Ink

I don’t hunt.
I don’t have a pickup truck.
I don’t have a mustache.
I don’t have a tattoo.  Or several. 

How I am a Wisconsin firefighter is anyone’s guess.

Some of my failures to conform are philosophical.  Some practical.  Some merely convenience. 

Because I was put on Team Mammal, hunting has limited attraction.  Deer, bison, whaling?  Not my thing (metaphorical white whale notwithstanding). 

I am hunt-adjacent though; being willing to fish.  Fly-fishing, in particular, is attractive, with its constant movement and literal immersion in nature, attentive to the smallest detail of creek or stream’s moment in time.  All to outsmart a trout. 

Be that as it may, Maclean didn’t wax poetic in a A River Runs Through It about two guys sitting on a dock watching bobbers.  Or drilling holes in ice.  Can’t say I am very good at fly-fishing, but I am good with it.

Jeep rather than pickup truck, which brings even more advantages than a pickup truck of going anywhere, in any conditions.  With none of the disadvantage of having to move sofas of friends from Point A to Point Divorcee Moving Into An Apartment.  Two doors, two seats, rear wheel drive, manual transmission, convertible if you want; it is America’s most authentic and least mid-life crisis sports car. 

Moustache?  Got rid of that when I perfected the fake id technology of veneer punch swapping birth years on my driver’s license to get into bars.  Got rid of bars and drinking when I got the day job.  You really don’t want your city manager (or husband or father) hanging out in a bar.  I wonder if they still have pool tables. 

Which leaves tattoos.  Which I have no aversion to whatsoever.  Except, of course, my greatest fear.  Bad kerning.

Someday, there will be at least one tattoo.  Probably two.  The certain one is obvious.  The most winnowed graphic art to pride of place ratio municipal flag ever.  For, obviously, the greatest city on the planet.   The birthplace.  Whilst an awe-struck child, muscling steel into the sky beyond any other city’s most fervent dreams.    

There will be a Chicago flag on my right shoulder someday.  This next part is slightly esoteric.  It has to wait until I am done with the day job.  Because while I still have the day job, I am Mr. Town That Employs Me.  But whenever that ends, it’s two blue bars and four red stars.

The second one is a less definite in time, but more definite in tone. 

Let’s spin the clock back fortyish years.  Wherein, I was assigned to read a book. 

There was this lovely young lass.  Drove an AE86, managed a Marshall Field’s intimate apparel department and then a string of Victoria’s Secret stores.  Poli sci major.  Gorgeous, smart, kind.  Fantastic cook.  I could go on, and sometimes do, but let’s just say she called me out of the blue while I was working on a Marshall Field’s loading dock.  The only guy on the dock with a master’s degree on their way to flying jets for Uncle Sam but -- seriously -- loading dock (I needed a gig to pay the not insubstantial bar bill, whilst Uncle Sam was doing some paperwork).

Morning after our first date, told my friends I had met the woman I would marry.  The following week, I broke a few hearts, including Uncle Sam’s.    

The book assignment from the future Mrs. was (because I DO NOT make anything up) The Fountainhead.  I don’t know and I don’t care and we’ve never discussed whether this was some sort of standard assignment.  Indulge me for repeating the part about not caring.  The assignment, which I understood from the get-go, was not to flunk whatever kind of test was put in front of me.

The manifesto somewhat famously begins with “Howard Roark laughed.  He stood naked at the edge of a cliff.”  And let’s just say “it goes” from there.  At the time, my literary heroes were Yeager, Aragorn and Hong Kong Phooey.

Chuck, Estel and Hong have been faithful companions in my head through the intervening decades.  Thank you, Tom Wolfe, Professor Tolkein and Hanna-Barbara.  The decades have offered interest, battles both meaningful and ridiculous and no small amount of joy. 

As for naked dude on a cliff, I have not yet dynamited a building to register my disdain with architectural detail.  I did take a stand against a beige shed to serve as a utility building at Davenport’s spraypark and forced a colorful modernist redo … for which the Quad City Times launched one of their snarkily hostile attacks.  A colorful building in a delightful and under-budget park for Davenport kids hardly seemed a problem but I suppose something has to fill space between the ads. 

Later, they spun up a fanciful tale that (unbeknownst to me at the time) would begin a rather long chapter of which I will not bore you here. 

Suffice to say, dynamiting buildings ain’t my style, but living and learning is.  And part of that living and learning is picking more meaningful fights, and going about them with resolve rather than rancor.  Hostility is a cancer, and I have enough PFAS and soot on my bunker gear to worry about without adding hostility to the carcinogen stew.  I happen to think truth in the public realm is important to a democracy.  I can be a happy little trooper for that ideal for as long as I draw breath. 

At some point, the rather long chapter will turn to another.  Protagonist and antagonist will be sorted out, and life will go on. 

When it does, three small and exquisitely-kerned words will be added to the inside of my left forearm.

Howard Roark chuckled

Just one word different from the test fortyish years ago and -- not to turn this into a book report -- but a bemused and resilient chuckle would have made naked cliff dude a much better protagonist.