OUR NEW HOME

Yes, it has been a while since we have walked through the PNN neighborhood. Over seven months, actually, and we have been working on a new site for a couple of months. (behind the scenes stuff mostly)

During our time here on PNN we gained many friends and we were very gratefull that folks enjoyed our stories. In fact, it was someone from pnn who first began referring to author d.o.Foreman as the "humble narrator', a name which follows him around the virtual world now.

Despite health and economic issues, d.o.Foreman has resumed The Front Porch Times on the hypyklrz network. The direct address for Sasquatch Springs is here. You can also follow us on Twitter.

We would like to invite everyone over for a visit. d.o. is rewritting all the old stories (only the last two chapters of part one remain here on pnn) and has begun part two of the story.The whole shebang is just getting off of the ground, but all are welcome to stop by for a spell.

We'll put the coffee on.

Life, in General part 1

‘Notions of change remain arbitrary in the grasp of desperation.’

A coldness set in and made itself to home. Even after the snow had found it’s way downhill into the creeks and gullies, the air remained stubborn in it’s bitterness to such an extent that the few sunny days which Oregon was able to snatch from the Northwest winter weren’t enough to change it’s frigid tune.

Orval was leaning on the rail of the back porch, watching his great-grandson trying to situate a television around the suitcases in the trunk of Grandma’s car. Grandma was in the kitchen doing a little packing herself. The promise of fried chicken and potato salad floated through an open window.

“You best leave some room for the picnic basket, boy,” Orval advised his great-grandson. Then - “it amazes me that you can be out in this chilly morning in just a t-shirt and short pants.”

“I was born in Denver,” his great-grandson answered, as if that would explain it all.

A.J. thought that he might have the puzzle of the trunk figured out until his father appeared from the house carrying a wicker basket half the size of a grown man’s coffin.

“Duane, you ain’t got the sense God gave a turkey, letting that boy run around half-naked in this weather,” Orval calls after him.

“He was born in Denver, Grandpa,” Duane calls back, over his shoulder.

A.J. grabs the basket from his father and feels the weight of it. He had never seen such a huge picnic basket.

“What’s in here?”

“Grandma’s ‘tater salad,” Duane explained. “Why is your t.v. in the trunk of this car?”

“It’s a good t.v. I don’t want to leave it behind.”

“We’re only going to be gone a few weeks, A.J.”

“That’s what you say every time we leave for somewhere and we’ve never once gone back to anywhere.”

A.J. didn’t necessarily subscribe to his father’s theories on life and such. That there were ‘reasons for everything happening the way that they happened’ was the worst of a variety of ridicules theories in which Duane held a subscription to. Destiny - or the blue collar version ‘gut feeling’, was a religion that A.J. dismissed with the click of his mouse. His father’s gut feelings seemed to have garnered him nothing but regret.

“It was a long time before you were born that my gut feelings saved my life - on several occasions,” Duane tried to explain to his son.

“I’m really not interested in hearing your stories about surviving the 80’s, dad.” A.J. was tired of his father’s ghosts haunting their lives. Some sort of demon had cast a spell over Duane’s world and it was making him crazy. A.J. wasn’t about to ride shotgun on that trip. In lack of better judgment maybe, he decided to poke the bear.

“I bet you believe an invisible entity lurking about had saved your bacon, huh dad? The almighty hand of God! Worship me, ye heathens, and I’ll give you poverty, cancer, stale bread and depression!”

Duane regarded his son, standing there in the driveway, flailing his arm about and hollering like a buckboard preacher selling snake oil.

“I’ve been pretty lucky,” Duane smiled. “Life’s just a series of chain reactions.”

“Life’s a train wreck waiting to happen,” countered A.J. Why did every conversation with his father have to evolve into a cautionary tale?

“Careful now,” Duane warned in good humor, “God hears everything.”

A.J. merely shook his head. “I reckon I’ll see aliens before I set eyes on any god.”

“How do you know that God won’t be piloting the spaceship?”

“That looks like an interesting conversation going on over there. I wish my ears still worked proper.”

“They ain’t talking about you, Orval,” Ruby scolded as they watched Duane and A.J. fiddle with their course, packing the trunk of Ruby’s old Ford sedan.

“Well, my ears are burning anyway,” defended Orval.

“I believe burning ears are one of the seven danger signs of an impending stroke, dear,” Ruby teased.

“You’re the one going to have a stroke when they bring that car of yours back all dinged an’ dented.”

“Oh, hush now, Orval. That car is almost as old as Duane, and he’s an excellent driver.”

