tennis and cocaine

I play doubles tennis with some people in the winter. They are a mish-mash of people, business owners, high school teachers, restaurant managers, musicians and a pharmacy clerk. We play in a dome at a sports club up in the mountains. Generally we all arrive one by one on the court and greet each other. The mood is usually light and we catch up on local rumors and the occasional national topic. I should tell you I am the youngest member of the group but not the best tennis player. You tend to get better as you get older in tennis. Once you accept the fact that you can no longer run down loose balls you try to end volleys as soon as you can. It makes you a better player.

Despite the age difference we get along fine. Occasionally I chat about music between games with the musican and the pharmacy guy. Between games we switched sides and The Guy Who Calls Everything Out needed a break. (These guys always have to take a piss, so we get delays) so we started talking about Steely Dan.

"I was just listening to the 'Dan on the way up," I say. "I heard the line, 'the cuervo gold, the fine columbian' and I was like, 'they're not talking about coffee.'" We all made a polite chuckle.

Ah...the cocaine conversation starter. If you haven't tried this segway with anybody that was young and stupid in the seventies try it sometime. They always have good story...or two....

The pharmacist made an intro like he was about to tell a story, "When I was younger, working in a pharmacy, you know, training? We had these cocaine flakes, beautiful, it really was... you had to see it, anyways. We had grams and grams of it that we had to take inventory on for the government you know? We stored in these big glass capsules. Well one day I'm doing inventory for the DEA or somebody and I put it on a scale to make sure the weight matches up and nothings missing. Well, as I lay it out...I'm under this air vent in the ceiling. I spread out the cocaine and the vent turns on and cocaine goes flying around me like it's snowing. It was wonderful and horrible at the same time. If it ends up the floor it's not sterile enough so you got to trash it you know? But how do you put grams of cocaine and put it in the trash at a public store? It was a nightmare. I was filling out forms for days."

We talked about Zappa a little bit, then started playing again. I hit a forehand deep into a corner and The Guy Who Calls Everything Out called it out. This sort of thing comes with the territory.

The Good Old Days

When I was younger my Mom wasn't around much. My father was in a distant area code all together. My mother and I moved into an old WWII era house. It's previous owners had all shriveled up and died, like the neighborhood we moved into. In the backyard was the ghost of a 70's-era above-ground swimming-pool which was flanked (I'm not sure what i mean when I say this but I think you might understand when I write "flanked") by a row of three crab apple trees that were still pubescent in size. It was my department to mow the lawn in and around these horrors of landscape.
I would wear the bulky black headphones of my tape player and mow. Mowing thin strip by thin strip until I reached the apple trees. Here I would break and take a piss. Listen to sounds of other people in their lawns. Mostly old people...making little noise.
When I would start again I would inevitably nail the rotting blue tarps of the swimming pool floor that had been left by the makeshift demolition crew that took it out. I would stop and turn the lawnmower over making sure it wasn't damaged.
Then...I would look out at the other lawns that were visible from ours. There were multiple houses with swimming pools in decomposing shape.
At one point the neighborhood was pretty rocking, young families in every house. When we lived there all the trees were dying from gypsy moss. The dead moved out and the young single moms moved in. We never saw any body die, never saw anybody get married either. People just moved.