Hmm. It's not a short story, but I tape pictures to my dashboard too. And put things up there. And almost always carry fresh flowers in bottles in the cup holders. I have discovered that sometimes pictures of things I like helps keep me awake.
I notice, too, when other people have bouquets in their cars; you can usually see them coming. I think it identifies them, but I can't tell how. Then I take the flowers in with me, or crack the window for them. I take them in so they don't sit in the sun; but I discovered that they make nice toys at meetings, so I take them in anyway, because most people don't think of it. People usually say, what are those, and I say flowers, and they think hmmm, yah, they're flowers, okay, I guess they can come to the meeting.
I like big flowers, say bouquets or trusses a foot wide; but little ones are good too; and last time it was these light purple and gold "weeds" we found out in the desert and scooped up, when the Flowers From Home had faded. They kept; a fine flurry of small round rosey leaves and miniature linen seed-beads and golden stems. Mauve, tan, and white. Very airy.
We put them in a 100 year old purple bottle from the desert, and they're still on the dining table. Hard to believe they were weeds.
We move the "Mobeel Flowers" (Mobiles) (Mobel Prizes) into motel rooms, just like our clothes and beer, and set them up all over. It's like settling in. Making it yours. I do it in the hospital, too, and decorate the walls.
Sometimes we take a whole box of jars and bottles of flowers on the road, carefully braced, and unpack them wherever we stay. Especially in Rhody season (all Spring), when in any given week ten of the finest will be blooming, and we don't want to leave that behind. And they don't want to be left behind, either. Then when we're going home, we switch them to paper cups and leave them, if people there want them, which they usually do. It's better than a lot of stuff left behind in rooms. (We're eagerly awaited in some spots.)
And another handy thing is that Rhododendron blooms travel well and are large and poisonous, so if you want to off yourself, with something pretty and pretty handy, you can.
I accidentally poisoned myself with them once, though, and it was not as fun as any method I would like to choose; like say dissolving in a three day motel shower.
["Cause of Death ~ Wrinkling."]
Try not to get flowers so big you can't see.
A friend of mine converted his dashboard to a cactus garden. I've always wanted to try that, but for some reason I can't get around to it. I think he said they can just about make it on condensation, but that was here in the socky Pacific Northwest.
Bougainvillaea would be nice.
Really nice.
Once last year Dash and I went to Eugene, and we had a pretty fantastic truck-dash of early Spring primroses. Orange, magenta, yellow; like KIX Cereal. No, it's not KIX, it's colored KIX. (Froot Loops?) Little puffs, happy little color puffs, all the way along under the windshield. They were in those black plastic four inch pots; we bought them on the way down, to plant them at home when we got back. But it's great fun to ride around with them on the dashboard. They don't dry out that fast, and the overcast light here is usually brightly-even, so they really sparkle.
Zing; actually.
They go good with music. And if you get it right, it looks like the music is coming out of the flowers, like at Safeway.
(Music is pretty much the best other invention for the dashboard.)
Which reminds me of something that happened when we bought the primroses. (I always think to buy them for the spouse, because she loves the colors and the early "cheeriness.") (They're FESTIVE.) (You know.)
Anyway, on the way to Eugene there's a great nursery. By the highway. We were up and tooled and moving early, because we're He-Men, Doing A Job, and I just happened to think of the primroses as we passed the place. Dash knows I want them for his dashboard, and that I'll insist on putting as many up there as I can get, and he doesn't mind, because he knows that's what I always do, take control of the car, like The Outer Limits, and actually he likes the way they look too.
Everything I find, is up there. EVERYTHING of interest, until some of it gets replaced with ANOTHER really interesting thing, like shells or twigs or basidiomycetes or fluorite crystals; and it all gets unpacked where-ever or at the end of the day.
Anything I find, by the road or to buy, is going up there. Well, you're not going to put it on the seat, or in the back where you can't see it, are you? Your new~found stuff? Something you wanted bad enough to grab or pick up while people yelled at you from the car? Or you paid for? At the place by the road that was so neat you wanted to extend it's existence? Now? Permanently?
You're going to put that in the trunk?
Why?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think it was the INEVITABLE logic of this, that convinced Dash and MJ not to bother with me.
Don't mess with me, man.
These are my toys.
"Toys."
These are your enjoyments, the things you've picked up along the way that document your travel though time and space and pleasant experience. (From what could be, a pret-tee boring road trip.)
Rendered collectible. Fascinating.
"Transporter functions."
You get that ring of steel from the timber truss ceiling of the mill that was bent by the fire in Whitefish Canyon; the snippet of sage-and-mint colored juniper branch from the bank of the Rio Grande with the smokey blue berries the Indians use for dye; the coppery glass samples from the abandoned Silver City Mine; the tiny rock with orange lichen ~
~ you're gonna put these Places, these Things, in a squishy bag in the back?
