One Revolution Play Festival, Center Stages, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010, at 7:00 P.M. six writers met at the home of the current Center Stages president, drew prompts from a pile and began writing. We were charged with completing a ten page play by 7:00 A.M., when about forty actors, six directors, and an unspecified number of tech people met at the Center Stages arena to cast, crew, and stage the plays. At 8:00 p.m. the plays were presented to an audience. What follows is my play.
Writer: Ron White
Title: A Sinking Ship
Prompts: mismatched couples & a sinking ship
Setting: a hold in a ship that may be sinking
Characters:
JESSICA, late forties, dressed in short brightly patterned shift wearing cowboy boots. Somehow, on her tall, leggy figure the combination “works.” A brightly but differently patterned scarf is loosely tied around her neck. Her big sunglasses are pushed up on her head. Everything she says rings with certainty and authority.
GIB, even later forties, dressed in beige chinos and a tan shirt. He is as tall as JESSICA, but because he is overweight he gives the impression that he is the short one of this couple. He is certainly shorter in stature. If in every relationship there is a pot and a flower, he is the pot to the brightly flowering JESSICA.
CODGER, late sixties, dressed in what use to be pumpkin colored overalls, a long sleeved blue denim work shirt, and orange work boots. All the colors have been faded and stained to mottled earth tones. His hair is unkempt and his beard is untrimmed, both graying in that piebald pattern that will never look distinguished. You expect him to be trailing a grocery basket with all his world’s possessions.
BENJAMIN, a shadow of a teen, skinny legged black jeans, a hoodie, worn zipped up with the hood up. Arms either perpetually wrapped around his thin frame or his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He barely raises his head until BRIANNA enters.
BRYCE, Late forties. He never thinks he is out of place, wearing yellow chinos, and a khaki safari shirt and hat. He is ebullient and enthusiastic, to the edge of insincerity. He smiles a lot, for no apparent reason.
BRIANNA, a teen, wearing a khaki safari shirt open over her black t-shirt. Also wearing a black skirt, she carries a khaki safari hat as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
THE SCENE
(We hear the sound of dripping water in a big, empty, metal-walled space, a hold in a ship that has not had a useful purpose in decades. A working ship’s hold would have crates, labeled, ordered, and stacked. This hold, while containing a few old crates and boxes left over from useful life, resembles someone’s attic. Mismatched chairs are piled in corners, among tables, boxes, and an occasional nautical artifact and random junk that only someone who sees possibilities in even the most worthless, useless things would save. Occasionally we hear a metallic thump echo from somewhere in the ship, and at rise, seemingly from everywhere we hear a metallic groan so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift.)
JESSICA
(striding into the hold looking over her shoulder)
What was that! I tell you this thing is sinking.
GIB
(entering then roaming around the hold looking in boxes moving chairs, looking behind things)
It may be. Could just be the hull heating in the sun and expanding. Ask the Codger about it.
CODGER
(we hear his voice echoing from down the passageway)
Halooo, where’d you git to? Don’t stray off. Ye’ll git lost an we won’t be able to save you.
JESSICA
I never stray. I’m not lost. Don’t need saving. We’re here.
(CODGER shuffles in, he has a slight limp. He looks from JESSICA to GIB and back, a little too intently. His gaze settles on GIB. What at first looks like the CODGER’S shadow resolves into BENJAMIN, who slips through the hatch and into a corner, sits on a crate, pulls a notebook from his pocket and hunches over it.)
CODGER
You wanted to see this?
(GIB does not answer)
JESSICA
Well,did you? You’ve been asked.
GIB
(on his hands and knees looking into a pile of chairs)
Yes. This was his last berth. I never got his personal effects. He had an old trunk. I thought it might still be here.
CODGER
Well, prob’ly. All we done here since I came is add stuff, never threw anything away. Never know what you’ll need. It’s all got possibilities.
JESSICA
Looks like a bunch of junk to me. Fifteen years ago. It’s probably not here, been too long, and if you find it what’ll you have?
GIB
It’s worth a look to me. It might be worth something to someone.
BENJAMIN
(releases a heavy sigh, and impossibly, manages to slump even further into the shadows. We have yet to see his face.)
JESSICA
Bennie! (a bit too intense) Don’t you start! (BENJAMIN straightens slightly while JESSICA is looking at him, then slumps. JESSICA to GIB) How long will it take? We’re leaving soon, not driving all night.
GIB
Not long. With help. Ben, look there. . . . a black trunk.
(JESSICA rolls her eyes and begins to pace around, occasionally halfheartedly looking around.)
BENJAMIN
“Ah eye t”
(spoken as one syllable, his response is indistinguishable as “right” he slumps over toward the corner, tilts slightly as if to look under one chair and stops)
JESSICA
He never did anything, never fit in anywhere, never accomplished anything.
GIB
He was my father. One hour (looks at watch), we’ll go, found or not.
(We hear a distant ringing, like a ranch house dinner bell ringing)
CODGER
Oop, ‘nother customer. Are ye sayin’ a trunk or a footlocker? Wood or metal? Round top or flat?
GIB
(after a pause) Locker. Metal. Flat.
CODGER
Ah’ll keep thinkin’. (the bell rings again) Be right back. (He takes two steps out, stops, turns, and commands) Stay here! (he leaves)
JESSICA
(drifts toward GIB, stops between him and the pile he wants to explore. Whispering, as if to hide her words from BENJAMIN)
This is not the vacation I planned. If we’re going to look through stuff, I’d rather it be something useful—we passed two outlet malls this morning—something meaningful.
(GIB looks her in the eyes a moment, makes a slow feint left, which she follows to block his way, then he spins left all the way around to his right, walks around JESSICA toward the pile and stoops to look through it. BENJAMIN, who has been watching, barks out a laugh which JESSICA squelches with a dark look.)
I’m tired of you two laughing at me. I will have better. I deserve better.
(the drips, creeks, pops--the sounds of the ship intrude again, culminating in another loud metallic groan, once again, so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift.)
I tell you if this thing isn’t sinking, it’s coming apart at the seams.
GIB
Sorry, Jess. Fifty minutes. Promise. (He checks his watch. As he speaks he looks through the pile, he stops, sighs) Ben, that was wrong of me. I made you laugh at her. Sorry. I shouldn’t have.
JESSICA
That’s wasn’t my Bennie. He’s better than that, better than him anyway, aren’t you my sweeeet boy. (She crosses to him and pulls his head to her chest in a hug, he hangs there limply as if his head was impaled on a wall)
BENJAMIN
(emits an inarticulate mutter as she rocks his head side to side)
GIB
Here, help Ben. (JESSICA releases BENJAMIN who extracts himself and crosses to help edge a crate aside so GIB can look behind it.
(sounds from the passageway, people talking, CODGER talking. The sounds get louder as they draw closer.)
CODGER
. . . cargo down the coast of South America and back for thirty years. This’ll be the only exhibition ship honoring the merchant marine. A cargo hold to the left. . .
(CODGER, BRYCE, and BRIANNA enter. BENJAMIN stands taller when they enter.
BRIANNA
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the Battleship Texas, Dad. (CODGER gives her an irritated look.)
BRYCE
(breezy, and confident)
Well maybe not, but it’s interesting none-the-less. (stops as he sees the others, a little over inflected) Well what a coincidence. Jessica, Gib, Bennie!
JESSICA
(Surprise, caution)
Bryce.
GIB
A coincidence?
CODGER
I know where the footlocker is? Nor’east corner. Back ‘o the boxes. A black one, right?
GIB
(turns toward the corner and begins to move junk. Sighing to self.)
Coincidence.(finding the foot locker) Ah! You’re good?
(GIB drags the foot locker to center. BENJAMIN joins him. They kneel, trying to open it)
CODGER
I know where most things are, possibly everything.
JESSICA
(moving toward BRYCE as BRIANNA moves to see what’s in the chest)
What is it?
GIB
(opening the lid, pulling papers and letters, some stacked and tied together with string) My father’s poems.
BENJAMIN
(his first articulate word)
Grandpa wrote poetry?
JESSICA
(JESSICA, snorts and rolls her eyes so only BRYCE can see)
Well that’s . . . good.
GIB
Look, Ben, He wrote this about you when you were born. He use to send poems to us neatly written in his big looping handwriting. I didn’t keep them, barely read them. (BENJAMIN takes the paper, and begins to read, GIB to BENJAMIN, apologetically) Old fashioned stuff, huh? He always said his poems were out of fashion.
BENJAMIN
No, it’s okay. I like it. (BRIANNA, kneels next to BENJAMIN, begins to read the papers with him.) Is it all poetry?
GIB
Looks like a lot of it is. This looks like a stack of journals. I’m glad we found it. (to CODGER) May I have this? Do I need to pay you anything?
CODGER
Looks like the best place for this is with you.
JESSICA
Okay, you found it. Let’s . . .(she drifts off, a first sign of uncertainty)
BRYCE
What are your plans? Bree and I are staying in Rockport. We could all go for dinner together.
GIB
I think our plan is to go on up to San Antonio this afternoon.
JESSICA
We’re on a vacation, we can be flexible. Bryce, do you think there might still be rooms available where you’re staying?