“That car only has forty-eight thousand original miles on it and nary a scratch. Besides, I doubt those two will get a hundred miles down the road before they kill each other.”

“Just drink your coffee, Orval, and enjoy the morning,” Ruby warned, though underneath the fray she found a worrisome thread dangling from her conviction. Indeed, Duane hadn’t really been himself since the illness caught him. Mostly, it was anger that he simmered in, but Ruby realized that her grandson’s spirit had received a substantial blow. Her one hope was for Duane to find his faith again - not the faith of religion, mind you, but of life itself. He was still too young of a man to live the rest of his days broken.

“Well,” began Orval, “this trip might do the both of them some good. For Duane, anyway.”

“I wish I had the money to send A.J. to law school. Lord, that boy likes to argue!”

“One likes to argue an’ tha other one’s never wrong. It’s gonna be a short trip, Ruby.”

“The Bay Area is only seven-hundred miles away, old man. I doubt they’ll be on the road longer than ten hours.”

“Eight hours, the way Duane drives, and I’ll bet ya they don’t make the state line,” Orval sneers.

“Don’t get all fogey on me, Orval.”

“I just don’t understand why I have to go with you,” A.J. insisted. “Grandpa needs me here to help with the chores.”

“That old man doesn’t need help with anything - ‘cept maybe to look for a place to hide when Grandma’s pitchin’ a biscuit.”

“I just can’t believe that we’re leaving when Grandma’s got the cancer,” A.J. counters, drawing the biggest weapon in his arsenal.

“You’re no going to guilt me into changing my mind. Not this time, amigo,” Duane promised. “I doubt that Grandma is going to expire within the next three weeks, A.J., and we’re not going to be gone longer than that.”

Duane caught the faintest glimpse of surrender in his son’s eyes. It only made him feel worse. His son shouldn’t have to surrender to an element he didn’t understand, and Duane himself thought that he shouldn’t be feeling the need to conquer the determination of his son’s reasons. But how was he to explain to A.J. the motivation behind the trip if he really didn’t fully understand the philosophy either.

It had been a month earlier when the e-mail from his father arrived. The time since Duane had seen his father, or his two younger brothers, could be counted in years. It was an estrangement in time and miles, sometimes of passivity, sometimes of regret, but always with a hollowness that perpetually haunted his life. The e-mail itself was a surprise, to say the least, and Duane attempted to respond in kind , but was handicapped by an awkward sense of failure. The subsequent phone call between father and son was a cordial exchange between two men living outside of each other’s lives. Duane left the conversation in a strange sense of relief, happiness even, believing that he could still recognize happiness for what it was. But that feeling of emptiness soon enveloped him, especially when he inserted A.J. into the equation.

Life, in General part 2

Hence, the road trip.

“I want you to spend some time with your grandfather,” Duane explained to his son.

“I’ve got enough old people in my life,” said A.J.

“Hey, I don’t like old people any more than you do, buddy, but this is important. One of those ‘bookmark of life’ episodes I’m always trying to instill in your brain.”

“Download on my hard drive.”

“Whatever - all my crap that you usually ignore - well, this is gonna be a big one. And you’re going to see it up close and personal.”

“God, you gotta lot of issues I have to deal with, dad.”

“At least I admit my failures, A.J.” Duane realized that his son was getting worked up again, and he was actually proud that this 17 year old monster he had created possessed enough piss and vinegar to stand his ground. So he gave a little where a little was due, and turned to walk away. But -

“- he paid bills and tried to make his son happy. Put that on my tombstone. Then put that damn t.v. back in the house,” - he was still the daddy.

A.J. lifted the television from the trunk of Grandma’s car and shuddered when his father suddenly turned on his heels back toward his direction. His father’s illness had shaken his confidence in life. That some un-seen force of nature could cripple his father, extinguish all his fire and brimstone and leave him incapable of taking care of the every day business of living, was a shadow that forced it’s cast over their lives and A.J. hated dwelling there. It was despair in it’s truest form. He saw faith fall to indecision, even apathy, and felt the influence of fear over simple things that should not have had to share their space with the emptiness of anger. And anger was his father’s main emotion in the clutch of his illness.

Duane saw the fear in his son’s eyes, and his heart broke. For the thousandth time.

“Look. I just want you to get to know your grandfather.”

A.J. regarded Duane, standing there in the driveway. He had never seen tears in his father’s eyes before. His Great-Grandparents were there in the background watching from the back porch. The day was still gray with it’s season, gray maybe also, with the uncertainty of another change falling on his life. And maybe this was one of those memory moments that his father was always spouting-off about, when your conscious takes a picture and files it away in your mind’s history for future reference.

