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A Surprise Sep 3, 2007 7:51 pm
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The summer colours sweep by.
I see them
even at this midnight hour.
What did we do with our time?
Did we paste our promises to the fridge door...
or float them on the wind
cascading confetti
a surprise
for the long bike ride home?

One hundred ice creams
can't possibly be enough.

*******************

Teachers' first day back tomorrow.

Hey we should have a boxing day
after Labour Day I think.
14 Comments
For heaven Aug 31, 2007 4:10 pm
883 Views
Sunday had come. I was ready, my tiny apartment crammed with goodies and fully aired with open windows (it may have been winter, but these were the Ranchers after all).

The game wasn't to start for a couple of hours, so it came as a surprise when I heard the clomping boots of four largish men heading up my stairs. I pretended to wait for the knock.

-You guys are here early...come for the pre-game?

-Hey, little Ranchette. Your tv back in the living room then?

-Sure. Want a beer?

-Nah, we've got to get back to the Ranch. It's a tangle to plug anything in there.

Painkiller hobbled down the hall. Why were they waiting around in the kitchen? What was happening at the Ranch? For heaven's sake - they didn't want a beer?

I peered down the hallway. PK was just rounding the corner, the tv cord awkwardly trailing behind him. -We sure do appreciate this, Mary. Get it back to you on Monday, OK?

Frozen, my mouth jawed an empty nod.

My buddies, tv in hand, stromped back down the stairs, plenty of time to hook up the electric and hours to spare for the pre-game shows. Back at the Ranch.

The door flung to with a windy slam.

My shadow grew long against the kitchen cupboards, an empty frame motionless in the residue of their departure. Agonized by the dullness of my final understanding, I turned slowly to the fridge. The first beer slid as quick and tasteless as ever before...a before without buddies, without a genre...

Without the Ranchers after all.

***************
This is the final chapter.
Hope y'all enjoyed it.
6 Comments
Slapped me in the face (#7) Aug 26, 2007 8:37 pm
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*****This is #7. To get the full story start here: The Ranchers in my neighborhood and read the subsequent posts if you wish.*****

***************************

So. The Ranchers needed a television. And in all my tawdry five dollar furnishings there happened to be one (very old, very free) working tv. With cable. I had a tv and buddies and it didn't matter that it was a football game they wanted to watch.

-'So...Little Ranchette...' Sexxy Rancher was just near enough - closer than he'd ever been. My swiveled head did not pick up his Ranchette on my radar.

-'The Superbowl is Sunday.' He leaned in. A bar's breath away. 'Think maybe we could watch it on your tv?'

-'The Superbowl? Did you know I met Bruce Smith one time? Their training camp was at Fredonia.' My brain veered off, not able to inhabit the possibility of a world where the Ranchers hung out in my apartment, shouting boyishly and drinking Bud.

-'Yeah, you told me. Whatdaya think?'

What did I think. What did I think about what kind of chips I'd buy and where everyone would sit and what it would be like to be the only girl there and I'd better learn the names of some players and how the heck was football played anyway?

-'Um. Sure. That'd be great. See you on Sunday.' I squeaked away to hide under the heavily silent gaze of Junior.

[-'Just hold my hand ok? That frickin' bitch is here again.' My cheek still stung from her last visit to the Pink.]

Sunday. Wait a minute. Day after tomorrow.

I dropped Junior's hand with a squeeze and headed out for my very cold, very solitary, very long walk home.

There'd be a lot of round trip groceries to schlep home from the store the next day.

*****************

pic of the Pink Flamingo bar
on Allen Street in Buffalo.

The only place where someone I've never
met before has come up to me and slapped
me in the face. I just stood there
and cried. What a wimp.

The dangers of being a
Ranchette in Training.
6 Comments
Blame it on memory loss (#6) Aug 25, 2007 9:31 pm
813 Views
This story has been one big embellishment. It's not that I didn't love the Ranchers or that I wasn't ever a Ranchette in training. I did. I was. But even in retrospect, even now, I am playing it out. Rancher imaginings. Perhaps of what could have been.