BRYCE
I’ll give them a call and see. (he steps away and calls on his phone)
GIB
Jess, you okay with that?
JESSICA
Sure, it’ll probably be good for Bennie--someone his own age. (to BENJAMIN) Do you know Bree? You go to the same school,don’t you? (BENJAMIN, shrugs, nods, and when JESSICA turns to BRYCE exchanges a direct gaze and smile with BRIANNA)
BRYCE
It’s a done deal. I went ahead and told them to hold you a room. That okay, Gib?
JESSICA & GIB OVERLAP
JESS: Sure,that’s fine. GIB: Looks like it.
GIB
(turning to CODGER, indicating the footlocker) Is this for sale, then?
CODGER
Naa, it’s yours.
GIB
Let’s see if we can carry it out.
JESSICA
Up those ladders? It’s going to take forever.
BRYCE
Why don’t we go ahead and get your room and let them come along when they haul the trunk out?
JESSICA
Uh, okay. (second sign of indecision)
BRYCE
Bree, you okay staying with them, or . . . do you want . .
BRIANNA
I’m okay Dad. (quickly)
JESSICA
Okay with you? (to GIB)
GIB
Probably for the best.
(JESSICA & BRYCE begin to move toward the exit)
CODGER
Le’me show you all out.
BRYCE
We can find it.
JESSICA
Yeah, not a problem.
(they’re gone, once again we hear a metallic groan so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift)
I’m telling you this thing is sinking! Don’t hang around too long.
CODGER
I better go with ‘em.
GIB
Let her go. She may be lost, she may need saving, but she won’t admit it.
CODGER
We’ll be outta here in just a bit, anyway. I’ll look for ‘em when we finish.
GIB
Up those ladders with this trunk?
CODGER
Naw, the hold has a winch at the hatch. Come on up and help me drop the net down to the kids. (they exit)
(BRIANNA and BENJAMIN are left reading the poems. They look to see they are alone and then embrace and exchange a kiss)
BENJAMIN
Breee? (laughing)
BRIANNA
Bennieee? (laughing)
TOGETHER
BRI: Nobody calls me that but Dad.
BEN: Nobody calls me that but Mom.
(They laugh, giggle, and tussle playfully)
BRIANNA
And your Mom really doesn’t know anything about me?
BENJAMIN
She knows, I’ve taken out an Annie several times. (they both laugh) Dad knows you, could you tell?
BRIANNA
No, really?
BENJAMIN
He’s good that way. He’s also bad that way. I didn’t know why we were roaming around in this old ship, but I think he wanted me to have Grandpa’s poetry.
BRIANNA
Does he know about . . .
BENJAMIN
I don’t know . . . maybe.
BRIANNA
I like the poems, they’re sweet.
BENJAMIN
As sweet as mine? (she smiles as . . .)
GIB
Ahoy mates, line coming down. (interrupting from above)
TOGETHER
Ahoy mates? (looking at each other, they laugh again)
(a line is dropped from above and the “children” tie the footlocker to the line, it is being raised to the hatch above as the lights fade. The last thing we hear is their laughter echoing in the hold)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Monday, June 08, 2009
Honor Code
This spring I attended the JROTC spring banquet. In the program, they printed the JROTC "honor code.” I may not be doing the language of it justice since I'm calling it up from memory, but the plain, blunt, sense of it was:
"I will not lie or steal, nor will I tolerate those who do."
I was struck by the bald simplicity of the statement, the knowledge that the students in the JROTC program sign it in order to be in the program, the stark contrast between that simple statement and the baseline morality of many students, and the fact that an open affirmation of the value of honesty and integrity seems largely absent from our school and all other student programs and activities.
Earlier this year, one of my freshmen threw the view that "everybody lies" (with appropriate reference to the TV show House) into a casual, end-of-class, student discussion and shrugged off my surprise when the view lay there unchallenged, a truth so generally accepted by all that it carried the day and settled the discussion.
So . . . After the JROTC banquet I found myself brought back to the question, what is the verity here? Is it somehow a truth that everyone lies? Can that statement carry the label that it denies?
"I will not lie or steal, nor will I tolerate those who do."
I was struck by the bald simplicity of the statement, the knowledge that the students in the JROTC program sign it in order to be in the program, the stark contrast between that simple statement and the baseline morality of many students, and the fact that an open affirmation of the value of honesty and integrity seems largely absent from our school and all other student programs and activities.
Earlier this year, one of my freshmen threw the view that "everybody lies" (with appropriate reference to the TV show House) into a casual, end-of-class, student discussion and shrugged off my surprise when the view lay there unchallenged, a truth so generally accepted by all that it carried the day and settled the discussion.
So . . . After the JROTC banquet I found myself brought back to the question, what is the verity here? Is it somehow a truth that everyone lies? Can that statement carry the label that it denies?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Beach House
This is also from Ike.
It is one of several segments I wrote for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up an evening's entertainment about our hurricane experiences fall of '08.
The idea of building a beach house that would crash during the sound-and-lighting-effects-created hurricane was one of the first images that led us to create the production. In part, it was the before and after pictures of houses on the Bolivar peninsula that led me to make the crash the climax of the show. I also wanted to personalize the "big disaster" of the storm for my students.
My intent was for the beach house to loom in the background through the first act, for it to crash during the storm, and for the debris to be background to the second act.
The storm itself, at first, was going to be represented with sound efects and lighting, but as we developed the scenes, one of the students composed a solo piano piece that we showcased through the storm.
Crashing the house in a way that could be re-set and re-crashed on subsequent nights was a technical challenge, but the students were determined to make it work.
The story of these two scenes was designed to help create another throughline, part of a spine for the play. While not quite whole cloth, the story of the brother and sister in these scenes did not come from any student stories.
"The Beach House, Before the Crash”
(It’s dark with a dim light under the beach house, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds; we hear moderate waves rolling in. A teenage boy is sitting on the sand on the Gulf side of the beach house looking out toward the Gulf. He may not be seen at first. A car is heard from the other side of the house, we see the headlights pull up, stop, and turn off as the engine stops. A car door opens and closes, a girl in her late twenties comes from under the beach house looking around. She sees the boy.)
SIS: Hey (using the word as a greeting) . . . Sorry if I scared . . .
BRO: I heard you pull up.
SIS: (a pause, she looks out into the Gulf) ...'s a storm out there.
BRO: (gentle sarcasm) Ya think? I came to see and hear real surf. It’s about the only time, when there’s a storm.
SIS: I figured. Papa was worried.
BRO: He said?
SIS: No, but he called.
BRO: Oh, (He checks his phone, slumps his shoulders, sighs) I didn't charge it.
SIS: We figured. I told him you were probably here.
BRO: Don't come here as often as before . . . we don't. He tried to keep doing everything just the same, for a while . . . we were out here the whole first summer.
SIS: Not the same?
BRO: In town, he seemed sad. Out here, it was different--good different--but he kept . . .
SIS: . . . remembering?
BRO: No, . . . not forgetting.
SIS: It seemed okay when we came down that first Christmas
BRO: That was good, better even. You and Mike, driftwood Yule Log. (He laughs)
SIS: (She smiles) Christmas with my guys.
BRO: A real "traditional" Christmas Eve, playing Nuclear Risk 'till 6:00 a.m. (Both laugh)
SIS: Mike still talks about Papa's final sweep out of Russia with his ...what? Cossacks?
BRO: No, (imitating a dramatic voice) “Mongol hoard riding across the Steppes."
SIS: Yeah, Mike analyses that game like it was a chess match. He checked out library books on strategy, planning a re-match . . . sooo intense.
BRO: And Papa just plays around, all random, no plan. (Another imitation) "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
SIS: And he always wins.
BRO: (a little too abrupt) I've won. I can beat him. (He slumps and stares toward the Gulf)
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) You can . . . you do. (Pause) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
BRO: Figuring. That Christmas Eve was unscheduled.
SIS: What’d you mean? We did stuff. Tamales, chips, guacamole, black-eyed pea salsa. Our stockings.
BRO: Traditions are not a schedule. It was way different before. She’d plan the whole evening, hour by hour. Instead, you were rummaging around, looking in the top cabinet for a bowl and said, "Hey, here's Risk." And we play for eight hours.
SIS: You miss schedules?
BRO: (too casual, too nonchalant) No
SIS: (pause, a shrug) She doesn't like board games.
BRO: (a low key rant) She doesn't like a lot of things: doesn’t like random, doesn’t like relaxed, you don’t have to vacation with her . . .
SIS: Papa didn't raise us to dislike our mother.
BRO: I don’t . . . I’m just figuring things out . . .
SIS: (over his unbroken line) Anyway, that storm was building for longer than we knew.
BRO: . . . she doesn't like sand, the beach house, Papa . . . Huh? Yeah it's building, Cat four coming off Cuba—what? (realizing she’s not talking about Ike) Oh, uh, yeah. I don’t think she even knew. If it was a storm, we’d ‘a noticed, maybe done something.
SIS: We couldn’t have fixed it. Wasn’t ours to fix.
BRO: (pause) Do you ever feel she doesn't like us either. . .
SIS: (pause, heavy sigh) Yes . . . but I know better.
