Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 27-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Yesterday, I spotted a bunch of packaged fire wood in the alley two blocks from here. Perfect for a campfire. I walked back this evening around 8:30 to see if it was still there. It wasn’t right in the alley, but, to my way of thinking, it was up for grabs. It was outside the fence, in with a bunch of busted up cinder blocks. I quickly picked up one package and walked the two blocks to the van, wondering if anyone had seen me. It’s split alder wrapped in plastic marked “fireplace wood.” I decided to take the van back to get the three remaining packages, two of which were birch bound together with plastic straps. I drove the van past the park where an older man was sitting at a picnic table, keeping an eye on three little kids playing on their hands and knees in the dirt. Up and over the speed bump, I wondered what he was thinking: a) “Man, I sure am lucky to have been plunked here to ponder the progress of my progeny’s progeny”; b) “I never thought my life would turn out like this. Taking care of my lame-ass grandchildren”; or c) “I wish I was going camping with that woman in the 1979 van.” Actually, he didn’t see me because he was holding his head in his hands, which gave rise to my suspicion that the answer was “b.” I turned the corner, passing a man on the sidewalk with a unicycle. With him, two kids and a wife/mother-type person getting everyone prepared to cross the road. The man with the unicycle looked exhausted by the fussing. Hell, the unicycle looked exhausted.
I pulled in near the alley and looked both ways between the flowery curtains on the side of the van. No one was around. Carrying stuff out from behind houses and loading it into a van could be a problem. How would I be perceived? A small, middle-aged (if I live to be 102 years old) woman with glasses, hair up in a jaunty bun, a boy’s plaid shirt open over a saggy T-shirt, baggy old faded Levi’s and boots getting out the side door of an old Ford camper van. Broad-daylight firewood thief association factor? Zero. Three trips up the alley to the second house along. Squat and heave the wood into my arms to carry it like a baby, back to the van. Actually, I’ve probably only held a baby about three times in my life. Walking and carrying a baby? Never. Why? Where would I be going with a baby?
Weirdly, now that I have made the association between firewood, tours, vehicles, babies and poets, I am reminded of the first Black Wedge Tour. 1986. We were camping in Big Sur. Actually, it was more like sleeping in the dirt at a campground because it was nighttime. Not really camping. In the morning, jingle-man Bryan James brought a still-smoking, half-burned piece of firewood onto the bus, the old school bus that D.O.A. had loaned us. He said the smoldering wood looked like his kid. Bryan is black. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe you had to be on your second beer before 9 a.m. Me, not Bryan.
The two bundles of birch were almost too heavy, but I got them inside the van and piled them in the toilet cubicle. Feels good to get a wood pile going. I can’t explain how good. Laughing-and-smiling good. I am going to make a fire in the woods and sit there moving logs around, smelling smoke, alone, staring into the crackling orange embers. Then I’ll climb into my tent or the van and sleep. I hope it’s the tent. I want to sleep on the ground. I drove to the traffic light, turned right and parked the van in front of my building. It still feels really weird to have a vehicle. To be going camping. To have a wood pile. To think about making fire in the dark. Without exhausted unicycles on their hands and knees in the half-burnt dirt of unintentional poems that will never be written.
