I feel self-conscious—conspicuous—wearing anyone’s logo. Clothes “make the man” in unexpected ways. I mean, someone’s sense of humor (if that’s what it was), somebody’s reaction to what you’re wearing can blow up in your face.
We were camping up north, farther north than I’d ever been, and now I was taller, I was fifteen, that left it up to me to do stuff my older brothers used to do, be the one who crawled inside the collapsed tent and struggled to stand up in the middle while my father brought in the center pole; pounding stakes around the outside corners, pulling ropes as tight as I could; being yelled at because never tight enough—
Because Lewis and Gary were both in college, working jobs or taking classes year-round, and couldn’t be bothered with a two-week trip to nowhere.
(I didn’t know it was nowhere—yet.)
Only four of us then, me, my parents and my six-year-old brother. How envious I was of Allen wanting to stop, making us stop, begging for souvenirs, getting souvenirs, even “feeling carsick”—all things I remember getting away with before I got too old.
Not old enough to drive yet.
Just old enough to do things wrong and get yelled at.
Felt like.
We stopped at Pentwater where it was chilly, I bought the novelty sweatshirt that caused the trouble (and my one foot was still stained black from stepping on a blob of oil, remains of a spill rolled in the sand). We stopped at Mackinac Island for Mom to say hi to old Mr. Somebody who said he remembered her from thirty years ago (if so, he looked like that was about all he remembered—with prompting). We crossed the Upper Peninsula to the Sioux Locks, crossed into Canada (and suddenly ran out of pine trees or anything green).
Pitching a tent on the moon, I’d never seen so desolate a place. Incredible, with the one two-lane highway we were on, and ominous, with a pulled-off-the-road semi and trailer about every mile. Abandoned.
The first week of August? Left from the winter? The freight rate must be astronomical.
To the paper mill in Milton by noon, in time for the tour.
Who’d want to see where paper towels are made?
My mother.
The worst part, I don’t know how far away it started (I thought at first it was like passing a dead skunk, it would go away, but it didn’t), a long way out of town, before the mill, all the time there and for fifty miles beyond when we left, the overpowering smell of rotten eggs.
“That’s sulfur,” my father said.
Whatever it was, how could people live with it? Truly an alien part of the world, a not human spot, the Planet of Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon.
Indeed, to me the mill was a torture chamber, not only the smell but the noise. Noise. NOISE. Static amplified a thousand times.
I don’t think anyone could hear the guide, maybe only read her lips. And being the last-comers to a crowd of thirty or forty people (where’d they come from?), seeing backs of heads and once or twice a flash of the guide’s red hair, once or twice when she held up her hand (signaling something, I had no idea what)—
Torture chamber.
First, we crammed into an office, penned up behind desks (and nobody sitting working at the desks). Then (there was her hand) she opened the door and the noise doubled.
Big industry, a major commotion. Were we supposed to be impressed? By going deaf?
Gigantic room next, like a warehouse but empty, with (out of sight) gigantic machinery convulsing its three other walls.
Oh—one forklift going around like a dodge-em car in a rink at the state fair but with no other cars, no load on its fork, as if putting on a performance just for the tourists.
Finally, far side of the big room, intent on trying to hear what the lady was saying (impossible)—
Finally right behind me, close—
BANG!
The forklift driver was right there, close enough to reach out and touch—the fork (if it had been lifted)—to see the fork now on the floor ten inches from my feet—to feel the floor shake with the weight of the drop—
Forklift driver pointing at me, smiling (or snarling) and screaming, “MACAW! MACAW!!”
A bird? I looked like a bird? He thought Macaw was my name?!?
No accounting for some people’s sense of humor (if that’s what it was—in the hostile atmosphere, it might have been outrage). In a long puzzling minute, I figured it out. It was my new sweatshirt from the camping goods store in Pentwater.
I thought it was neat, “Moscow University Idaho,” the MOSCOW in big letters, University under it smaller, Idaho unreadable. This man was yelling, “Moscow! Moscow!!”
He sure got my attention.
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