BRO: I mean us, who we are not what she can make us. She wants’ you to be her. She wants’ me to be . . . I don't know . . . something, something I’m not.
SIS: She loves us, maybe even Papa. She just, I don't know, lost her nerve. She needs to have a plan. It’s the way she’s wired. She doesn't like needing it, but she does. I asked her once, before everything crashed, about how they met. She said Papa was fun in college because she never knew what was going to happen next, (He reacts with surprise) that they always laughed a lot. She wanted that, wanted to be that way herself.
BRO: (incredulous) That's the same reason she told him she was leaving him. I heard her say it, (in a flat, unemotional, voice) --, “I never know what you’re going to say or do next.” —they thought I was asleep. What a wreck!
SIS: (She hugs him) Sorry I wasn’t here when you had to go through all that. (He shrugs) I think she left because she was afraid. Not knowing wasn’t fun any more.
BRO: She tell you that?
SIS: . . . just figured it out.
BRO: She didn't talk with me either.
SIS: She’s afraid for us now, ‘cause we’re also like her--you more than me--She wants to know we’ll be okay, that we won’t wake up someday and be afraid of our lives.
BRO: What's there to be afraid of?
SIS: She doesn’t know . . .
BRO: . . . and not knowing scares her?
SIS: Yeah.
BRO: That’s whack. I’d go nuts if everything were all mapped out. Some stuff, yeah sure, but not everything.
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) Yeah, sure.
BRO: You flying back tomorrow?
SIS: Haven’t decided, maybe after the storm comes in.
BRO: Staying to take care of us?
SIS: You are my guys.
BRO: Two of ‘em anyway. We’ll be okay. Ike comes ashore here; we’ll drive north until we find someplace fun to stay.
SIS: I’ll call Mike when we get back to the house and see if he can stand to be without me a few more days. If he’s cranking out pages, I sometimes distract more than I help. Let’s go so Papa will stop worrying. (They begin to make their way through the pylons under the beach house)
BRO: Besides, Ike’s not coming here.
SIS: Hope not. I’d like this to stay the same.
BRO: We’re good. Storms never make landfall where the first prediction sets the bull’s eye...
(We hear car doors opening and closing, engines starting, see headlights come on and turn away, as we hear cars pulling away. Finally, it’s dark again, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds, and we hear the waves rolling in.)
"After the Crash"
(Dark again, no moonlight, sound of waves, no lights at all on the collapsed beach house. It has been forced off two of its' pylons and lays amid a rubble of boards and trash. A bouncing flashlight beam, then a second approaches from the street side, upstage of the house.)
SIS: If Papa knew we came out here, he’d die.
BRO: Don’t tell him.
SIS: Not ever! He’d stroke out. He hates snakes.
BRO: I’m not even sure that was a snake. We’re safe now.
SIS: Safe is sitting at the Sonic like you let Papa think we were gonna be, not walking with flashlights in snake land. I wish we could’ve gotten closer in the car.
BRO: Oh wow, it’s totally crashed.
SIS: (Carrying flashlight, coming to Gulf side) Okay, we’ve seen it. It’s a wreck, just like on the website. Let’s go.
BRO: We only saw the street side on the website.
SIS: Well, Gulf side is a wreck also.
BRO: (He comes out) Yeah, it is. But all the pieces are here, mostly.
SIS: And extras pieces from I don’t know where.
BRO: Can we fix it?
SIS: Not enough to fix. Maybe rebuild it. (Gauging the distance from the house to the new shoreline) It’s closer to the Gulf, but we still got land, it’s not into the open beach. (He goes back under, we hear banging) What are you doing! That’s not safe. (Muffled voice) Get outta there.
BRO: (he emerges carrying something) Inside is wrecked too, but look. (Holds Risk box) It was still in the top cabinet, not even damp. Bowls were broken though. (They turn and look at the house for a while, then turn and look at the Gulf. We hear waves)
SIS: (Turning back to the wrecked house) I’m glad we came to see it, but I’m sad. (Pause)
BRO: (Looking at her) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
SIS: I don’t know, maybe both. Maybe both are okay if you got a reason.
BRO: We got a reason. . . . I’m sad, too. (Trying to be hopeful) So, it can’t be fixed?
SIS: A bunch of this isn’t even ours to fix. We can re-build what’s ours. It’ll be different, but good different, at least until the next storm. (Pause, she looks at him) ‘k? (Verbal shorthand for okay?)
BRO: ‘k. But there won’t be another storm.
SIS: (again, gentle sarcasm) Ya think?
BRO: Not rolling through here. Storms never make landfall in the same place more than once in a generation. (She smiles)
(They turn and stand looking at the house, then briefly glance back out to the Gulf, and begin to pick their way back through the rubble)
SIS: Let’s cruise through Sonic on the way home and get Papa a cherry Dr. Pepper so he won’t think to ask us what took us so long.
(He laughs, they laugh. The sound of their steps fade until they become retreating flashlight beams and we are left hearing the waves on the beach.)
It is one of several segments I wrote for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up an evening's entertainment about our hurricane experiences fall of '08.
The idea of building a beach house that would crash during the sound-and-lighting-effects-created hurricane was one of the first images that led us to create the production. In part, it was the before and after pictures of houses on the Bolivar peninsula that led me to make the crash the climax of the show. I also wanted to personalize the "big disaster" of the storm for my students.
My intent was for the beach house to loom in the background through the first act, for it to crash during the storm, and for the debris to be background to the second act.
The storm itself, at first, was going to be represented with sound efects and lighting, but as we developed the scenes, one of the students composed a solo piano piece that we showcased through the storm.
Crashing the house in a way that could be re-set and re-crashed on subsequent nights was a technical challenge, but the students were determined to make it work.
The story of these two scenes was designed to help create another throughline, part of a spine for the play. While not quite whole cloth, the story of the brother and sister in these scenes did not come from any student stories.
"The Beach House, Before the Crash”
(It’s dark with a dim light under the beach house, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds; we hear moderate waves rolling in. A teenage boy is sitting on the sand on the Gulf side of the beach house looking out toward the Gulf. He may not be seen at first. A car is heard from the other side of the house, we see the headlights pull up, stop, and turn off as the engine stops. A car door opens and closes, a girl in her late twenties comes from under the beach house looking around. She sees the boy.)
SIS: Hey (using the word as a greeting) . . . Sorry if I scared . . .
BRO: I heard you pull up.
SIS: (a pause, she looks out into the Gulf) ...'s a storm out there.
BRO: (gentle sarcasm) Ya think? I came to see and hear real surf. It’s about the only time, when there’s a storm.
SIS: I figured. Papa was worried.
BRO: He said?
SIS: No, but he called.
BRO: Oh, (He checks his phone, slumps his shoulders, sighs) I didn't charge it.
SIS: We figured. I told him you were probably here.
BRO: Don't come here as often as before . . . we don't. He tried to keep doing everything just the same, for a while . . . we were out here the whole first summer.
SIS: Not the same?
BRO: In town, he seemed sad. Out here, it was different--good different--but he kept . . .
SIS: . . . remembering?
BRO: No, . . . not forgetting.
SIS: It seemed okay when we came down that first Christmas
BRO: That was good, better even. You and Mike, driftwood Yule Log. (He laughs)
SIS: (She smiles) Christmas with my guys.
BRO: A real "traditional" Christmas Eve, playing Nuclear Risk 'till 6:00 a.m. (Both laugh)
SIS: Mike still talks about Papa's final sweep out of Russia with his ...what? Cossacks?
BRO: No, (imitating a dramatic voice) “Mongol hoard riding across the Steppes."
SIS: Yeah, Mike analyses that game like it was a chess match. He checked out library books on strategy, planning a re-match . . . sooo intense.
BRO: And Papa just plays around, all random, no plan. (Another imitation) "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
SIS: And he always wins.
BRO: (a little too abrupt) I've won. I can beat him. (He slumps and stares toward the Gulf)
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) You can . . . you do. (Pause) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
BRO: Figuring. That Christmas Eve was unscheduled.
SIS: What’d you mean? We did stuff. Tamales, chips, guacamole, black-eyed pea salsa. Our stockings.
BRO: Traditions are not a schedule. It was way different before. She’d plan the whole evening, hour by hour. Instead, you were rummaging around, looking in the top cabinet for a bowl and said, "Hey, here's Risk." And we play for eight hours.
SIS: You miss schedules?
BRO: (too casual, too nonchalant) No
SIS: (pause, a shrug) She doesn't like board games.
BRO: (a low key rant) She doesn't like a lot of things: doesn’t like random, doesn’t like relaxed, you don’t have to vacation with her . . .
SIS: Papa didn't raise us to dislike our mother.
BRO: I don’t . . . I’m just figuring things out . . .
SIS: (over his unbroken line) Anyway, that storm was building for longer than we knew.
BRO: . . . she doesn't like sand, the beach house, Papa . . . Huh? Yeah it's building, Cat four coming off Cuba—what? (realizing she’s not talking about Ike) Oh, uh, yeah. I don’t think she even knew. If it was a storm, we’d ‘a noticed, maybe done something.
SIS: We couldn’t have fixed it. Wasn’t ours to fix.
BRO: (pause) Do you ever feel she doesn't like us either. . .
