often times i need to become familiar with something for me to care for it. case in point - i read in the local paper earlier this week that there would be a local area clean-up day on may 7th. i have read many similar announcements and ignored them all. however, in this case, i'd seen an announcement for this very same activity a number of times over the last 2 months. this announcement, asking for locals to volunteer to clean up their neighborhood - something that makes perfect sense to me - has been prominently displayed at a cafe, but not at my most frequented cafe. rather, my most frequented cafe has been hoisting a competing community service - eating pancakes to raise money for firemen. i would love to believe...better yet, i would love to know, that more people picked up roadside trash than paid to sit down and eat some doubly feel-good pancakes. intuitively, i am melancholically aware that the pancake eaters outnumbered the laborers, probably by a maple syrup landslide reminiscent of the early 20th century molasses spill in boston. whichever activity drew more people, i'll probably never know, but because i had become intimately familiar with the idea of garbage handling over the past couple months, my saturday morning had been planned for quite some time.
i was given trash bags, a recycling bag, a pair of surgical purple colored latex gloves, a warm bottle of water, and a location to keep me busy for a couple of hours - the North-South bypass road. i brought 1 essential for my time spent appearing as a chain-gang convict - my phone and some earbugs.
passing a few couples already at work on the south end of the street, and all seemingly a parent-child combination, i began in an area that had a bit of history for me - a spot just around an unmarked trail leading to Pudding Pond. on this same path, which connected to olden railroad tracks that hand-railed the pond, i'd taken a short walk with the birdman once upon a time. he wanted to look at birds. he probably remembers the types and numbers of them we saw that day. i recall ducks or geese of some sort - i'm pretty sure they were ducks, with one oddball member that excited my oddball friend - that left very little impression on me, and a beaver that left quite an impression.
embanking an inlet, which maybe was only there because of some serious beaver work, there was a large lodge, able to fit many beaver lovers. but the birdman and i did not see lovers frolicking tooth-in-tooth in the front yard pool. we saw 1 beaver, swimming and smacking its paddle-like tail on the surface of the water more frequently than most seniors would paddle their minions during rush week. maybe we were a bit too close for its comfort. deal beaver - you probably never felt such a freeing relief as you did after the birdman and i decided to give you freedom from our presence.
so i grabbed much trash on the hill heading down the drainage. i packed away recyclable bottles and cans, many of which i found on the path leading to the beaver lodge, presumably tossed by some underagers' looking to emulate their elders by seeking out a 12 or 20 ounce high. i found the lodge, easily, but i did not spot any beaver, alive or stuffed like pricilla presley's. i thought for a few seconds i had spotted 2 beavers resting their heads on a dirt mound near their home. after further inspection, it was 2 turtles, possibly soaking up some tasty vitamin d while taking a little break from swimming or noshing on the local fish. whether these turtles are new hampshire natives or were recently home pets that bored their owner(s), who can say?
after making a small dent in the trash population surrounding and floating atop the pond, i headed back towards the road to be nearer to my car. my 1 sustained worry this day was that some police officer would adhere a bit too closely to the letter of the law and subsequently write me a parking ticket, despite the non-presence of "no parking" signs. maybe a ticket for "parking too close to the street," maybe too far from it, perhaps "trespassing on public dirt." The cops have their way of keeping their eyes peeled for long-hair's like me, so i figured today i'd use a similar sense to keep my eyes peeled for them. it didn't take long.
shortly after leaving the private teenage soiree spots behind, i had my 1st conversation with a local 5.0. I'd settled on cleaning the modern cigarette butt ashtray - the areas closest to the road (how could we ever get maximum resale value on our automobiles if we stubbed out our butts in the ashtrays? besides, how many car models even come with ashtrays anymore? 5? 15? and for what - a hundred bucks extra? ha! to the roadside with thee!).
the cop had come to a stop on the 40 mph road and turned on his blinker, clearly about to either: make an illegal u-turn or pull over and chat me up. he chose the later. i pulled the earbuds out from my ears and walked towards him, garbage bag and recycling bag still in my left hand, skeptical of his intentions. i'd been getting extra and extra long police stare-down's while driving recently and i wasn't in the mood to deal with any bullshit.
