we used to tell a dumb joke about two deaf fishermen walking up opposing sides of the street...both the men carried fishing poles slung over their shoulder, caps with fishing hooks, a lunch, etc. as they slogged along they called out to one another: "Hey, you goin' fishin???"
we'd always say 'get it?' and of course we did because being that both men were deaf, they'd be saying that all the way to the fishing hole 'hey, you goin' fishin?'...well..I didn't ever see the pointlessness of this joke until my freshman year of college. We studied Camus...who wrote about the optimization of lassitude, something I wasn't up on as an eighteen-year old college student. There didn't seem to be enough hours in the day. There still doesn't. While Camus reflected on the beinglessness of being, I was thinking about how to make it through the first semester of college. I had a work-study position with the head of the civil engineering department. The money went directly into my tuition account, meaning that the college had let me into their school and they were going to expect me to work to pay for my studies there.
After being with the civil engineering department for a while, I figured I should have gotten a job in the cafeteria, where I could eat to my heart's content and be full for a change. I never did that.
One day around Christmas Break, when we were full of the notion that we were going to go home for the holidays and receive major presents, it began to snow. It snowed for a night and t hen it snowed the next day. It snowed and it snowed. It began to look as though we might not be going home for the holidays after all. During this time, my comrad Hummel left me his car key and flew off to the East Coast to spend the holidays with his father, Col Hummel. He entr usted me with the safety of his 1962 Impala, a white beast of dubious tires and starter, conditioned for the road with over three hundred thousand milles on 'er, purchased in installements for three hundred dollars American, only missing the chenielle bobbles that then went with every decent Hispanic mobile that could crank itself up and down (yes, they were doing that back then too)...The Impala's keys were lost on a Sega tray at suppertime the day before we were due to pull out of t he campus and head home. There were four of us going. Two were being dropped in Aberdeen, one in Forks and one a little closer to Clallam Bay. My father was picking us up in Forks and driving us to our house as I did not yet get my drivers' l icense and did not get it until I was nine months pregnant with my first child, Hummel Jr. (the third...) That was a little later one. On this adventure the tire on the Impala went flat upon arrival at my parents' home and stayed that way until Hummel Jr came to collect me just after the new year1969. The snow had somewhat abated by then, I'd had my tonsils out over the holiday and so was unable to join my four brothers sliding down the hill by the house, succeeding in getting popcorn kernels stuck in the stitches in my throat, I gloomily watched the boys flying down the hillside. In hospital overnight for t he procedure, I'd woken up with a frantic four-year old boy who was my roommate for the night, finding myself unable to locate the bedside response button I walked the little boy into the darkenend hallway in the hospital ward, croaking for a nurse.
Hummel came to collect me, we got the Impala running again, complete with better tire and off to school we went. Th at summer I visited him in the balmy weather of the East Coast stepping off the plane in wool knee socks and quilted jumper, I soon learned what halters and cutoffs were for and stuck with them for the rest of the summer. Once off the plane, Hummel took me too his old neighborhood where all the kids were wearing ties and getting into their parents liquor supply. "You only have to be 18, we're all seniors, we're just about there, it's ok," was their litany. I was 18 so I had a beer. It wasn't that great, kind of bubbly and sour, I wasn't impressed. Boone's farms was better I thought, more like Koolaid than that other stuff. The kids were all wearing ties, playing poker and all of them had parents working for the CIA. At the time, I didn't think much of that information, my dad was still working on his civil engineering license, I worked with a guy he absolutely loathed. I found out later the man had been a prisoner of war during WWII with the Japanese at Bataan. So much for pleasant personalities.
These CIA kids were something else. Not only were they anticipating being 18, they had a brother who was 19 and he provided the wheels, the beer and the drives into the big city for pub crawling. It was a fun summer of late night adventures in the steamy jungles of the metropolitan area, coupled by day with door to door encyclopedia sales and dry goods vending where I found out how AfroAmerican people lived in houses that were one room with outdoor toilet and electricity but no fans. There were lots of flies in those places. The encyclopedia people looked like a lot of Arabs, as we called them, carpet sellers my mother said, civil engineering students my university enrolled (those there were) and I didn't no beans about the mideast so I was unaware of what ramifications the door to door sales of some kind of encyclopedia termed 'reference programming' was going to make impact wise and how I could earn a living doing so (I didn't, I quit when I was told by one customer that I was doing the 'work of the devil'). I came home quite penniless from my summer in the East, it's kind of been a theme of mine ever since. I went back to college that fall with fifty cents and then about twenty five years later there was a band by that name...