SIS: (pause, heavy sigh) Yes . . . but I know better.
BRO: I mean us, who we are not what she can make us. She wants’ you to be her. She wants’ me to be . . . I don't know . . . something, something I’m not.
SIS: She loves us, maybe even Papa. She just, I don't know, lost her nerve. She needs to have a plan. It’s the way she’s wired. She doesn't like needing it, but she does. I asked her once, before everything crashed, about how they met. She said Papa was fun in college because she never knew what was going to happen next, (He reacts with surprise) that they always laughed a lot. She wanted that, wanted to be that way herself.
BRO: (incredulous) That's the same reason she told him she was leaving him. I heard her say it, (in a flat, unemotional, voice) --, “I never know what you’re going to say or do next.” —they thought I was asleep. What a wreck!
SIS: (She hugs him) Sorry I wasn’t here when you had to go through all that. (He shrugs) I think she left because she was afraid. Not knowing wasn’t fun any more.
BRO: She tell you that?
SIS: . . . just figured it out.
BRO: She didn't talk with me either.
SIS: She’s afraid for us now, ‘cause we’re also like her--you more than me--She wants to know we’ll be okay, that we won’t wake up someday and be afraid of our lives.
BRO: What's there to be afraid of?
SIS: She doesn’t know . . .
BRO: . . . and not knowing scares her?
SIS: Yeah.
BRO: That’s whack. I’d go nuts if everything were all mapped out. Some stuff, yeah sure, but not everything.
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) Yeah, sure.
BRO: You flying back tomorrow?
SIS: Haven’t decided, maybe after the storm comes in.
BRO: Staying to take care of us?
SIS: You are my guys.
BRO: Two of ‘em anyway. We’ll be okay. Ike comes ashore here; we’ll drive north until we find someplace fun to stay.
SIS: I’ll call Mike when we get back to the house and see if he can stand to be without me a few more days. If he’s cranking out pages, I sometimes distract more than I help. Let’s go so Papa will stop worrying. (They begin to make their way through the pylons under the beach house)
BRO: Besides, Ike’s not coming here.
SIS: Hope not. I’d like this to stay the same.
BRO: We’re good. Storms never make landfall where the first prediction sets the bull’s eye...
(We hear car doors opening and closing, engines starting, see headlights come on and turn away, as we hear cars pulling away. Finally, it’s dark again, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds, and we hear the waves rolling in.)
"After the Crash"
(Dark again, no moonlight, sound of waves, no lights at all on the collapsed beach house. It has been forced off two of its' pylons and lays amid a rubble of boards and trash. A bouncing flashlight beam, then a second approaches from the street side, upstage of the house.)
SIS: If Papa knew we came out here, he’d die.
BRO: Don’t tell him.
SIS: Not ever! He’d stroke out. He hates snakes.
BRO: I’m not even sure that was a snake. We’re safe now.
SIS: Safe is sitting at the Sonic like you let Papa think we were gonna be, not walking with flashlights in snake land. I wish we could’ve gotten closer in the car.
BRO: Oh wow, it’s totally crashed.
SIS: (Carrying flashlight, coming to Gulf side) Okay, we’ve seen it. It’s a wreck, just like on the website. Let’s go.
BRO: We only saw the street side on the website.
SIS: Well, Gulf side is a wreck also.
BRO: (He comes out) Yeah, it is. But all the pieces are here, mostly.
SIS: And extras pieces from I don’t know where.
BRO: Can we fix it?
SIS: Not enough to fix. Maybe rebuild it. (Gauging the distance from the house to the new shoreline) It’s closer to the Gulf, but we still got land, it’s not into the open beach. (He goes back under, we hear banging) What are you doing! That’s not safe. (Muffled voice) Get outta there.
BRO: (he emerges carrying something) Inside is wrecked too, but look. (Holds Risk box) It was still in the top cabinet, not even damp. Bowls were broken though. (They turn and look at the house for a while, then turn and look at the Gulf. We hear waves)
SIS: (Turning back to the wrecked house) I’m glad we came to see it, but I’m sad. (Pause)
BRO: (Looking at her) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
SIS: I don’t know, maybe both. Maybe both are okay if you got a reason.
BRO: We got a reason. . . . I’m sad, too. (Trying to be hopeful) So, it can’t be fixed?
SIS: A bunch of this isn’t even ours to fix. We can re-build what’s ours. It’ll be different, but good different, at least until the next storm. (Pause, she looks at him) ‘k? (Verbal shorthand for okay?)
BRO: ‘k. But there won’t be another storm.
SIS: (again, gentle sarcasm) Ya think?
BRO: Not rolling through here. Storms never make landfall in the same place more than once in a generation. (She smiles)
(They turn and stand looking at the house, then briefly glance back out to the Gulf, and begin to pick their way back through the rubble)
SIS: Let’s cruise through Sonic on the way home and get Papa a cherry Dr. Pepper so he won’t think to ask us what took us so long.
(He laughs, they laugh. The sound of their steps fade until they become retreating flashlight beams and we are left hearing the waves on the beach.)
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Our Dad is Nuts
Also from IKE. Pretty much whole cloth. We never named these children.
He: I think my father . . .
She: Our Daddy
He: . . . is not like other fathers.
She: He’s nuts!
He: When I arrived home from school today . . .
She: Everyone else’s parents are rushing around, getting ready for the hurricane . . .
He: He was sitting at his computer looking at numbers, as usual.
She: Our whole house could blow down and he wouldn’t notice unless the internet went down.
He: It wouldn’t do that.
She: The house won’t blow down?
He: No, our connection won’t go down. It’s broadband wireless.
She: Great! He’ll be sitting in the wrecked house staring at the computer. We’re not ready! We’ve got to get ready!
He: I think you’re nuts. When has he ever been not ready for anything. . . . So I go to the study . . .
She: Me too, I go too.
He: I knock, wait a minute and he says come in. He looks up like nothing is happening, so I say there’s a storm headed our way. He looks back at his computer and says “There is storm coming, but I think we’re almost ready for it.” He punches a few keys and the numbers on the screen change.
She: And I can’t stand it, so I tell him that everyone is boarding up their houses, stocking up on food and water, and that even that lazy Mary Grace Crussell next door is hauling their patio furniture into her garage, and that we’re all going to be refugees and that I don’t want to be a refugee.
He: He looks at us a minute like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and says “Oh, yes, the hurricane. We’ll be evacuees, not refugees. It’s much better. We’ll go to your Uncle John’s.” I keep standing there looking at him and finally he says, “Well let’s get out the boards.” He’s got these boards he keeps in a rack in the garage, all cut, painted, and numbered. They fit over every window and door in the house. We pull them out and slip them over our windows with these little clips he has for them.
She: I decide to save the patio furniture and go outside but most of it is built-in as part of the patio. I put the chairs in their little house, went to check on Mom, she’s packing a picnic and asking me what book we would like her to read to us in the car, like it was vacation or something.
He: When we finish putting the boards up Dad tells me to get my laptop and a few days clothes packed up and goes back to his computer. He gets out his PDA and seems to be syncing it up with the computer and some new gadget he’s got. Then he goes back to the screens of numbers he’s always checking. I can hear our neighbors cutting boards and hammering them over their windows.
She: I tell mom there’s a storm coming our way, she says she knows and tells me to get the bag she packed for me from my room. I ask her if we have all the food and water we need for after the storm, and she shows me a cabinet I didn’t know we had high in the garage filled with water and canned food.
He: While I’m putting the bags and picnic hamper in the car, Father stops in the doorway of the house, punches a couple of buttons on his PDA and suddenly I hear that monster generator he has in the back yard—it’s in its own little louver-sided house that every one thinks is a pool house—anyway it started up. He says, “Oops, gave it the wrong command.” He hits a few more buttons and it shuts down. I thought he was a little nuts when he towed that thing home from an equipment auction once, but maybe we’ll get some use out of it now.
She: Driving out of town, I ask mom if our house will be there when we get back. She says, “Yes, I hope so” and dad says “if it’s not we could probably turn a tidy profit selling the lot as a scrape-off.” Mom says, “Now Justin (she always calls him by his first name when she’s scolding him), that’s our home, not some commodity you flip for cash.”
He: And he said, “You are right dear.” Which is what he always says when she calls him, “Justin.” Except this time, he also said, “confusing homes with commodities is what brought on this storm . . . that and greed.”
She: I didn’t understand, but mom started reading Eragon, and I didn’t want to interrupt.
He: We drive to Father’s brother, our Uncle John, in Austin and just wait for everything to blow over. Both of them work at home, investments, and so they both spent the whole time on John’s computers, screens of numbers, just like Father’s.
She: When I asked them what they were doing, John said they were, “buying and selling,” Dad added, "mostly selling." Then they laughed that funny way they do . . .
He: . . . they chuckle . . .
She: Anyway, it’s irritating. It’s like they’ve guessed a big secret that no one else has a clue about.
He: We sat at Uncle John’s and watched Ike on TV like most everyone else I guess. Father, John and I sat up all night Friday night watching the weather coverage. I was about half asleep, but as the South wall of the storm moved through Brazoria County I heard an alarm on Father’s PDA go off. He looked at it, punched a few buttons and told John the “power in our house just went out,” but as far as he could tell "the integrity of the house is still unbroken."