But it was real. To me. It was real.

*****

The Buffalo Bills. Remember Jim Kelly? The "I really don't remember much after getting hit in the head" guy? Quarterback for four losing super bowls in a row? Yeah - that guy.

I met him once. Well...I didn't exactly meet him.

At that time I was hostess for The May Jen Chinese Restaurant on Elmwood Avenue (had to quit weeks later due to severe allergic reaction to female she-devilheaded boss). Any-way, May Jen had a strict policy for their hostesses. Keep track of the tables. No squeezing people in. Seat fairly. Fold napkins into birds.

Extraordinarily tall blonde woman:
-Kelly party of six.

Me:
-Oh dear, I don't see you here, so sor---

Flam. The pie-filled belly of my assistant manager barred me from further contact. In a flat Buffalo NY minute they were seated at the finest table.

-You've got to be kidding, Mary. There - there - look, that's Jim Kelly!

Sh1t. And not for the first time.

****

Buffalo was crazy for the super bowl that year - the year of the Ranchers. If you had asked me about The Bills in those days I would have said, what's football? If you had asked anyone else...well - they would never have predicted the deja vu about to happen the following year. The Cowboys and the Bills. Two years in a row. What're the odds?

The Super bowl, 1994. The good old boys, beer, and a tv set that worked.

Needless to say, the Ranchers had
two
out
of
three.

***************************

This is part 6 in a something or other I am writing titled (I think) The Ranchers. Ranchers?

pic of Jim Kelly, Buffalo Bills quarterback

I shouldn't be so hard on the guy.
His second son was diagnosed at the age of four months with Krabbe’s disease, a fatal genetic disorder.

Still - how can you lose a super bowl and blame it on memory loss?
8 Comments
Reasonable weirdness (#5) Aug 24, 2007 7:22 pm
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It was an odd phenomena being me back then - I was within the parameters of reasonable weirdness, unable to apply any of my intelligence in a meaningful manner, and not someone you'd look away from in an effort to hide your cringing surprise. All in all, not that different from the next little Rancher. Yet with every non-effort I made, with every slide of a drink, people edged further and further into my periphery until they were all packed into the men's restroom, tiny specks that back-turned away from the giant monstrosity twirling on her barstool.

What had I become?

Wake up there.

C'mon do a shot. Here. Just one - do you have a cigarette? Eyes seeking out a bleary kinship. Seared with smoke. Feeling old at 23. One final look around. The topple of last call and the call of last resorts.

Wake up.

Question:
Where does one find buddies? They can be flirt buddies or drinking buddies or just plain friendly buddies. But where does one find them? The only buddies who ever spoke to me were Iwantsexrightnow buddies and believe me...if I wanted that kind of buddy, I wouldn't pick you buddy.

My Rancher buddies. I had buddies and they were Ranchers and they may have even had a genre. They said things like - We're going down to The Pink - want to come? Or, I'll see Ranchette safely home. You could time Painkiller on his hourly chorus of - time for breakfast - let's go (an arm was slung, a finger crooked). One time I even watched over Junior Rancher while he had the great plan to quit drinking for a night. DTs. An all night hug shattered into seconds. (Some people are not meant to quit with just a Ranchette in training on hand.)

I was in Rancher heaven. I imagined life-long friendships. I fantasized letters written on Essex Street napkins when I moved away (how could I stay?). I planned future romances and calls in the night for help.

I liked them.
I liked my Rancher buddies a lot.
13 Comments
Emaciated drunkard (#4) Aug 23, 2007 7:14 am
797 Views
Life for me began on Essex St.