My mother didn't want to let go of any of the family funds for my college expenses like deodorant, shampoo, socks, underwear, what have you. Instead, she said I'd just have to get a job. "I have a job," I said. I work for the head of the Civil Engineering Department. "All my money goes to my tuitiion!" They didn't give me any of it for things like Tampax. I couldn't get a job off campus because I didn't have a bike or a car and the nearest places to find work were just that far away. It caused me the sort of stress that I still feel today...where to scrape up the next dime to have enough to get a donut...
we'd always say 'get it?' and of course we did because being that both men were deaf, they'd be saying that all the way to the fishing hole 'hey, you goin' fishin?'...well..I didn't ever see the pointlessness of this joke until my freshman year of college. We studied Camus...who wrote about the optimization of lassitude, something I wasn't up on as an eighteen-year old college student. There didn't seem to be enough hours in the day. There still doesn't. While Camus reflected on the beinglessness of being, I was thinking about how to make it through the first semester of college. I had a work-study position with the head of the civil engineering department. The money went directly into my tuition account, meaning that the college had let me into their school and they were going to expect me to work to pay for my studies there.
After being with the civil engineering department for a while, I figured I should have gotten a job in the cafeteria, where I could eat to my heart's content and be full for a change. I never did that.
One day around Christmas Break, when we were full of the notion that we were going to go home for the holidays and receive major presents, it began to snow. It snowed for a night and t hen it snowed the next day. It snowed and it snowed. It began to look as though we might not be going home for the holidays after all. During this time, my comrad Hummel left me his car key and flew off to the East Coast to spend the holidays with his father, Col Hummel. He entr usted me with the safety of his 1962 Impala, a white beast of dubious tires and starter, conditioned for the road with over three hundred thousand milles on 'er, purchased in installements for three hundred dollars American, only missing the chenielle bobbles that then went with every decent Hispanic mobile that could crank itself up and down (yes, they were doing that back then too)...The Impala's keys were lost on a Sega tray at suppertime the day before we were due to pull out of t he campus and head home. There were four of us going. Two were being dropped in Aberdeen, one in Forks and one a little closer to Clallam Bay. My father was picking us up in Forks and driving us to our house as I did not yet get my drivers' l icense and did not get it until I was nine months pregnant with my first child, Hummel Jr. (the third...) That was a little later one. On this adventure the tire on the Impala went flat upon arrival at my parents' home and stayed that way until Hummel Jr came to collect me just after the new year1969. The snow had somewhat abated by then, I'd had my tonsils out over the holiday and so was unable to join my four brothers sliding down the hill by the house, succeeding in getting popcorn kernels stuck in the stitches in my throat, I gloomily watched the boys flying down the hillside. In hospital overnight for t he procedure, I'd woken up with a frantic four-year old boy who was my roommate for the night, finding myself unable to locate the bedside response button I walked the little boy into the darkenend hallway in the hospital ward, croaking for a nurse.
Hummel came to collect me, we got the Impala running again, complete with better tire and off to school we went. Th at summer I visited him in the balmy weather of the East Coast stepping off the plane in wool knee socks and quilted jumper, I soon learned what halters and cutoffs were for and stuck with them for the rest of the summer. Once off the plane, Hummel took me too his old neighborhood where all the kids were wearing ties and getting into their parents liquor supply. "You only have to be 18, we're all seniors, we're just about there, it's ok," was their litany. I was 18 so I had a beer. It wasn't that great, kind of bubbly and sour, I wasn't impressed. Boone's farms was better I thought, more like Koolaid than that other stuff. The kids were all wearing ties, playing poker and all of them had parents working for the CIA. At the time, I didn't think much of that information, my dad was still working on his civil engineering license, I worked with a guy he absolutely loathed. I found out later the man had been a prisoner of war during WWII with the Japanese at Bataan. So much for pleasant personalities.
These CIA kids were something else. Not only were they anticipating being 18, they had a brother who was 19 and he provided the wheels, the beer and the drives into the big city for pub crawling. It was a fun summer of late night adventures in the steamy jungles of the metropolitan area, coupled by day with door to door encyclopedia sales and dry goods vending where I found out how AfroAmerican people lived in houses that were one room with outdoor toilet and electricity but no fans. There were lots of flies in those places. The encyclopedia people looked like a lot of Arabs, as we called them, carpet sellers my mother said, civil engineering students my university enrolled (those there were) and I didn't no beans about the mideast so I was unaware of what ramifications the door to door sales of some kind of encyclopedia termed 'reference programming' was going to make impact wise and how I could earn a living doing so (I didn't, I quit when I was told by one customer that I was doing the 'work of the devil'). I came home quite penniless from my summer in the East, it's kind of been a theme of mine ever since. I went back to college that fall with fifty cents and then about twenty five years later there was a band by that name...
My mother didn't want to let go of any of the family funds for my college expenses like deodorant, shampoo, socks, underwear, what have you. Instead, she said I'd just have to get a job. "I have a job," I said. I work for the head of the Civil Engineering Department. "All my money goes to my tuitiion!" They didn't give me any of it for things like Tampax. I couldn't get a job off campus because I didn't have a bike or a car and the nearest places to find work were just that far away. It caused me the sort of stress that I still feel today...where to scrape up the next dime to have enough to get a donut...