* * * *
She: Sunday, I figured we were headed home when I saw Mom in John’s kitchen packing the picnic hamper again.
He: We drove home just like we drove up, at a leisurely rate with Mom reading to us from Eragon.
She: As we got closer to Lake Jackson, we saw more and more torn up stuff. Trees, houses, lots of signs just blown completely away.
He: There weren’t many streetlights working anywhere. As we skirted around Houston, Father called Tony—the guy who takes care of our yard and stuff—and asked if he had crews out working already. Then he started punching buttons on the PDA again.
She: He told me he was going to turn on the power at our house!
He: He logged onto the burglar alarm system to find out if there were any windows or doors broken—he said the house was okay. He also had the generator rigged up so he could start it remotely.
She: If everything worked like it was supposed to, he said the house would be cool by the time we got home.
He: It was.
She: I still think he’s nuts. He doesn’t get excited about anything. We were unprepared. We should have prepared more. We were just lucky. (She leaves the stage.)
He: He gets excited about some things. Like Monday, the 15th, right after the storm, I heard him in his study and it sounded like he was talking to Uncle John. I looked in and saw they were using a voice/picture connection between their computers. I’ve never seen anything on those screens but numbers and graphs. They’ve never acted like that before, either—way beyond chuckling. John was almost giggling like my sister’s friends, saying, “You got us out just in time.” Father shrugged, “We were just lucky we were able to sell when we did.” John laughed, “completely out without a hit,” and logged off.
He: I think my father . . .
She: Our Daddy
He: . . . is not like other fathers.
She: He’s nuts!
He: When I arrived home from school today . . .
She: Everyone else’s parents are rushing around, getting ready for the hurricane . . .
He: He was sitting at his computer looking at numbers, as usual.
She: Our whole house could blow down and he wouldn’t notice unless the internet went down.
He: It wouldn’t do that.
She: The house won’t blow down?
He: No, our connection won’t go down. It’s broadband wireless.
She: Great! He’ll be sitting in the wrecked house staring at the computer. We’re not ready! We’ve got to get ready!
He: I think you’re nuts. When has he ever been not ready for anything. . . . So I go to the study . . .
She: Me too, I go too.
He: I knock, wait a minute and he says come in. He looks up like nothing is happening, so I say there’s a storm headed our way. He looks back at his computer and says “There is storm coming, but I think we’re almost ready for it.” He punches a few keys and the numbers on the screen change.
She: And I can’t stand it, so I tell him that everyone is boarding up their houses, stocking up on food and water, and that even that lazy Mary Grace Crussell next door is hauling their patio furniture into her garage, and that we’re all going to be refugees and that I don’t want to be a refugee.
He: He looks at us a minute like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and says “Oh, yes, the hurricane. We’ll be evacuees, not refugees. It’s much better. We’ll go to your Uncle John’s.” I keep standing there looking at him and finally he says, “Well let’s get out the boards.” He’s got these boards he keeps in a rack in the garage, all cut, painted, and numbered. They fit over every window and door in the house. We pull them out and slip them over our windows with these little clips he has for them.
She: I decide to save the patio furniture and go outside but most of it is built-in as part of the patio. I put the chairs in their little house, went to check on Mom, she’s packing a picnic and asking me what book we would like her to read to us in the car, like it was vacation or something.
He: When we finish putting the boards up Dad tells me to get my laptop and a few days clothes packed up and goes back to his computer. He gets out his PDA and seems to be syncing it up with the computer and some new gadget he’s got. Then he goes back to the screens of numbers he’s always checking. I can hear our neighbors cutting boards and hammering them over their windows.
She: I tell mom there’s a storm coming our way, she says she knows and tells me to get the bag she packed for me from my room. I ask her if we have all the food and water we need for after the storm, and she shows me a cabinet I didn’t know we had high in the garage filled with water and canned food.
He: While I’m putting the bags and picnic hamper in the car, Father stops in the doorway of the house, punches a couple of buttons on his PDA and suddenly I hear that monster generator he has in the back yard—it’s in its own little louver-sided house that every one thinks is a pool house—anyway it started up. He says, “Oops, gave it the wrong command.” He hits a few more buttons and it shuts down. I thought he was a little nuts when he towed that thing home from an equipment auction once, but maybe we’ll get some use out of it now.
She: Driving out of town, I ask mom if our house will be there when we get back. She says, “Yes, I hope so” and dad says “if it’s not we could probably turn a tidy profit selling the lot as a scrape-off.” Mom says, “Now Justin (she always calls him by his first name when she’s scolding him), that’s our home, not some commodity you flip for cash.”
He: And he said, “You are right dear.” Which is what he always says when she calls him, “Justin.” Except this time, he also said, “confusing homes with commodities is what brought on this storm . . . that and greed.”
She: I didn’t understand, but mom started reading Eragon, and I didn’t want to interrupt.
He: We drive to Father’s brother, our Uncle John, in Austin and just wait for everything to blow over. Both of them work at home, investments, and so they both spent the whole time on John’s computers, screens of numbers, just like Father’s.
She: When I asked them what they were doing, John said they were, “buying and selling,” Dad added, "mostly selling." Then they laughed that funny way they do . . .
He: . . . they chuckle . . .
She: Anyway, it’s irritating. It’s like they’ve guessed a big secret that no one else has a clue about.
He: We sat at Uncle John’s and watched Ike on TV like most everyone else I guess. Father, John and I sat up all night Friday night watching the weather coverage. I was about half asleep, but as the South wall of the storm moved through Brazoria County I heard an alarm on Father’s PDA go off. He looked at it, punched a few buttons and told John the “power in our house just went out,” but as far as he could tell "the integrity of the house is still unbroken."
* * * *
She: Sunday, I figured we were headed home when I saw Mom in John’s kitchen packing the picnic hamper again.
He: We drove home just like we drove up, at a leisurely rate with Mom reading to us from Eragon.
She: As we got closer to Lake Jackson, we saw more and more torn up stuff. Trees, houses, lots of signs just blown completely away.
He: There weren’t many streetlights working anywhere. As we skirted around Houston, Father called Tony—the guy who takes care of our yard and stuff—and asked if he had crews out working already. Then he started punching buttons on the PDA again.
She: He told me he was going to turn on the power at our house!
He: He logged onto the burglar alarm system to find out if there were any windows or doors broken—he said the house was okay. He also had the generator rigged up so he could start it remotely.
She: If everything worked like it was supposed to, he said the house would be cool by the time we got home.
He: It was.
She: I still think he’s nuts. He doesn’t get excited about anything. We were unprepared. We should have prepared more. We were just lucky. (She leaves the stage.)
He: He gets excited about some things. Like Monday, the 15th, right after the storm, I heard him in his study and it sounded like he was talking to Uncle John. I looked in and saw they were using a voice/picture connection between their computers. I’ve never seen anything on those screens but numbers and graphs. They’ve never acted like that before, either—way beyond chuckling. John was almost giggling like my sister’s friends, saying, “You got us out just in time.” Father shrugged, “We were just lucky we were able to sell when we did.” John laughed, “completely out without a hit,” and logged off.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Daddy's Girls
Also part of our IKE play, though largely made up of whole cloth, there are tidbits of actual stories here and there. Like "On a Stick," the "Daddy's Girls" sections are essentially long monologues, in this case broken up and bounced between the three girls. The three asterisks in the middle of the monologues and in all of the play's stories represent the storm passage. The "Stick" monologue was broken up and woven through the whole play as one of the connective devices to, excuse the expression, "stick" the whole play together. The stick girls last line, "my sister cried, but I ain't gonna" was the last line of the show.
The girl evacuating alone after her shift as a waitress was a student story, told to me as true, except it was a story about the Rita evacuation. She took the back roads and made it to Huntsville nearly a half a day before her Mom and Dad did via 288 and I45. She also had her ten-year-old sister riding with her. That was possibly a better story than I wrote, but it didn't fit the IKE frame.
The man who cut down a tree, dropping it across a trunk line, cutting off power to a whole neighborhood after it had been restored is a story that went around via email in LJ after Ike. I suspect it is an urban legend.
Muffy's story is whole cloth, though I know a few non-mechanically inclined guys who struggled comically with generators after the hurricane.
We called them Daddy's Girls, but named the segments . . .
RONNYE My Dad is nuts.
BRANDY My Dad is nuts.
MUFFY My Dad is nuts.
RONNYE So I get home after school Tuesday and he’s already there, got off from work early. He’s running around saying “There’s a storm in the gulf and it’s headed our way.” I’ve never seen him moving so fast. He’s got a pile of plywood and he’s boarding everything up. I get to hand him nails and carry his hammer.
BRANDY When I got home, my Dad had the car packed. And the engine running. Says we’re getting out early, not getting stuck on the road like Rita. It took us twenty-four hours to get to my aunt’s in Huntsville. This time he had this map marked with a special route that goes around all the evacuation routes. He said that was the real problem last time. He joined the Lemmings on the road and got jammed up. He says get in the car. I tell him I have to work. He says the restaurant is probably already closed. I tell him I at least oughtta call. He says okay, so I call. They’re open and want me to come in if I can. I tell my Dad they really need me because they’re shorthanded. So we argue.