While other twenty somethings were gathering furniture and job longevity, the entirety of my apartment was furnished with $5 and I was on my 5th job in two years. I trundled groceries one bag at a time from the nearest convenience store and had a system for going to the laundromat. Although I worked, my only real human encounters occurred 'round the corner at the pub. I loved it. No roommate. No arguments. No school. And no job worth mentioning either. Three years of my life went by.

The necessity to be around people came as a by-product of the need to validate - well...to validate me. At that time I was all about validation in whatever form it wandered up to me. Mostly just sitting at the bar trying not to look like I was watching to see who was looking at me was enough. Mostly. And there were days when I wouldn't have known a validating glance if it slapped me in the face. (Which it did, but that is a story for another time.)

Everyone I met at that time was peripheral, like a gray horizon that suddenly clears and you discover you've not been looking through the haze at a mountain range...but at a valley full of chain stores and interstates. I tried everything to make my peace alone...midnight walks in the January rain, edging into the artsy crowd (never read Eldridge Cleaver aloud when paying a compliment to someone), and finally gaining a begrudged reputation as an emaciated girl (is she still here?) who could hold a lot of rum.

As much as I wanted to go home and read or try some new tofu recipe, I began to crave what everyone around me seemed to have - a genre. I wanted a genre and some freaks of my own to go with it.

I had been alone and set aside for too long.

**********
pic of Ani Difranco
born 1970 in Buffalo, NY
played many Saturday evenings
at the E. St. Pub (where life begins)

John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls
also born in Buffalo - 1965.
Early band members played
at the Essex.

Rumor has it that both of these
artists lived above the Essex
at one time or another.
8 Comments
Life in the "structure" #3 Aug 22, 2007 7:38 am
752 Views
The Ranch was the last stop you could possibly take before becoming officially homeless. I'll never be sure how they did it, but Boss Rancher had somehow taken possession of an abandoned house in a tightly packed section of the lower west side (not prime real estate - but, hell, all they really needed was a place to put a keg). BR had also convinced one of the neighbors to string an extension cord from their upper window so the Ranchers could at least plug in an amplifier.

Whether money had ever exchanged hands for this structure is uncertain. I do know that the Ranchers never made any attempt to make it livable, aside from the random mattress and odd roll of toilet paper (did the plumbing even work?). Two of the boys had 'real' homes.

While at one point PK Rancher had been like family to me, I would always remain estranged from the sub-hip culture of the cool and the punk in my town. No one really wanted a normal drunk hanging around. Well, I was ahead of the times with my blank tee-shirt and shredded jeans. But, grunge was yet to come. Anyway, who cared? 'Cause all my coolness was hidden behind a baby-face who couldn't un-hippie herself long enough to be a punk.

The virtues of hindsight.

So...like most of "the overlooked" I drank. And watched the door to punkdom creak open just wide enough for me to slip through. I'm still not sure whose face hit the door. I do know Junior gently took me by the arm and led me to the place where he would soon be vomiting. But prior to passing out he graciously stumbled before Boss and meeked out a request that I be the first ever Ranchette in Training.

I'm not sure they could make out who I was exactly...but the consensus was a loud *hic*-nod and an affirmative belch.

I was in.

**************
oh yeah - pic of Sid Vicious
want more?
to be cont'd?
8 Comments
Hardcore Punks (The Ranchers #2) Aug 21, 2007 7:44 am
729 Views
We'll get back to PK Rancher in a moment.

First let's clarify. These boys were by no means Ranchers in any sense of the word. In fact only Boss Rancher actually pretended to be from Texas (claims to meeting Mathew Mcconaughey also circulated loudly). The Ranchers were sheep-sheared, hardcore punks who drank from pitchers, snuck into and streaked through political debates, and drew all over the walls of the nearest bar. Needless to say these activities left their un-callused minds idle and on the look out for creative ways to exploit time - thus the evolution of The Ranchers. A self-created club of hedonistic, yet endearing, drunkards.

