Kazoo Concerto Quartet

You knew it was within the realm of possibility. The last few months were a bloodbath of sorts. It was not as bad as expected, and it is still not over. The smell of smoke and fresh gunfire clung to the town. People were nervous and their mental health a tinderbox. The dark eyed juncos were now returning to the trees and a brave coyote wandered up the hill by the powerlines. I had not been grocery shopping in weeks. We stockpiled food before the violence broke out. We could see it coming for years. Being in Washington state, the violence wasn’t as bad as in other places. It’s Déjà vu all over again as if wars and pandemics never happen. Do we ever learn or do we covet our little glimpse of sunshine and hope.

The shelves at the grocery store accross town were barren yet there was food to be bought. I bought some apples, potatoes, steel cut oats, cereal, and other essentials. It was enough food to last us another week. We were still working on a cash basis as the banking system still did not function consistently. The oversized trucks with the large flags have mostly gone back to Indiana or Idaho. Still, many stay and they still scare me now that the fighting has stopped. I eat an apple from my bag as I walk back out to the car. My earlier car sustained damage during the warfare. They not only wanted to destroy the arts, but they also had a vendetta on fuel-saving vehicles. So that leaves me driving a 1972 Volkswagen beetle bug much like the one I drove in high school. The heater barely works, the radio is AM only and it is a stick shift. I am a better driver with a manual transmission, but it did not matter. There were few cars on the road. So many now lay severely damaged or destroyed.

I have not figured out everything about my new car. It has been a long time since I owned a car with an engine in the back. For this reason, I decided to take the lazy way out and leave the bike at home. It was the middle of winter, and it started to snow. Big heavy flakes fell from the sky with grit and determination. In general, I love the arrival of snow, but I had a racquetball match in twenty minutes. It was curious to me how my racquetball league started up so quickly. I intended to play anyway as I needed to restore a little bit of normalicy to our lives like none of this ever happened.

I skidded into the parking lot at the sports club. I sat and watched the snowflakes linger in the streetlamps in the parking lot, remembering that I still had groceries in the back seat of the car. It was there that I remembered Volkswagens were not great at navigating in the snow. I ended up, hitting a newly plowed snowbank. It sounded louder than just snow, but there, given recent events, there were bigger issues to worry about.

I should have stayed home. I forgot my protective goggles and had to borrow some from the front desk. Have you ever felt like you were this little character walking around in a poorly rehearsed movie script? Something did not seem quite right or the absurd was the new normal.

And there I was facing the same opponent I lost to prior to the violence breaking out. The matches were always competitive, and he always won in the end. I won quickly today. I found extraordinarily little satisfaction in that. He seemed to have lost much of his fitness during the conflict.

Since the shower at home was not consistently working, I decided to take an extended shower before I headed home. The communal showers in the sports club freaked me out today. I stood in the shower and washed soap over me; in the hottest water I could withstand. I saddened for a moment knowing things could have turned out much differently. I knew I promised my dog I would be home half an hour ago. The showers felt like those in concentration camps. I do not know why my mind went there. But I know if we did not fight the most recent war some less fortunate could have ended up there. I did not know how to fight, and I still feel guilty for doing absolutely nothing. The shower felt mind numbingly good, and I felt guilty about that walking to my car.

I thought I had locked the car, but when I got back to the car, I found the windows down, and the passenger seat covered in a light layer of snow. With scattered attention and fueled by endorphins I hopped in and put the car in first gear. The engine engaged, and then I looked in the rear-view mirror. The groceries I bought earlier were no longer in the backseat and my puny AM, Radio was gone. Then I remembered the radio was in the glove compartment. It only played oldies. For some reason they were playing Paul Harvey reruns. I was too lazy to turn it off. And there on the passenger side sat a kazoo with blue whales etched on the mouthpiece. At least the thief had a sense of humor. They also left two blocks of tofu, brocolli and roasted chilli flakes. They were the ingredients I planned for our meal tonight.

Usually, after a theft, such as this, the victim feels violated. Not in a body sense more of a personal space. This simply isn’t true anymore after years of war with those on the right. They had the money, and they had the ammunitions. They broke the laws, even when there were no laws. I do not know how I survived that. There is no way I will ever own a firearm. Sorry I cannot kill anything or anybody. Certainly, that ideology was tested over the past few years. Yes, many people died, but by refusing to fight, they started fighting amongst themselves somewhere on the brink of a moral dilemma and others just wanted to shoot their firearms. Yet the Bible thumpers went into hibernation a few years back. It helped us win the war without fighting. We would have been trounced in a conventional ground war.

I drove home solemnly having removed my halo effect on humanity. I am going to have to explain to my wife the loss of the groceries. We will be fine. And yes, that it is a long-convoluted story that there is no way I am going to tell consistently.

“Hello Americans, I'm Paul Harvey... And now for the rest of the story,"

How do I turn this radio off? And then I sat transfixed and listened to something Paul Harvey said many years ago. “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these".

I hope this is not true.

I drove toward home, on a road that winds around the city. I drove by a homeless encampment near where the railroad tracks meet by the lake. It was now blustery cold, and I do not know how people live like this. But I stopped anyways to see if they needed anything. We are all in this together. Or I am a naïve dreamer. We will figure out the house less problems someday now that we downsized the industrialized military complex.

A colorful, eclectic group sat around a roaring fire and seemed to be having a rollicking time. I thought they were eating the same food that was missing from my car. They even were burning the firewood that was in the hatch of the car. I forgot that it was even in there.

I remembered I had the kazoo in my pocket. I did not know how to play, but I did anyway. I imagined myself as Miles Davis and played with reckless abandon. It felt tremendous to have a head full of endorphins and a little hope for the future. And there I saw my wife on the riverbank with a broad beautiful smile on her face. She even brought the dog.

I knew Cabot from doing my work around town. He was a counselor for the less fortunate. He was born wealthy by inheritance but heroically lived the life of a pauper. I trusted him and respected him. The snow now covered his mustache and beard. For a composed, articulate man, he looked wild. He had a certain sparkle in his eyes.

He took out a similar kazoo, this one adorned with otters. He played more skillfully than me. A woman with a toothy, subtle smile tapped expertly on a plastic trashcan. The falling snow, and the faint singing of a dark eyed junco made for perfect acoustics for this impromptu concert. Sometimes music hits the ear just perfectly. It is nice to have hope again.