MUFFY My Dad is unloading a generator when I get home. I don’t know where he got it, but mom keeps calling it her new couch. He says we’re really going to need it when we get back, after the storm—says the power may be out for weeks, but we’ll be okay because he got this generator.
RONNYE Dad boards up everything, the house, the tool shed, the doghouse, and the garage door windows. I reminded him to leave the front door open so we could get in and out of the house. I thought he’d be mad—he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when he gets like this--but he just said he wished he had some sandbags, and left the board to go over the front door on the porch.
BRANDY We argue with my Mom and sister sitting in the running car until finally he says I can work my shift if I promise to get right in my car and drive to Huntsville as soon as I get off work. He gets out another map and marks the route for me. It looks like spaghetti. He takes my mom and sister and drives off. I go to work. After work, I call him on my cell. He says they’re some-place-I-never-heard-of “making good time.” I hear Mom say they’re lost again and why doesn’t he just stop and ask directions. He says he has his map and knows exactly where they are, then whispers into the phone, telling me to "be careful of the Needville cutoff," then loudly he says to "be sure and follow the route he marked on the map, and to call him every hour."
RONNYE I asked him why sandbags and he took me inside and made me look at this computerized map that showed Angleton as coastal city if a 21-foot storm surge hit Freeport. He played it over for me, twice—10-foot surge and Surfside is gone, 18-foot surge and Freeport is under water, a 21-foot surge and Lake Jackson is . . . well a lake. He wanted to go to Surfside and see how many sandbags we could make with beach sand and mom’s pillowcases. I told him it was illegal to take sand from the beach, Mom would probably hide all the pillowcases if she knew what he was planning, and that this was a particularly crazy time to go to Surfside, so instead he made us haul most of the furniture upstairs.
BRANDY After I talk to Dad, I toss his spaghetti map in the back seat, pull out on 288 and drive straight to Huntsville, no traffic, no problem. I arrived at my aunt’s an hour before they did.
RONNYE Wednesday morning we load the car and go to Waco to stay with Grandma & Grandpa.
MUFFY We don’t leave until Friday morning. Mom made him check us into a really nice hotel in Dallas. She said if she couldn’t have a new couch, she was at least going wait out the hurricane in a nice spa.
* * *
MUFFY The hotel was nice. I wish we had stayed longer. Saturday afternoon, after the storm passed through Lake Jackson my Dad was in a big hurry to get back home. Driving down from Dallas, we ended up in the edge of what was left of Ike. It was pretty bad, rain, wind, even a little hail. The power was out when we got home. I think dad was glad.
BRANDY We drive back from Huntsville Tuesday the way I went up, straight down 288. I never did find out what took them so long going up. They don’t talk about it. I never did tell Dad I drove up 288 and there was no traffic. I don’t think he wanted to talk about that either. When we got home, there was no power
RONNYE When we get back to our boarded up house there is no power, no air conditioning, the weather is cool outside but the house is hot, muggy, and we just lay around like dead people, hot sweaty dead people. It’s like all our energy was used up getting ready for the storm and after the storm, we lay around in a boarded up house unable to move.
MUFFY When we got back, he went straight to the garage and started fiddling with the generator. He had his nose buried in a book trying to start it, trying to hook it up to the house. It took three hours. Finally, we heard it start and we had power. Everything came on. Then it sputtered and stopped . . . but we still had power. The power came on for our whole end of the street. We were some of the first in Lake Jackson to have our power restored. We didn’t need the generator.
RONNYE We eventually started taking down the boards so we could open the windows. Taking down boards, picking up branches. When the air came on it was like my dad got his second wind. He was out picking up the yard, hauling limbs to the curb. He got so into it he fixed the patio door and the back light—stuff mom has been after him to fix for months.
BRANDY My sister and I had to pick up tree limbs and pile them at the curb. She pretended we were building a fort. I got a call to go in. With everybody, eating out because they had no power, the restaurant really was shorthanded and needed me.
MUFFY That generator didn’t do us much good. I wished he’d gotten something that would pick up limbs and branches from the yard. Maybe he can trade it in on a new couch.
RONNYE Everything was okay--I mean I thought Dad would end up repainting the house or something--but everything was okay until he decided the big tree in our back yard needed to be cut down because “it would probably fall in the next storm.” He borrowed our neighbor’s chain saw and started on the tree, but something went wrong. Instead of falling across our back yard, the tree crashed through the power line behind our house, taking out the power for the whole neighborhood.
He went in the house right after it happened—made me sneak the borrowed chainsaw back into our neighbor’s garage. I think he’s hiding out, trying to pretend the tree fell over because of the storm.
I guess that’s kind of true.
The girl evacuating alone after her shift as a waitress was a student story, told to me as true, except it was a story about the Rita evacuation. She took the back roads and made it to Huntsville nearly a half a day before her Mom and Dad did via 288 and I45. She also had her ten-year-old sister riding with her. That was possibly a better story than I wrote, but it didn't fit the IKE frame.
The man who cut down a tree, dropping it across a trunk line, cutting off power to a whole neighborhood after it had been restored is a story that went around via email in LJ after Ike. I suspect it is an urban legend.
Muffy's story is whole cloth, though I know a few non-mechanically inclined guys who struggled comically with generators after the hurricane.
We called them Daddy's Girls, but named the segments . . .
My Dad is Nuts
RONNYE My Dad is nuts.
BRANDY My Dad is nuts.
MUFFY My Dad is nuts.
RONNYE So I get home after school Tuesday and he’s already there, got off from work early. He’s running around saying “There’s a storm in the gulf and it’s headed our way.” I’ve never seen him moving so fast. He’s got a pile of plywood and he’s boarding everything up. I get to hand him nails and carry his hammer.
BRANDY When I got home, my Dad had the car packed. And the engine running. Says we’re getting out early, not getting stuck on the road like Rita. It took us twenty-four hours to get to my aunt’s in Huntsville. This time he had this map marked with a special route that goes around all the evacuation routes. He said that was the real problem last time. He joined the Lemmings on the road and got jammed up. He says get in the car. I tell him I have to work. He says the restaurant is probably already closed. I tell him I at least oughtta call. He says okay, so I call. They’re open and want me to come in if I can. I tell my Dad they really need me because they’re shorthanded. So we argue.
MUFFY My Dad is unloading a generator when I get home. I don’t know where he got it, but mom keeps calling it her new couch. He says we’re really going to need it when we get back, after the storm—says the power may be out for weeks, but we’ll be okay because he got this generator.
RONNYE Dad boards up everything, the house, the tool shed, the doghouse, and the garage door windows. I reminded him to leave the front door open so we could get in and out of the house. I thought he’d be mad—he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when he gets like this--but he just said he wished he had some sandbags, and left the board to go over the front door on the porch.
BRANDY We argue with my Mom and sister sitting in the running car until finally he says I can work my shift if I promise to get right in my car and drive to Huntsville as soon as I get off work. He gets out another map and marks the route for me. It looks like spaghetti. He takes my mom and sister and drives off. I go to work. After work, I call him on my cell. He says they’re some-place-I-never-heard-of “making good time.” I hear Mom say they’re lost again and why doesn’t he just stop and ask directions. He says he has his map and knows exactly where they are, then whispers into the phone, telling me to "be careful of the Needville cutoff," then loudly he says to "be sure and follow the route he marked on the map, and to call him every hour."
RONNYE I asked him why sandbags and he took me inside and made me look at this computerized map that showed Angleton as coastal city if a 21-foot storm surge hit Freeport. He played it over for me, twice—10-foot surge and Surfside is gone, 18-foot surge and Freeport is under water, a 21-foot surge and Lake Jackson is . . . well a lake. He wanted to go to Surfside and see how many sandbags we could make with beach sand and mom’s pillowcases. I told him it was illegal to take sand from the beach, Mom would probably hide all the pillowcases if she knew what he was planning, and that this was a particularly crazy time to go to Surfside, so instead he made us haul most of the furniture upstairs.
BRANDY After I talk to Dad, I toss his spaghetti map in the back seat, pull out on 288 and drive straight to Huntsville, no traffic, no problem. I arrived at my aunt’s an hour before they did.
RONNYE Wednesday morning we load the car and go to Waco to stay with Grandma & Grandpa.
MUFFY We don’t leave until Friday morning. Mom made him check us into a really nice hotel in Dallas. She said if she couldn’t have a new couch, she was at least going wait out the hurricane in a nice spa.
* * *
MUFFY The hotel was nice. I wish we had stayed longer. Saturday afternoon, after the storm passed through Lake Jackson my Dad was in a big hurry to get back home. Driving down from Dallas, we ended up in the edge of what was left of Ike. It was pretty bad, rain, wind, even a little hail. The power was out when we got home. I think dad was glad.
BRANDY We drive back from Huntsville Tuesday the way I went up, straight down 288. I never did find out what took them so long going up. They don’t talk about it. I never did tell Dad I drove up 288 and there was no traffic. I don’t think he wanted to talk about that either. When we got home, there was no power
RONNYE When we get back to our boarded up house there is no power, no air conditioning, the weather is cool outside but the house is hot, muggy, and we just lay around like dead people, hot sweaty dead people. It’s like all our energy was used up getting ready for the storm and after the storm, we lay around in a boarded up house unable to move.