A breeze sprang from the hollow, causing him to think of the sound that words make when whispered by several people from a far away place.

But the tenacity of his resolve would not allow such beliefs as spooks and boogers who spelled their haints in the wind. That was an aspect of the farm’s culture that he left for the old folks to decipher. Life was for the living. If he had to share space with the echoes of the past, he was going to do so reaching for the future. Embarking on a road trip to reunite with a side of the family that he barely knew, in a dying town in California, was not what his ambition would consider to be forward motion, and he expressed these thoughts to his father.

Duane pondered his son’s anguish for a moment. A.J. already thought of him as the world’s biggest ass hole, so why should he worry about forcing the issue at this point. “We’ll talk about it in the car, A.J. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

“I guess I’m too dumb to understand, then, dad.”

“Whatever, A.J.,” Duane said., “You aren’t any dumber than anyone else on this Earth who’s just trying to make their way. I can’t explain a lot of things to you because there’s a lot of things that I don’t understand myself. But your grandfather is a smart man, probably the smartest man I’ve known, and I admire the way he has lived his life.” Duane considered his own words for a moment, and was struck by his own revelation. Then he said: “I want you to have his memory - to carry with you through your life. I believe that would be a valuable thing. But most of all, I want you to have his friendship.”

The Grandparents greeted Duane at the back porch. Ruby noticed the mist in her grandson’s eyes and said, “that looked like a heavy meeting of the minds.”

“I just can’t seem to make that kid happy,” Duane said, watching his son carry the television around the house to the front door.

“I know you like to spit ‘n git, Duane, but sit a minute, won’t you?”

Ruby waited until her grandson took a seat on the porch steps before having her say. She realized a long time ago that the footsteps of the soul never really caught up with the stride of life. Lessons learned were merely road maps to the next bend in the road, and the hard edge of the world always had a payment past due.

“A lot of people turn to the Lord in their desperation,” she said.

“I’ve never known you to be so religious, Grandma.”

“I’m just making an observation, Duane. Besides, this cancer has made me a short-timer and I’m trying to score some points before I’m called before the Almighty.”

“Pretty sure that’s the direction you’ll be going?” Orval mused.

“Orval, you need more sugar in your coffee,” Ruby observed, “and I’m just trying to say that sometimes you can find answers in places where you’ve never looked before.”

“I don’t know that I’m really looking for anything, Grandma.” Duane didn’t think God would want him, and the Devil didn’t seem to care. “I think I’ll just relax and welcome the sweet embrace of my own insanity.”

“That insanity comes from your Grandmother’s side of the family,” Orval offered.

“Orval, please - go say goodbye to your great-grandson and let me be for a moment.”

Orval gave Duane a wink as he stepped past. Duane and Ruby watched him saunter around to the car where A.J. was already strapped in.

“That boy’s in the car all ready?! He needs to say goodbye to you proper,” Duane realized, turning towards the driveway.

His Grandmother grabbed his arm. “Duane, your son and I said our goodbye’s earlier. It was our own goodbye, just me and him.”

Duane took a deep breath. “I guess I forget that he has a life of his own to live and it won’t always have to do with me.”

Ruby reached for her grandson, held his arms and said, “that boy has a heart of gold. That has everything to do with you. You’ve done a good job raising him. I don’t know if anyone has ever told you that, but now someone has.”

The breeze picked up again. Duane brushed his Grandmother’s hair from her eyes.

“The ghosts are bidding you farewell,” she said.

“Okay, Grandma. Just don’t be ghost yourself when we get back here.”

Ruby embraced her grandson. “That’s not likely,” she said, letting him go. Another child into the wind. Again.

She watched her grandson shake his Grandfather’s hand, Orval not being the hugs and kisses type. She lost herself for a moment, seeing exhaust fall from the tail pipe but not really hearing the sound of the engine. Suddenly, Orval was beside her and the car was moving down the driveway. She realized too, the noise of the morning had found her again, and that time had returned also, leaving her with another moment to remember.

Duane had a sinking feeling of never seeing his Grandparents again. Before he put the car in gear he grabbed one more look. His Grandparents stood at the edge of the driveway. They were holding hands.

Orval and Ruby watched the car make it’s way toward the highway.

“I hope A.J. sets his mind in a better way towards this trip,” Ruby worries.

“He’ll be alright. He was born in Denver, wasn’t he?” Orval chuckles and gives his wife’s hand a squeeze.

Ruby sees the brake lights of her old car flash, then watches the car turn left, towards town, and her grandchildren toward a different story.