notes from a new-frontier town

PUNishment? Not quite – mostly it’s just too hot to write. Near triple digits on tap for this afternoon again. One’s not feeling swell but – sweltered. And since a trip to Antarctica’s not in the cards right now, I opted for a type of time travel.

Back into archives of the cold, refrigerated since last winter. When frostbite was our sunkiss and ice was our barbecue. Burrowing back into laptop permafrost, to uncover the following old snowball. Tossed up from waves of blizzards like a sausage in a bottle.

Or a message.

From seven months ago today – December 21, 2008. When at 2:30 in the morning I’d started my delivery run into that deep freeze Sunday. Along the way notes were taken like hostages and after work they got tapped into this endless account.

But, since it’s easier to transcribe than to scribe – return with us now, to those chilling days of yester year…

Ice cap

The mercury’s dropped to zero degrees and it’s snowing and there’s snow on the ground two feet deep. College Place shivers under the avalanche of white in the dark. A blur of whiteness floods through the beams of my headlights and under cones of light from street lamps.

This old Ford van plunges gamely among the drifts. Its rear tires chained up and’s packed to the rafters with bundles of Sunday newspapers. Another cup of coffee sloshes in a holder on the dash board as the van slides and skitters through the snow-bound streets.

Ah but neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night… or however that goes, will keep these Yew-Bees from their appointed stoops. Or porches.

Busy as U-Bs

Every Saturday night , the cogs of a finely-tuned news machine grind away inside the secret Union-Bulletin headquarters at First and Poplar. Unknown yet dedicated gnomes are swinking at their occulted trades. The Sunday edition is about to take final shape.

Computer screens blink in dim offices, producing columns of electronic copy. One door shows flourescent brightness through a small window. It opens into the Forbidden City of the news room, where few outsiders intrude. (Including me.) From there the last stories usually flash out off a sports desk – results from just-ended games on the west coast.

When the facts have all been tallied, the torch is passed to a scrum of unlikely artisans. They’re the guys who make the ol’ presses perform. Uniform in blue work garb, wrenches in hip-pockets, alert at arcane wheels and levers – they look like the crew of a WWII submarine.

They’re like Impressionists ladling spatulas of thick paint. Or with ears inclined toward the tune of the roar of machinery they listen like safe-crackers for an off-beat or a clunker note. Mechanics with colorists’ eyes – if they don’t know the ropes cold, all writing and news-gathering goes for knot.

Or naught.

They bring the work of reporters and photographers to final form, looking after lay-outs and adjusting color values. Theirs is a trade that can’t be learned in a day. Or a night. Regulating valves of a mechanical heart whose beats keep the show on the road.

They can be seen wedged under frame-works or craning above cat-walks. Always tinkering. Fiddling with this and that. They hammer, cajole, baby the machine. Until the big metal beast purrs like a kitten. Whatever it takes to get a newspaper out.

And like men who save their money in a Ming vase, it could be said – they urn it.

Gleaners of the night

A vision from 1930s movies comes to life…

Around midnight in a bright-lit cavern, cylinders of the ancient press whirl over endless lengths of newsprint flying through between them. In a flash surfaces take on dark rows of words and squares of colored images and rush toward eachother to be married in an instant fold and sliced to sections and sped out in a solid stream by conveyor belt into the next room.

There they embrace within their folds various pre-printed sections inserted along two assembly lines under the constant feeding, monitoring and coaxing of other dedicated laborers in this journalistic vineyard.

And behold – the completed Sunday Union-Bulletins get counted by electric eyes and sorted into the hundreds of routs they’re destined for. Human hands add the last copies and include a fact sheet specific to each route. All are bundled by strappers and roll down into waiting arms of the first-link-folks in the delivery chain.

And that’s where I come in – a previously missing link.

Duty calls

Out in the frozen night in hundreds of homes heaped with snow, many’s the folks and many’s the young folks who sleep or wake in expectation. They expect that the papers for their delivery routes will land on their door steps before dawn.

It’s a type of Santa Clause they hope for eh? One who will fight through whatever hostile elements interpose, find their houses and heft among deep barrier drifts their papers all in order.

Of course then in the morning it’s up to them to trudge the icy and often trecherous trek door-to-door. But that’s where more dedication makes its appearance too.

(Remember those who toil unseen for your convenience.)

At this time though it falls to me and to other bundle-route drivers to deliver the papers to the paper-delivery people. Indeed.

Laughing all the way

So here I be, dead of night, plowing through the snow-clogged streets of College Place. To stop in front of certain houses, hop out, slide the side door open and count bundles. Stagger with them through drifts to the porch. And drive another stretch of silent night swept with thick flakes.