MUFFY When we got back, he went straight to the garage and started fiddling with the generator. He had his nose buried in a book trying to start it, trying to hook it up to the house. It took three hours. Finally, we heard it start and we had power. Everything came on. Then it sputtered and stopped . . . but we still had power. The power came on for our whole end of the street. We were some of the first in Lake Jackson to have our power restored. We didn’t need the generator.
RONNYE We eventually started taking down the boards so we could open the windows. Taking down boards, picking up branches. When the air came on it was like my dad got his second wind. He was out picking up the yard, hauling limbs to the curb. He got so into it he fixed the patio door and the back light—stuff mom has been after him to fix for months.
BRANDY My sister and I had to pick up tree limbs and pile them at the curb. She pretended we were building a fort. I got a call to go in. With everybody, eating out because they had no power, the restaurant really was shorthanded and needed me.
MUFFY That generator didn’t do us much good. I wished he’d gotten something that would pick up limbs and branches from the yard. Maybe he can trade it in on a new couch.
RONNYE Everything was okay--I mean I thought Dad would end up repainting the house or something--but everything was okay until he decided the big tree in our back yard needed to be cut down because “it would probably fall in the next storm.” He borrowed our neighbor’s chain saw and started on the tree, but something went wrong. Instead of falling across our back yard, the tree crashed through the power line behind our house, taking out the power for the whole neighborhood.
He went in the house right after it happened—made me sneak the borrowed chainsaw back into our neighbor’s garage. I think he’s hiding out, trying to pretend the tree fell over because of the storm.
I guess that’s kind of true.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
On a Stick
I'm not a prolific poster, particularly when I'm in the middle of productions--which is most of the time--and especially when my involvement includes writing for a production. Without spending time trying to justify it's inclusion, thematically, in e-verities, I'm posting this and reserving judgment on it's place here for later.
It is a monologue I put together using bits and pieces from three student storm evacuee stories, several events reported in newscast, a little research about "on a stick" foods at fairs, my own memories of working a funnel cake booth at the Brazoria County Fair for several years, and my own imaginings. It is one of several segments I've written for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up the evening's entertainment. First conceptualized to include only student created work, it has evolved into something broader, including a whole company dance number to a brief excerpt from Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain," that delights me every time I see it. If you're nearby, Nov. 6, 7, & 8th, consider attending a performance.
So, the monologue we call,
First, we loaded up Dad’s truck and the van with everything we could haul down from the apartment and headed up to my Aunt’s in Houston. That was late Wednesday. Dad drove back down to work in Galveston Thursday and helped his boss, Virgil, board up his boat shop. Dad does fiberglass work on boats, repairs and stuff. He made a whole boat once, nearly by himself. By the time he got back up to my Aunt’s that night, there were twelve of us staying in the house. I gotta lot of cousins.
Friday mornin’ TV announcers were tellin’ us where we were in Houston had to evacuate, too close to the ship channel. It looked like Ike was going to roll right over us, so we loaded everything back up and drove north to my Uncle’s place south of Tatum. We drove up in our truck, the van and my Aunt’s two cars. Including us, the Houston folks, and some others that just showed up at my Uncle's from the piney woods, there was nearly twenty people bedded down. It was crowded. Like I said, I gotta lot of cousins.
The TV in the workshack was up high. We sat around on the floor, boxes, and workbench to watch the storm roll in over Galveston. In one of the reports, Dad was pretty sure he saw his boss’s boat shop flooded with the roof partly blown off. Maybe also it was on fire, he wasn’t sure. Even if he didn’t see it, the TV said there was six feet of water and mud in the buildings along the bayside and that had to include the boat shop.
Saturday, Dad kept trying to call in and couldn’t get Virgil. By then it looked like Ike was gonna roll right up over Tatum too as a tropical storm. Some of us was sleeping in the shop, and the little boys were outside in tents, so Dad decided we’d ease the crowdin’ and go to my Mom’s parents, Granmaw and Granpaw, in Dell City, Ok. He had to borrow money from my Uncles to buy gas for the van and the truck.
Dell City is near Oklahoma City, home of the State Fair of Oklahoma, and tho’ Granpaw and Granmaw are retired—I can’t remember from what—they run a couple of concession stands at the fair. They’ve run food concessions at the fair for longer than I’ve been alive. Mom said she use to work them when she was my age. It sounded fun. Granpaw said he could use help, so Mom and Dad went to work for him. I didn't get to go, at first. I had to sit around Granpaw and Granmaw’s house and watch my little sister, she’s a first grader. She’s okay. Only sometimes, she’s a brat, but she’s waay better than any of my cousins.
At the fair, Mom was makin’ Deep Fried Twinkies on a stick. Never heard of ‘em before. They poke a stick through a Twinkie, dip it in batter, and deep-fry it. Mom said when the fryer gets going they smell so good you can’t make ‘em fast enough for the people that crowd up. The smell just pulls people to ya. Granpaw says if you could figure out how to sell stuff by smell over TV, you could get "double dog rich." I don’t know what that means really, but it sounds good, I think, at least the rich part.
Mom brought home some broken fried Twinkies for us. They were good, but mom said they tasted better fresh hot out of the fryer. She couldn’t hardly stand the sight of them after the first day. I never saw her eat one.
Dad worked serving Bar B. Q. Baby Back Ribs—on a stick. He says that’s a funny thing about the fair. They sell all kinds of food on a stick. Granpaw says it’s a tradition. Says he was the first vendor to batter dip and fry a chunk of cheese on a stick about twenty-four years ago. He said he started the whole on-a-stick food thing. I don’t know if he really did, sometimes he just says things ‘cause they sound good. He said back then the only thing ya could get on a stick was corn dogs and some kinds of ice-cream.
By Tuesday, Granpaw said they needed more help in the concession stands and he’d rather pay family than foreigners, so I got to go work at the Oklahoma State Fair. I thought my sister would get to go too, but Granmaw an Mom did a funny thing. They enrolled her in the Dell City Public Schools. She didn’t like it much at first, but she didn’t get to choose. Mom told her it was just for right now and that she didn’t want to fall behind and disappoint Mrs. Taylor when we went back home. That’s her first grade teacher; she just loves Mrs. Taylor. That settled her down and she went right off to school without crying.
I fried Twinkies for twelve hours that first day. When one would break, I got to eat it. I ate a bunch the first hour. I didn’t break any on purpose. I was just learning how to do it and sometimes they just fell apart. After the first six hours, I couldn’t eat any more. After ten hours, I couldn’t hardly stand to smell ‘em. Now, it makes me a little sick just thinking about ‘em.
Standin’ over the fryer that long makes you feel greasy: greasy skin, greasy hair, greasy clothes. Grease would drip on the floor—you couldn’t help it when you got to frying them fast. It got so you could skate around on it, but Granmaw doesn't like foolishness while workin'. All the grease smelled like fried Twinkies. After you were good and sick of the Twinkies you got to thinking only crazy people would be buyin’ them to eat. I showered for an hour that first night and washed my hair three times.
My second day, Granpaw said I was working good enough to get a break for lunch and dinner. I didn’t have any money to buy food, couldn’t stand the Twinkies, and don’t really like ribs, so Granpaw taught me about “barter.” He fried up a perfect Twinkie and went to the back doors of the other concession booths, offering to swap for whatever they were making. He got me a turkey leg, on a stick of course. It was pretty good. After I learned how to barter, I could have almost anything I wanted. Sometimes other vendors would come knockin at our back door with something to barter and I didn't even have to go lookin' to trade. Usually I could find someone who wanted one or the other, Twinkies or ribs, so for the rest of the week I just bartered through the whole on-a-stick menu.
I made a list of everything I tried:
Twinkie on a stick, of course.
It is a monologue I put together using bits and pieces from three student storm evacuee stories, several events reported in newscast, a little research about "on a stick" foods at fairs, my own memories of working a funnel cake booth at the Brazoria County Fair for several years, and my own imaginings. It is one of several segments I've written for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up the evening's entertainment. First conceptualized to include only student created work, it has evolved into something broader, including a whole company dance number to a brief excerpt from Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain," that delights me every time I see it. If you're nearby, Nov. 6, 7, & 8th, consider attending a performance.
So, the monologue we call,
On A Stick
First, we loaded up Dad’s truck and the van with everything we could haul down from the apartment and headed up to my Aunt’s in Houston. That was late Wednesday. Dad drove back down to work in Galveston Thursday and helped his boss, Virgil, board up his boat shop. Dad does fiberglass work on boats, repairs and stuff. He made a whole boat once, nearly by himself. By the time he got back up to my Aunt’s that night, there were twelve of us staying in the house. I gotta lot of cousins.
Friday mornin’ TV announcers were tellin’ us where we were in Houston had to evacuate, too close to the ship channel. It looked like Ike was going to roll right over us, so we loaded everything back up and drove north to my Uncle’s place south of Tatum. We drove up in our truck, the van and my Aunt’s two cars. Including us, the Houston folks, and some others that just showed up at my Uncle's from the piney woods, there was nearly twenty people bedded down. It was crowded. Like I said, I gotta lot of cousins.
