Coyotes, pregnant strippers, school consolidation and thyme

The coyotes are out in full force tonight. I’m somewhat shocked that we even have coyotes in Bramble, as we’re not really in a remote area. Lest you confuse “coyotes” with “wolves” - wolves are more majestic, and their baying fits perfectly in that “Call of the Wild”/Zane Grey picture that many of us have of the Old West. Coyotes are, on the other hand, scroungy, nasty animals that are almost as mean as the one sales rep I worked with in Bloomington; both should be shot on sight. (Figuratively speaking on the latter, of course.) Put another way, coyotes are the (who’s the one skank that sings, the one that fell chronologically between Britney and Jessica?) of the animal world.

My wife is working split-shifts this week, leaving the house around 1am, dropping off our son at the sitter’s (who is a Saint for taking him at 1:30 am), and working from 2 until noonish. When you have a 20-month-old son, sleeping at any time other than the hours that normal people sleep can be a chore – “Why is Mommy sleeping at 4 in the afternoon? It’s play time!” he seems to be asking, and Mommy, not Daddy, is the perfect play partner at that point. To that end, after I got home from work, I put him in the truck, and we drove around for about two hours.

He’s learned a new phrase – “Beep beep!” It’s very sweet. So we spent part of the two hours beeping back and forth with one another. Then he tired of that, and spent most of the rest of the time looking around out the window at the countryside.

We ended up in Wheatland and Bruceville; boy, could Daddy tell him stories about Wheatland! It’s a small town of about 500 in Knox County, home to nothing in particular except for what sanitized speak would term a “gentleman’s bar” called the Satin Lady. The Lady is known in these parts as the Home of The Pregnant Stripper – a running in-joke that, if memory serves, undoubtedly rang true at one time. (The Satin Lady was also the site of a particularly violent lap dance I received one drunken night about 8 or 9 years ago, but I digress.)

The Satin Lady used to be on U.S. 50, which ran through the heart of Wheatland some years ago. U.S. 50 between Washington and Vincennes was eventually four-laned, and instead of also going through Wheatland like its predecessor, it bypassed around the south end of town. Somewhat appropriately, the bar sits at the end of a dead-end road where they lopped off old 50. You can still see the Lady from new 50, where the name of the bar is painted in 15-foot letters on its tin roof. Classy!

To get to Wheatland proper, you have to turn north off U.S. 50 onto Indiana 550, which is the only highway that runs through the town now. (If you pass Hindostan Falls, you’re on the wrong 550.) Once you get to the intersection of old 50 and 550, you can turn west toward the Satin Lady, or you can turn east toward the Wheatland Motel; I didn’t drive by to see if it was still in business, but the big 20-foot sign was still along the road. On what appeared to be Main Street, there’s a post office and, next to it, a mural for the Wheatland Jeeps. The brave and noble Jeep was the mascot of the old school, which passed into history when the consolidation bug hit Indiana in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the school was rolled up into the utterly charmless-sounding, although geographically correct, South Knox.

(I’ll go on the record right now as saying that school consolidation did as much as anything to kill small towns across Indiana, and if the USPS moves forward with its plan to close a lot of smaller post offices, there wouldn’t be much of a reason for a lot of those towns to exist anymore. Once its residents die off, these towns will eventually fall off the map, like so many towns in dusty West Texas that are populated only by tumbleweeds, armadillos and the rusted-out skeleton of a gas station.)

I don’t know if, in due time, my son will appreciate the history (and sometimes-charm) of small towns around here like I do; if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be the first. Beep beep.

Had an epiphany tonight. Was standing outside the house smoking, and I was looking in through the living room window, watching my wife talk on the phone and my son play on the floor. My epiphany was: “My God – is this what I would be doing if I died? Looking into the window at the family I left behind, while they sit unaware that I’m watching? How sad is that??” It was like a scene out of “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “The Sixth Sense” (or, possibly, “Ghost Whisperer,” starring Jennifer Love Hewitt’s guns and the original Amazon woman from the moon, Aisha Tyler). It was a very sad moment, really, a sad, sad kick in the pants.

It really served to be more of a wakeup call than anything: “Hey, dumbass – do you want this scene to play out for real? Then you’d better stop smoking, start eating better and get some exercise, you mancow.”

“But I drink beer only, like, once a month now. If that.”

“Ooh, gold star for you. And when you do drink beer, you get completely blotto. Your liver thanks you! Now, let’s get to the rest of it!”

Ugh. Some consciences are never happy unless I’m miserable.

Anyway, smoking. I had smoked for about 7 years before quitting cold turkey on my wife’s 30th birthday back in 2002. Never really gave it a second thought except in my dreams, when I would dream about smoking and think, “Damn, I’m off the wagon again.” One night around February of last year, I smoked in a bar during a poker game, and was back off of it again after that. Thought to myself, “This is neat. I can pick it up and put it back down again! I’m in control of my former addiction!”

Well, no, I’m not. My in-laws had a big blowout pig roast in the last part of July to celebrate their 35th anniversary/re-wedding. We bought a pack of smokes beforehand to have for the evening, and ended up smoking only about half of them. Then – and here was the fatal flaw in my “pick up/put back down” scheme – we left the rest of the pack in my truck.

The following Monday after work, I got in my truck and thought, “Wow, that was a long day, and hey, those cigarettes are just begging to be smoked.” And so I did … and it was really nice, felt really good. So I snuck around for about a week, clandestinely smoking and getting hooked – want to feel good more now!!! - without anyone else’s knowledge till I finally broke down and told my wife about it. I cut a deal with her to where I could continue smoking until school was finished. “OK!” she said.

Graduated in December. It’s now February. I’m still smoking a pack a day. I’m furious – not at Big Evil (i.e. Philip Morris et al), but at myself for ever thinking I could just start and stop smoking like it was a game of Red Light/Green Light. Thankfully, the missus hasn’t brought it back up. She knows I know, and I know that she knows I know.

How does this tie in with the rest of my epiphany? I haven’t done a lick of physical activity for several years. I eat very poorly. For many people, the act of eating a meal is an event, something grandiose and to be savored and cherished with friends. (I hate those people – “good food and good friends” and all that crap just never resonated with me, and I really have grown to resent people close to me who have lived by that credo.)

For me, food is strictly utilitarian; I tend to go for something quick and dirty and generally bad for me instead of something that takes time to prepare with healthy ingredients and all that noise. And, of course, the faster the food, the better.

As I tend to tell my wife: “I’m 31 (deleted) years old.” As such, I guess it’s time to face up to the fact that I can’t eat like a finicky 8-year-old the rest of my life. Well, I suppose I could, but that would make the rest of my life considerably shorter. (Or, I could stop smoking, start eating better, and then go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Crapshoot of the gods, you know.)