In between odd-ball twilight zones.

Hands froze, boots wet, heater full-blast – I punch on the radio. And fumble curious among the air waves. Tuning through the usual blur of static, pop tunes, Christmas carols, talk shows, news reports, commercials and so forth.

When what to my wandering ears should appear? Suddenly some nameless station radiates the eerie keening and moans of a band of Zimbabwe hypnotists.

Dang.

The night’s froze as dry ice outside – but my van suddenly shimmies to equatorial rhythms that cause sweating. Weirdest singing in the world. Full groan men – chanting unknown jungle dreams, tropic trances…

Full groan men – what’s going on?

Immaginary love song

Then before the music can turn into smoke signals, there among dark snowed-in houses of a side side street, in a single lighted window of an upper floor – was that a girl in a night gown?

Can that be?

She was like a gold fish in an aquarium up there. A blonde in a sheer gossamer of material. (There’s a word – diaphonous. It might not be THE word… but you get the idea.)

Oar wuz my ice playing tricks on me?

Well, the night has a thousand eye-lids – with glitter on ‘em. Blinking like girls flirting in spotlights. (Another word – irridescent. Snow flakes like a blizzard of tiny prisms caught in electric nets. Orthogonal sparkles.)

The eyes have it.

But I don’t know what’s going on, only that it’s time for a pit-stop. So gotta slide the van over a parking  lot like a hockey rink. And squint my way into the huge flourescent circus of Wal-Mart. Deserted except for workers stocking shelves.

Duck into the restroom. Then pick up a couple snacks quick. And I’m off again through the snow.  A van full of papers and a heart full of gold – or fool’s gold. And coffee and cottage cheese.

Emperor of endless flakes

Crunching along to a house with Christmas lights strung on a ramp slanted from the front porch. They glow along the rails like mutated or genetically altered jewels. Their bright green red blue yellow splash across the snow drifts like transparent dye.

I wade up the ramp with my burden of bundles. But in the strangeness of our times, my toiler’s frame is bathed in lights more splendid than luminated Darius himself, that kings’ king at Persepolis before Alexander and his girl friend got through with the place.

Odd is it not?

A simple string of Christmas lights throws imperial glows really, compared to the pre-electric centuries. My snow-steps lit more magnificent than the tracks of ancient potentates in their palaces.

And folks tend to feel princely too, during the holidays. And then the blizzard adds its sense of urgency. We suspend the rules a little right? Folks don’t necessarily stop at stop signs – maybe just slow down a touch.

And we’ll run red lights that take too long to turn. It’s a different state of mind behind the wheel at this time. We’re all royalty for a few weeks. All to be deposed after the new year kicks in.

But now it’s deep in the night of frozen milk. Marsh mallow, excitements. Tensions. At every turn – a fish tail. Directions all scrambled up. Vast cods of wotton.

(Hmm..)

Then the radio runs into a ditch of nutty Christmas songs. Beach Boys doing The Little St Nick. Burl Ives crazed with Have a Holly Jolly Xmas. Or Sinatra shedding his Rat Pack ways, to put on the piety of Silent Night. So pure so lovely. So sincere eh?

5:30 a.m.

The bundles have found their respective door steps. And I’m about half done with the racks (machines on the street to buy papers from). More slogging through snow banks, mostly on College Avenue.

Some of the frozen locks won’t work – spray de-icer. Open the machines. Replace papers. Reset the machine for Sunday prices.

Repeat.

And now’s in front of the darkened Coffee Cup. And it’s the last colorations of night before dawn. I’m just standing in the street. Stark still. No soul about. No car to be seen. No sound but the sifting whispering snow. And my slow breathing. Nothing but a strange sense of calm.

The carol comes true – heavenly peace. For a moment. At least.

Snow over everything under a pearl-grey cloudy sky, reddened at the horizon from neon effects. Lights of the signs of businesses. Street lights, Christmas lights, traffic lights, lights through windows.

And trees line the street in drapes of white woollies. Bowed old gents, carrying their burden of beauty. Soft clumps and ridges on the branches. The evergreens especially weighted – especially pretty.

And ice bits sift down through soft silence. It’s hyper quiet. And I’m getting near to done. Boots been soaked through now for about two hours. And I’m ready to be all the way done. Plenty.

A few slurps of cold coffee left.

Finis

And in the end it’s over eh? Creep back to the U-B parking lot where bundled papers first rolled out into an icy dark lanced by flood-lights. I leave the van for my car. Shiver with an ice scraper and defrost the windshield. Crank up the heater for a slow crawl home. Downtown Walla Walla deserted in the snow.

Still grey before dawn.

Four cups of coffee and a pound of cottage cheese – a good night.