"Letter to Memphis," the Pixies, Trompe le Monde(By the way, more lunacy at
LTC: this past week has featured a humble request to a volcanic mountain, a quiz written especially for the undecided voter, and a frighteningly accurate-feeling dissection of Ann Coulter. Thank goodness we live in a country where we're allowed to do this stuff.)
So I normally really wouldn't be up this late, but the combination of wind and rain have exposed the lack of any insulation -- or, more accurately, a boundary -- between indoors and outdoors at my apartment. Don't get me wrong, the place is wonderful. I just need to do a little work on the windows whenever the rain stops. Until then, it's old T-shirts to the rescue, soaking up the water.
Rain is rare enough out here that every time it happens, it can trigger within a person dangerous levels of nostalgia. And tonight, for me, rain = Memphis. And rain in Memphis will forever be linked with this place... some place where Matt and I used to eat... what was it? Huey's? I think it was Huey's. They had what I remember to be pretty good hamburgers and some heavily seasoned french fries.
Anyway, I loved going to visit Matt up there. Memphis was full of invariables. For instance: rain. It invariably rained. And invariably, when I was on some multi-lane superhighway-style surface street that ran right through the middle of town, the happy little green arrow above my lane became a menacing, angry red 'X' and before I knew it, cars were coming right at me. Just a little note to Memphis: most towns only change direction of their roadways during an evacuation. That's some scary shit. I didn't know what had happened. In the future, when deciding if you're going to arbitrarily make planes fly backwards or something, consult somebody who's not loaded on Zima.
I know, I know, rush hour, blah blah blah. That's another thing I can't stand abou... wait a second... I like Memphis! What the hell am I doing?
Back to the invariables. Also invariably, Matt and I would have an evening of bourbon and guitar, followed by a morning of stumbling, followed by a mid-afternoon visit to Huey's, followed by the unavoidable rain. While at Huey's, Matt would (invariably) eat the first half of his hamburger and about 7 french fries in world-record time, and then he would suddenly become full. He'd usually stay full for about 90 minutes to 3 hours. Naturally, we'd get a to-go box. I'm not certain, but by the last times we ate there we had probably gotten to the point where we just ordered it to go, ate some there, and then left, skipping the whole "plate" thing.
So we'd take the leftovers (half a hamburger and 85% of the seasoned fries) with us into my car -- a 1989 Pontiac LeMans that had somehow not yet had its engine explode. We'd drive down some crazy-ass lane-direction-changing street to some bar where all the cops hung out, and in the process it would start to rain. Something about the rain and the seasoned fries combined to make the most hilariously lethal, unremovable, stuffy, sense-clamping odor/essence that would remain in the car for a week. Anyway, we'd go into the bar for an hour or two, come out, and get back in the car. You could almost taste the fries. It was overwhelming. Plus, it reminded Matt they were in there, which was perfect, because he was now hungry again.
Anyway, the rain coming into the house made me think, you know, this isn't so bad -- my bedroom could be stuffed full of french fries, too. Also, it reminded me of freezing as we waited for the gas man to come fix Matt's heater, our fingers so cold it hurt to play the guitar; learning to use bourbon as an endothermic source of heat; walking down to the waterfront to hear Dylan play; and flirting with the idea of moving up there, living in that building on 2nd street (or whichever), right by the trolley. Of course, if Matt and I had both lived there, big super-bonus fun.
The rain also reminded me of when Mel and I visited up there at the same time once, she visiting a friend of hers out in Germantown and me visiting Matt. A visit with Matt and my big sister all at once -- very cool. Again, it was a long time ago, but I think Matt barbacked at some place called T.J. Mulligan's, which is a funnier name the more I look at it, so it certainly can't be what the place was really called. That visit was when I was most tempted to move up there after college, but the apartment prices -- well in to the three digits!! -- seemed so outrageous by Alabama standards (my $110/month one-bedroom in Tuscaloosa already seemed a luxury). Well, it was a combination of that visit, plus those ridiculous ducks. Quack quack quack, elevator, quack quack quack, fountain...
It also made me think of that Pixies song in the title of this post.
Anyway, off to fight the water...
Oooh! I think I figured it out. If you have water leaking in through your windows, and your windows are like mine -- the kind of windows that pretty much convince you, against all logic, that
this is the apartment for you, because they open up like cabinet doors and let in so much light and a nice breeze, but they also fling open when the big bad wolf huffs and puffs, and they pretty much funnel water as efficiently as possible towards all the unprotected leather or electronic stuff you may have -- here's the thing to do:
1. Take an old sheet that you don't mind sacrificing. If you don't have one fitting that description, just take one off of your roommate's bed. If you don't have a roommate, consider getting one just for this occasion.
2. Open the window.
3. Flipping the sheet outside the window, tuck the top of the sheet over the top corners of the "doors" of the window, closing the doors over the sheet & making sure the sheet hangs down outside the window.
4. Voila! A thingie!
Damn, this is hard to describe when, like me, you don't know words and stuff. Maybe I'll just do some fine drawings tomorrow and scan them in.
On to sleep in the dry dry west,
-M