That stuff belongs up front here. Carefully arranged in the bright, forward-rolling light. To guide you to more cool stuff, and encourage it to jump out, to be seen, and to climb into the front of the car.
What the hell kind of Moron are you? You stick-in-the-mud wet crouton.
Oh ~ you're going to leave your cigarettes, the map and your tape measure up there, instead?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I yell, "Turn in HERE!!" ~ and Dash wheels hard left, right, left, into the nursery's Spring flower display, which is an impressive floral corridor approaching the open gate.
"I need to get some primroses."
Some tools slide in the back, but we manage to avoid getting headon-ed. Dash looks over at me like he could use a little warning thank you, but he can handle this.
He's okay. Forget it.
Besides, he's also looking at the flowers they've set out like refulgent Krishna Matterhorns. "O-kay;" he slips out. He's kind of interested.
Wow. These guys have been working on this, and in the early morning light, the place is just radiating colors. Fresh greens and Color Spots. It's got "Be Happiness" written all over it. It looks like a won-drous place to work, or hang out, right now; but it's 7:45 and we're supposed to be sixty miles up the road.
Dash doesn't care. Not that much. He's cool.
Besides, he knows Paul is "an occupational hazard."
Number One, he's hard to predict, and a hazard to your occupation; and Two, you better keep him occupied.
And if he has his little happy flowers to play with, and arrange in combinations, and pick yellow leaves out of, and pluck rain-damaged blooms off of, and sniff, and harmonize Perfectly, or Zen-ly, or Kyoto-ly, and water carefully on the floorboard mats with the jug from the back ~ at least you'll be able to get out of the driveway.
Face facts.
Might as well stop now.
Dash is a realist; a practical person. Sure, he'd like to get going; and he might not have dove in here, but he likes flowers too. He won't admit it verbally, but he'll look over here later, lots, and smile; and if I change the arrangement from Perfect, a few minutes later he'll tell me, "Go back. Go back the way you were before. The way it was before."
He decides we can make the stop.
"Okay. Let's make it snappy."
"No problem. Primroses are pretty standard psychedelic colors."
We dribble into the parking area, and Dash peers out into the cool. "It doesn't look like they're open."
Hmm. Maybe they aren't. But there's cars by the office on the far right, and there's a guy walking in some rows of containers up there. A yard guy. I can tell he's The Yard Guy, because he's here early and he's a monster. I've worked in the landscaping business myself, and I've been This Guy. You get somebody who can, literally, move trees. He's about thirty; six four and 280 or so. And not what I would call fat. Not now, anyway.
He's got on overalls off one shoulder, over a tee-shirt, and he's already shiny in the 50 degree morning air.
But I know, he knows, what's up.
I tell Dash to pull up there and I'll ask him.
"I dunno," says Dash, "maybe we should bang on the office."
"It's no problem; I'll ask this guy."
"I dunnoo. He's working."
"Pull up and I'll ask him. Besides, he knows where they are. Come on. Just pull up."
"I don't think we should bother him," he says, slowly edging the truck forward.
I roll down my window. "Howdy."
The Guy stretches up from placing a pair of five-gallon Arbutus.
"Hi."
I lean out. "You guys open yet?"
He raises his rough forearm, and looks at his watch. "Not til eight o'clock."
"Thanks."
I poke my head back in the truck. We really need to get going; we can't sit around here, for fifteen minutes; that pretty much equates to all day, in our business. We are needed now, up the road, for our thirteen hour day. All the rest of the contractors will be there, and there are only five days left to Finish.
Dash says, in the same assessment, "We'll get some later."
"Well ~ we need them now. For the ride down."
"But they're not open."
"I know."
It's true. But they have primroses. There has to be some way to get the primroses into the truck.
We're stuck. But I don't want to give up my flowers; all the way down there. And have nothing to do. I lean out the window again. Dash says let's go, and Bull Durham is just getting up from setting down two more containers.
I decide action is needed.
I call out to him:
"Are you going to sell us some goddam primroses or not."
"AIeeeee!!" Dash inflates. "Jesus, Paul!!"
He grabs the sleeve of my flannel shirt and starts pulling me back in the car.
"Let's go!"
Yard Guy is surprised all right; but he looks up and sees Dash flailing around in the cab in a panic and me looking dork-face at him, and Yard Guy and I start laughing.
("Some goddam weirdos ready to pick an 8 a.m. fight over primroses.")
He has to think it's funny.
"Shure. Over there; just tell me how many you get."
So I got some nice ones for the dashboard, and we were on our happy yellow primrose way, to more adventure.
Dash won't forget it; and it's just another "reason" in the unpredictable day of The ADHD Aesthete. "Jeez," he always says.
He's getting more cautious around me all the time. When we come home from a day, MJ always has to debrief him. The two of them get stuck together, just inside the door, and the sentences always start with "Paul......" and mix with, "I know; I know."
"You can't trust him."
|
