Hello Lambpoonies!
This chapter of The Traveling Cynic concludes the thing. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing them, though nothing can compare to the experience of living them. Even the things that didn’t actually happen. I'll never forget those.
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In the last hundred thousand words, I traveled roughly fifty thousand miles. That's like, two words a mile. Or about a half mile per word. It is brief. I'm told brevity is the spice of life and I usually agree with people just to end the conversation.
Perhaps someday I'll write a book on brevity. Its positive and negative applications, outcomes, and connotations. I'd include a history of the term stretching back to Proto-Latin days along with common usage. It sounds fun and entertaining.
Because I love the thought of exploring and dissecting something so deeply one misses the point entirely. Let me tell you all about brief in five hundred pages or more.
But that's for later, maybe. If my family, Nazis, Commies, liberals, conservatives, nihilists, progressives, epicurean epistemologists, fundamentalists, hot dog vendors, linguists, Twitterati, historians, and libertarians don't murder me after this book.
And if I manage to remember.
This little story, or collection of stories, ends where it started. At home. Because of this, I'll be breaking my rule regarding naming names, so to speak. These people are my people and they've been so for quite a long time by now.
So, you’ll meet some of my family. It's the least I can do to get back at them for spawning, loving, and raising me. By the time it's all over, they'll have to look at what they've done. I don't relish receiving justice, but I have no trouble dishing it out.
Because I'm a hypocrite like everyone else on the planet. We crucify anyone who isn't, after all. Also, they’ve had ample opportunity to jump ship or drown me in a bathtub by now. Yet they persist. Look upon their works.
Well, mine. My works. But I’ll blame them at my court-mandated therapy anyway. It's just easier.
I hail from Washington State. It's the one resembling a horny rhino staring at Japan across a pond. It's rarely in the news unless we start an anarchist colony or riot over money stuff.
We gave you Grunge, which is kind of like a bunch of punks beat up a prog-rocker, then recorded and sold the whimpers.
For more background, Washington has sin-taxes. These lovely little vestiges of Puritan religion serve to make fun things cost more and they don’t care if you’re already poor. Injustice rains on rich and poor alike in Washington. It's in our constitution.
We're all in it together in Washington State. Though, admittedly, some are more in it together than others. But taxes are uniformly applied so long as you're not a filthy deviant looking to have a good time at a strip club or a bar or drive a car anywhere.
Duty-free bathtub crank is still available in Spokane, my hometown. The industry booms quite literally as a meth lab retires every other week. Then another takes its place, because tweakers smoke and cigarettes are expensively sin-taxed along with gas.
The good news for Washington citizens is Idaho is just over there. Like, right there.
North Idaho is the most beautiful place in the world. Pine stretches beyond what the eye can see, broken only by rivers and tiny logging roads. The few buildings one sees out here are usually beautiful farmhouses with horses and cows grazing about.
I've always felt a kinship with cows for some reason. So much so I married then divorced one. I gave her the entire Lamb Experience, including the name. I did mention Washington is progressive.
This trip takes place during the seventh year of His Magnificent Lordship Jay Inslee First of His Name and Governor of Washington State's loving rule. There was a pandemic going on involving a virus and a mortality rate of 1% in 85-year-olds.
Naturally, His Splendidness Science Itself shut down anything and everything young people do. It was a time where one was blasted daily with assertions cowering in your bed was courageous and strong and dissenters got squealed on.
At the time, punishing 100% of the young to save 1% of the old made perfect sense to everyone allowed to speak. It still does if you're a courageous, infallible, power-hungry governor.
During this time Megan and I were most cowardly if not downright dastardly. His Lord-Commander Governorship had canceled Thanksgiving, but I feared my mother's wrath were I to dodge it. Because I'm not a complete idiot.
“Keep Washington safe. Don't gather. Stay home. War is peace.”
Freeway signs beamed this incontrovertible truth and similar sentiments to me every twenty miles or so. Without context you'd think we were being invaded by aliens from Andromeda who only attacked democratic assemblies and partiers.
But no, it was a viral pandemic, and I was glad to be reminded about it every 20 miles. Prior to dutifully kicking Megan out of the car at 80 MPH I had been in real danger of enjoying my commute. We're all in it together, after all.
Except Megan, who yelped and bounced and tumbled into a fluffy snowbank all on her own. She wasn't wearing a mask! Don't look at me like that. I drove back to pick her up. I'm not a monster. I was complying with CDC guidance.
And it worked! She got socially distant real quick after that. Real quiet.
It was winter in Snoqualmie Pass, but His Eminent Ordinance had convinced the snowflakes to mostly stay home. There weren't many on the road, but I worried about ice and Republicans at higher altitudes.
Snoqualmie cuts through the Cascades, a mountain chain dividing Washington Democrats and Republicans. There's a ski resort up there but it was closed considering the government got big all of a sudden and skiing wastes water or something.
Once we descended the east slope, evidence of political diversity finally began to boil to the surface. A muffled, horrified screech escaped my surgical mask, “Trump sign!”
I'd seen a sign that said Trump on it. They don't exist in Seattle. A most diverse city, we don't allow for deviation from single party politics. It's Democrats up and down and all around the homeless camps, untenable economy, and statues of Lenin.