The TV in the workshack was up high. We sat around on the floor, boxes, and workbench to watch the storm roll in over Galveston. In one of the reports, Dad was pretty sure he saw his boss’s boat shop flooded with the roof partly blown off. Maybe also it was on fire, he wasn’t sure. Even if he didn’t see it, the TV said there was six feet of water and mud in the buildings along the bayside and that had to include the boat shop.
Saturday, Dad kept trying to call in and couldn’t get Virgil. By then it looked like Ike was gonna roll right up over Tatum too as a tropical storm. Some of us was sleeping in the shop, and the little boys were outside in tents, so Dad decided we’d ease the crowdin’ and go to my Mom’s parents, Granmaw and Granpaw, in Dell City, Ok. He had to borrow money from my Uncles to buy gas for the van and the truck.
Dell City is near Oklahoma City, home of the State Fair of Oklahoma, and tho’ Granpaw and Granmaw are retired—I can’t remember from what—they run a couple of concession stands at the fair. They’ve run food concessions at the fair for longer than I’ve been alive. Mom said she use to work them when she was my age. It sounded fun. Granpaw said he could use help, so Mom and Dad went to work for him. I didn't get to go, at first. I had to sit around Granpaw and Granmaw’s house and watch my little sister, she’s a first grader. She’s okay. Only sometimes, she’s a brat, but she’s waay better than any of my cousins.
At the fair, Mom was makin’ Deep Fried Twinkies on a stick. Never heard of ‘em before. They poke a stick through a Twinkie, dip it in batter, and deep-fry it. Mom said when the fryer gets going they smell so good you can’t make ‘em fast enough for the people that crowd up. The smell just pulls people to ya. Granpaw says if you could figure out how to sell stuff by smell over TV, you could get "double dog rich." I don’t know what that means really, but it sounds good, I think, at least the rich part.
Mom brought home some broken fried Twinkies for us. They were good, but mom said they tasted better fresh hot out of the fryer. She couldn’t hardly stand the sight of them after the first day. I never saw her eat one.
Dad worked serving Bar B. Q. Baby Back Ribs—on a stick. He says that’s a funny thing about the fair. They sell all kinds of food on a stick. Granpaw says it’s a tradition. Says he was the first vendor to batter dip and fry a chunk of cheese on a stick about twenty-four years ago. He said he started the whole on-a-stick food thing. I don’t know if he really did, sometimes he just says things ‘cause they sound good. He said back then the only thing ya could get on a stick was corn dogs and some kinds of ice-cream.
By Tuesday, Granpaw said they needed more help in the concession stands and he’d rather pay family than foreigners, so I got to go work at the Oklahoma State Fair. I thought my sister would get to go too, but Granmaw an Mom did a funny thing. They enrolled her in the Dell City Public Schools. She didn’t like it much at first, but she didn’t get to choose. Mom told her it was just for right now and that she didn’t want to fall behind and disappoint Mrs. Taylor when we went back home. That’s her first grade teacher; she just loves Mrs. Taylor. That settled her down and she went right off to school without crying.
I fried Twinkies for twelve hours that first day. When one would break, I got to eat it. I ate a bunch the first hour. I didn’t break any on purpose. I was just learning how to do it and sometimes they just fell apart. After the first six hours, I couldn’t eat any more. After ten hours, I couldn’t hardly stand to smell ‘em. Now, it makes me a little sick just thinking about ‘em.
Standin’ over the fryer that long makes you feel greasy: greasy skin, greasy hair, greasy clothes. Grease would drip on the floor—you couldn’t help it when you got to frying them fast. It got so you could skate around on it, but Granmaw doesn't like foolishness while workin'. All the grease smelled like fried Twinkies. After you were good and sick of the Twinkies you got to thinking only crazy people would be buyin’ them to eat. I showered for an hour that first night and washed my hair three times.
My second day, Granpaw said I was working good enough to get a break for lunch and dinner. I didn’t have any money to buy food, couldn’t stand the Twinkies, and don’t really like ribs, so Granpaw taught me about “barter.” He fried up a perfect Twinkie and went to the back doors of the other concession booths, offering to swap for whatever they were making. He got me a turkey leg, on a stick of course. It was pretty good. After I learned how to barter, I could have almost anything I wanted. Sometimes other vendors would come knockin at our back door with something to barter and I didn't even have to go lookin' to trade. Usually I could find someone who wanted one or the other, Twinkies or ribs, so for the rest of the week I just bartered through the whole on-a-stick menu.
I made a list of everything I tried:
Twinkie on a stick, of course.
BBQ baby back ribs on a stick.
Turkey leg on a stick.
Cheeseburger on a stick.
Cheeseburger on a stick.
Hoagie on a stick.
Hamburger on a stick.
Hamburger on a stick.
I think they put some of the stuff on a stick just so they can say it's "on a stick."
Ice cream on a stick, four kinds!
Teriyaki beef on a stick.
Corn dog on a stick.
Pork Chop on a stick.
Pickle on a stick.
Funnel Cake on a stick.
Catfish on a stick.
Popcorn Ball on a stick.
Pickle on a stick.
Funnel Cake on a stick.
Catfish on a stick.
Popcorn Ball on a stick.
Broccoli on a stick, really gross. Broccoli is still Broccoli.
Cheesecake on a stick.
Baked Potato on a stick.
Spaghetti on a stick, really strange.
Frozen grapes on a stick.
Deep-fried Oreo on a stick.
Bacon on a stick.
Caramel Apple on a stick.
Eggroll on a stick.
Choc covered banana rolled in nuts on a stick.
Spaghetti on a stick, really strange.
Frozen grapes on a stick.
Deep-fried Oreo on a stick.
Bacon on a stick.
Caramel Apple on a stick.
Eggroll on a stick.
Choc covered banana rolled in nuts on a stick.
Gator on a stick, greasy, but taste like chicken.
Chicken on a stick, three different kinds, some of 'em didn't taste like chicken.
Chicken on a stick, three different kinds, some of 'em didn't taste like chicken.
Sausage and roll on a stick.
Frog Legs on a stick.
Caramel Pear on a stick.
Pizza on a stick.
Steak on a stick.
Jalapeno on a stick.
Frog Legs on a stick.
Caramel Pear on a stick.
Pizza on a stick.
Steak on a stick.
Jalapeno on a stick.
Deep-fried garlic mashed potatoes on a stick.
Meatballs on a stick.
Cajun Quail on a stick.
Shrimp on a stick.
Lamb on a stick.
Cheese on a stick.
Meatballs on a stick.
Cajun Quail on a stick.
Shrimp on a stick.
Lamb on a stick.
Cheese on a stick.
Fried Coke on a stick. It's kind of like a funnel cake made with Coke syrup in the batter and Coke syrup drizzled all over. Taste okay, but I like my Coke with fiz.
Pecan Pie on a stick.
Fried Marshmallows on a stick.
Deep-fried corn on the cob on a stick, really good.
Fried praline on a stick.
Fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich on a stick.
Fried Marshmallows on a stick.
Deep-fried corn on the cob on a stick, really good.
Fried praline on a stick.
Fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich on a stick.
Fried macaroni and cheese on a stick. I took some to my sister. She liked them cold, yuck.
And my all time favorite,
deep-fried Snickers on a stick,
I had four one day, was sick all night.
* * *
I’m back now, but not for long. Mom and I came back in the van—spent a bunch of her Twinkie money on gas. We’re gettin’ the rest of the stuff from our apartment. There's not much that's ours. She’s been sneakin’ around actin’ all hangdog (that’s what Granpaw calls it). I think we still owe rent.
Dad finally got Virgil on the phone. The boat shop is closed—Virgil is taking the insurance money and retiring my Dad said. We’re going to be stuck stayin’ on with Granmaw and Granpaw for a while.
My sister is still in school in Dell City and begged me to take Mrs. Taylor this letter.
I’m withdrawing from B'wood today and going to Dell City next week.
The fair’s over, so no concession jobs ‘til next year. I might be able to eat a Fried Twinkie On A Stick again by then.
Dad’s going to work at Sooner Fiberglass in Oklahoma City.
Mom’s looking for a job.
My sister cried a lot, but I’m not gonna.
I had four one day, was sick all night.
* * *
I’m back now, but not for long. Mom and I came back in the van—spent a bunch of her Twinkie money on gas. We’re gettin’ the rest of the stuff from our apartment. There's not much that's ours. She’s been sneakin’ around actin’ all hangdog (that’s what Granpaw calls it). I think we still owe rent.
Dad finally got Virgil on the phone. The boat shop is closed—Virgil is taking the insurance money and retiring my Dad said. We’re going to be stuck stayin’ on with Granmaw and Granpaw for a while.
My sister is still in school in Dell City and begged me to take Mrs. Taylor this letter.
I’m withdrawing from B'wood today and going to Dell City next week.
The fair’s over, so no concession jobs ‘til next year. I might be able to eat a Fried Twinkie On A Stick again by then.
Dad’s going to work at Sooner Fiberglass in Oklahoma City.
Mom’s looking for a job.
My sister cried a lot, but I’m not gonna.
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