"how's it going?" i ask, in stride.
a couple feet from each other now, him standing tall over me, having begun from higher ground. sun tzu would have applauded the policeman's positioning and derided mine. fuck sun tzu. there would not be any physical altercations, and i know from experience that the person in a lesser place is: 1 - not lesser, 2 - sometimes in the truly dominant position. there are many other lessons i've extrapolated from my sex life ;)
"if you happen to find a cell phone, don't throw it away," he says. i giggle, imagining Naked Gun and john c. reilly in Magnolia type circumstances that would lead a cop to ask me to track down his cell phone. he continued, "it's unlikely you'll find it, but if you do, leave it where it is, and call us. we want to find it undisturbed where it's at."
oh, yeah. that thing. and by thing, i mean, unsolved recent murder. the likely reason i'd been getting many more police look over's recently, since everybody is a suspect in a small town murder.
i don't ask any questions. i nod and affirm i will report a cell phone should i happen onto one. he leaves and i return to my karmic retribution from 20 years of tossing butts out of moving cars.
2 hours into this, i want to be done. i also don't want to leave after what i dubbed the low-end expectation of work. i cross the street. my car seems far enough away that it makes sense for me to work my way back to my car, and then call it a day. bending over, time and again, for butt after butt. as spasms shot through what a poetic co-worker of mine might call my, "over-the-hill lower back," i almost went back on my self pledge. for various reasons, some of which may stand outside of our empirically known ideas regarding time and space, i continued on 'til i came parallel with my car. it was there i picked up a black object that i almost immediately put back down.
since the copper drove away, i'd become pretty mentally focused on murder. death i dig. people, plants, planets, and presumably every star system that lived or lives, has died or will die. but again, the death is illusory. it's primed by our emotive minds fearing the unknown and forgetting the obvious - we, life, all of it, are a transference of energy. death in one form equals life in another, while living all the time threw in some way. thus, death ain't really there. and yet, it's an archetype fear.
murder, however, is a fucked up way to transfer that energy. i haven't been around much of that, but i have spent many an hour hanging with an alleged serial killer. this solo time between the cop and i talking up to now has had me thinking on that situation a lot. probably more than at any point since he was caught. maybe even more than when he'd been caught.
michael gargiulo. grew up in my town and went to my high school, albeit, one grade below me. he was an acquaintance friend of a good friend, and thus made it onto the softball team i played with for a few years post college. he was obviously athletically talented. maybe he was a skill set or two below paid athletic talent. maybe he had that talent, but just didn't apply it to sports.
equipped with a rifle of an arm, i recall a couple outfield throws he hit me with at 3rd base with a velocity many people don't have in short distances. he likely used that arm strength to murder my classmate, tricia pacaccio, during the summer just after she and i graduated h.s. that case remains open. years later, and shortly after our softball team disbanded following our best season - a 2nd place finish after an exciting final game - mike would move to california, when he now stands trial for 2 murders and 1 attempted murder.
perhaps now i've been hanging alongside my second murderer without recognizing some obvious mental break symptoms. or maybe it's not that simple. it is, however, sad and disturbing and puzzling why any person would murder another person. on a small town, small scale like krista dittmeyer's murder, or large scale like any war. and i'm not even going to get started on the non-murder of osama bin laden last week.
maybe i will have helped to find the newest north conway murderer. i didn't locate a cell phone, but i did scoop a cell phone battery from the ground. when i read it and recognized what it was, i replaced it where i found it. i had my surgical gloves on, so my earlier fear that i might now be a suspect due to fingerprints is likely unsubstantiated. i marked the spot, tied off my garbage bag after a final few partially biodegraded butts, and then drove off towards the center of town, where it made sense i'd find the police station.
moments into driving, i recalled how the police station was miles away in the opposite direction. i dialed an ineffective 311. a quick smartphone search later - done while pulled over, of course - and i had the non-emergency number, and used it. the jovial voice from the lady whom answered took a solemn tone once my reasoning for calling was understood, much like my giggle cum angrily philosophic switch earlier with the cop. i gave my name. and presumably caller id gave my number. i'm now officially attached to this case.
notes -
i planned to involved music in this writing much more than it panned out. at almost 2000 words already, song inclusions would have made this akin to a novella.
that said, "detlef schrempf," as of today, has pulled evenish with "into the mystic," as potential wedding songs for this guy that has no real plans or prospects for a wedding.
i have 3 main mental facets i take, or so i see it. i go for the joke. i go for the truth. and i go for some loving.
i found a dog tick in my hair tonight. maybe long hair in the northeast during summertime isn't the best combination.
i feel little to no release after having written this entry.
last order of business - come up with a title.
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