These conservative crafted trigger warnings grew more common the further east we drove.
We passed George and the usual spots one does cruising I-90 in the state. We crossed the Colombia and about drove into a concrete barrier looking at horse statues put up on a mountain for some reason.
We raced through my hometown of Spokane looking much as it always has. The freeway cuts through downtown parting a sea of fast-food joints, stolid and squat brick buildings, and taller ones full of insurance salesmen.
A bit further on, there's an old water park we used to break into during summers. The water was off but if you filled a trash can from the hose you could ride the payload down the slides. We left a lot of empty bottles and skin behind.
We also learned most police officers can't be bothered to climb a fence. I’ve used this knowledge several times in my life. Their little utility belts get caught like a cat with its claws stuck in a curtain. They're so cute when they scream, “Freeze!”
Beyond Spokane, we were welcomed to Idaho and snaked towards the city of Coeur d'Alene. The name means, “Heart of the Awl.” Or “Don't move here if you're from California we'll stab your eyes out.” It's a French thing, I guess. But Idaho is friendly.
A lot of places have French names in Idaho for some reason. Odd, since the locals don't seem to care for the French. I assume this disdain is fueled by familiarity. It is pronounced CORE-DUH-LANE.
Or CDA if you don't want to sound like someone trying to speak Latin with three hundred kinds of cheese in your mouth. Sic vivitur becomes c'est la vie if you speak with your mouth full. C’est la vie becomes livin’ la vida loca after tequila shots. So on.
Traffic here was busier than Washington’s. I expected Idaho to be the relaxing leg of the trip. But these savages, denied Inslee's Love by a line on a map, moved hither and thither with nary a care. They didn't seem to know the world was ending.
Ignorance is disgusting. They probably still shook hands and made eye contact. Don't they know brave men, real men, bump elbows? All the latest literature says so and Teen Vogue agrees. If anyone knows about men, people writing for teenage girls do.
When I stopped for cheap, sin-tax-free cigarettes and gas, I was confronted with unmasked evil.
The cashier asked why I was wearing a mask, goggles, and earmuffs. Sigh. I patiently explained His Radiance Inslee had ordered it done, but they shook their head in disgust and called Him a fascist! I mean, honestly!
Rather than lose my shit like any rational man would do, I calmly retorted, “Actually, it isn't really fascism unless it's from the Fascist Region of Italy. Otherwise, it’s just Sparkling Authoritarianism.”
I punctuated this truth with a withering glare designed to show how horribly wrong and stupid they were. But they laughed until I left money on the counter and left! Ugh! People are always laughing at the wrong time.
Thank the gods I couldn't hear much through my earmuffs. You see, a respiratory virus can get in through your eyes and ears. That's why it's so important to silence anyone disagreeing with government policies. The stakes are like, too high, or some shit.
I also wore a diaper but that was just for me.
We turned off onto a dirt road near Sandpoint on Lake Pend Oreille.
It's pronounced POND-UH-RAY and is near a tiny town called Ponderay. It's spelled three different ways within a three-mile radius due to speaking French with three pounds of huckleberries in your mouth. Apostrophes are optional.
We wound our way through woods until reaching my parents’ place on the river. My parents are, by far, my favorite parents. I'm told there are many like them, but these ones are mine. And there are none like them.
My father was skinning a deer in the shop, covered in gore. He was a sight, but I wager the deer had it worse. “Welcome to north Idaho!” He exclaimed, before giving me the grossest and greatest bear hug in all the world.
Now, I knew full well His Holiness Inslee had outright forbidden the dread hug, so I saw it coming in horror. But the instant my father and I locked arms and laughed in joy at seeing each other, I was Paul headed to Damascus. I loved the hug again.
I barely whimpered as my father wrenched my goggles, earmuffs, and masks off my face and asserted, “You’re in Idaho, son! Washington can’t hurt you anymore!” After thirty seconds spent bracing for death, I sucked in air untainted by my own breath.
After filling my diaper, in that moment I realized any political ideology or religion forbidding something so simply human as the hug was evil.
Now, I don’t mean to imply politicians pushing for lockdowns are manifest evil or something. Far from it. They're just reptiles.
My position on politicians comes from empathy rather than demonization. I know many politicos have anti-human biases due to hatching on a lonely beach somewhere. They never got hugs. Most of them get eaten by seagulls, in fact.
That's a rough thing to endure. But inflicting childhood trauma on everyone else is not the way. Let them eat hugs.
My mother was working on a history of our family going back to 1642 so far. She was also cooking dinner, reading a book, running the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, watching a murder mystery, and hugging me all at the same time.
And she can do it all without a mask.
She’s like that. Quietly competent and the greatest, most elegant person in the world. I have no idea how she does it. I can’t even change a lightbulb if someone is in the same room. Too distracting. But she does it in two different rooms simultaneously.
We’d arrived just in time. We popped more than a few corks and sat down to dinner. My nephew and father dutifully endured about a dozen jokes at their expense with the promise of more to come. I took a similar beating in turn.