Back to Painkiller Rancher. The punchiest drunk I'll ever need to meet - lead singer for, you guessed it, The Painkillers; largest human holding tank for alcohol; stalker extraordinaire; writer of such songs as Definition of a Termite; and Charles Manson lookalike. PK Rancher could break phone cords in a single grasp, sustain his wardrobe with duct tape, and still manage to look like a teen punk at the age of 30. PK Rancher. Alas, I am not at liberty to discuss his nomenclature. Suffice to say at times his music created a catatonic state which could induce a lapse in pain memory through even the most stolid of ear-protection devices.

Junior Rancher. AKA Anomaly Rancher. Ah, Junior Rancher. The scrawniest, drunkest, most forlornly appealing Rancher of them all. Junior Rancher should have been the poster-boy for the Buffalo family values league. "Do you want your son to become this Rancher?" But we loved him. As did any sympathetic girlie worth her weight in holistic medicine and grain alcohol west of South Buffalo. Thanks to Junior's patronage I had earned my place in Rancher Society...if only for a moment. Let's just say he was never really up for anything else.

Buffalo life in the early 1990s consisted mainly of searching sidewalks for loose change, trying to avoid getting caught listening to Edie Brickell, and waiting for new Berks to arrive in the mail. The favorite bar was the one closest to home and even if it wasn't necessary, one knew where all the local soup kitchens were. The Ranchers didn't have a monopoly on seediness, but I do believe The Ranch itself elevated their place in the ranking of over-educated lowlifes....

*****************

The Ranchers...
to be continued
9 Comments
The Ranchers in my neighborhood Aug 20, 2007 5:26 pm
796 Views
Back in my Buffalo days I was a Rancher. Well, not really a real Rancher, but I was allowed the title of Ranchette in training. Approval was sought, permission given. I was. Officially. A Ranchette (in training). No one else in the neighborhood could claim that name. At least not on that particular weekend.

The Ranchers: Boss Rancher, Sexxy Rancher, Painkiller Rancher, and my personal favorite, Junior Rancher - all West Side wannabe bums. All practicing the tenets of sustainable grit and freedom from a good hot shower.

Sexxy Rancher. Sexxy Rancher was, of course, off limits having been taken long ago by the only true Ranchette. Weekly boot lickings were common at the Pub and old fishnets flashed, just ripe for trips to The Ranch. Without boots I didn't stand a chance. I did have the hand ripped filter-less camels and the occasional lick your neck tequila shots...but without the slam-glam, I needed training. Serious training. I knew there would never be a true Sexxy Rancher in my future, taken or no.

Boss Rancher. Boss Rancher was, well... lacking in the certain charisma an unwashed leader of drunks needed in order to assert a true authority. But in appointing Ranchers, he was the best. My ticket in - bootless and all. Opinions among the E. St. Pub crowd about his ascendancy veered wildly between complete apathy concerning his appointment and a certainty that the three others had really anointed him Moss Rancher, but had sloshed it around with a boozish pronunciation - and henced forth from the guts of the Pub, one Boss Rancher. Our paunchy leader and owner of The Ranch.

Painkiller Rancher. Now Painkiller Rancher had the fitting-est name of all and I knew, more than anyone else just why that was...

***************

to be continued (if you want)
9 Comments
Finding it Aug 19, 2007 9:22 pm
670 Views
This ain't no place to lose it,
this town.
Look on,
past the parks
and main street hounds.
Old men clap beers,
hear train voices
now and since then gone.
Women own forty year lines
turned into liquored frowns.
Pass it on.
You've lost it...
find it...
one way down.
This ain't no place to prove it
no sir how.
Close your eyes
and backward step through time,
toe to heel past the shops
and through midnight walks.
Bar stools
grasp like children
trying to turn you around.
Your seat swivels more
side to side
sloshing the riptide.
Feet last,
you fall
full on the floor.

Remembering now
you can find it one way
but it's a long way down.
6 Comments
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