Apparently, my dad had tried to teach my nephew how to hunt deer, but he’d been a most disappointing student and actually managed to bag one. I, myself, had been a great student and never once got a deer. Perfect marks.
But I do know how to skin one without ruining the hide so you can wear it later. Keep that in mind, critics, and put the lotion on its skin.
I spent the majority of my week out on the river amid family relaxing and reading and not wearing a mask. I got around to digging into James Thurber, who didn’t mind either the wait or interest. He doesn't know who I am. He is dead, after all.
I was astonished to learn The New Yorker wasn’t always a champagne socialist circle-jerk. Thurber definitely upped their average when he was there. History is like that, full of surprises for anyone willing to discard the present to learn about the past.
I re-read The Open Society and Its Enemies, something anyone even mildly interested in philosophy, history, and politics should read. My approach to those things is mostly his. Plus, dick jokes and recklessness.
As the situation required, I drank coffee, Mountain Dew, wine, beer, mead, and some sort of hard cider which made my lips numb. Comfortably numb. It is possible the cocaine did this but I’m fairly certain it was the cider.
Throughout this visit, members of four different households congregated together indoors. Shockingly, not one person wore a mask at any point. It was dystopian to see each other’s smiling and laughing faces. Truly a nightmare.
My father made it perfectly clear where he stood on the Mask Question.
No sir, he didn’t like them. I admitted there is a hint of hysteria to the thing, but I also pointed out strange fashion trends happen all the time and looking ridiculous is often the point. MAGA hats, pussy hats, surgical masks, mohawks, whatever.
I really don’t mind the masking thing unless I’ve forgotten mine, which I always do. I don’t care if other people wear them just like I don’t care if people chop their cocks off to feel pretty. I'm fairly consistent on the topic of other people.
That turtle from The Neverending Story is my power animal. I don’t know who or what my spirit animal is or what that even is in the first place. But it’s probably those turtles, too.
People masking doesn’t affect me unless they’re mugging me and I know businesses are not so health conscious they won't sell me cigarettes. Some things are more important than public health policy and money appears to be one of them.
I don't make the rules, I just choose which to ignore.
No one can judge another’s sense of personal liberty. Only the individual can do that for themselves. People will tell you forbidding hugs is for the Greater Good, because everything they want is for the Greater Good. They’re just that Good, you see.
They aren't concerned about you, individually. You're a tree and they care only for the forest because it's less complicated. You are a data point. A mouthy, troublesome curve on a graph in serious need of flattening.
They're willing to risk your life and living to improve their numbers. But the only one qualified to risk your life is you. Because sometimes, it's about the Lesser Good.
I will follow your rules if I like and I reserve the right to break them at any moment. Stupid? Perhaps. Idiotic? Probably. I don't know if this is inspiring or brave. Like I said, I don't care. That's my liberty.
Besides, if I’d skipped visiting with the family I would have missed my mother sucking the very last drops of wine out of a bottle. Apparently, my father and I get intense when we talk about history and politics, which we always do.
She's dealt with forty years of this. She's a superhero.
But all of this could be the Zip’s talking. We found opportunity to swing by and slide inside one near Sandpoint. Idaho businesses encourage you to visit them, you see. Zip's is amazing and their tartar sauce is the meaning of life.
No one got sick after our dinner. In fact, very few in my family have ever been sick from COVID-19. Several of us have been vaccinated since, me included. But not back in 2020 when there was a grand total of two months test data behind them.
This visit with the family left me feeling invigorated as it usually does. But more than that I received a different kind of shot in the arm. A jab to the brain you can’t distill, sell, or ever, ever get FDA approval for.
Experiencing political diversity and different customs immunizes one from totalitarian nonsense better than any vaccine. Twain said travel is fatal to prejudice and he was mostly correct about that. Not bad for a honky.
Centuries ago, a man lamented, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”
He meant things are temporary and doomed to die forgotten. But what he didn’t seem to realize was in that space where they exist, a life is to be lived. Somewhere between alpha and omega is life. That’s the important stuff. The stuff that moves.
Life is not summarized by its outcome on a chart, or in a story, or a job resume. It isn’t summarized at all. Life isn’t eulogy. Life isn’t death. War isn’t peace. Love isn’t distance. Fear isn’t inspiring. Life is experience.
You don’t choose your parents just as they don’t choose you. Not really. But bonds are deeper than spreadsheets, stronger than politics, and most certainly one of the only true things we experience in our lives. If you’re lucky, you have one.
You can choose your bonds. Your family need not be your relatives. They can be friends. But whoever they are, you must hug them, and you must laugh and dance and joke with them while you can.
This is the only advice I ever truly offer.
One simply carries on with life amid death, struggling and striving against the odds, hugging, haggling, and loving all the way. If the state has a problem with it, just remember all is vanity and you must live life, not mourn it.
If that means being rude, or reckless, so be it. Also, I forgot my mask in Idaho. Just sell me the cigarettes, health freak.
Sic vivitur.
That friggin water park!! That was the second time I almost died in Spokane
Without a doubt this is your best...and this is only so far! I say this while splashing wine as I read. My Naked Wines delivery is due today so I'll have a glass and read your Best again!