Trapped

I am going to just come right out and say this: getting trapped inside a clothing donation bin is weird.  I am also of a mind that getting stuck inside such a bin requires some level of effort.

Earlier this month, a 38-year-old woman in Paterson, New Jersey, was rescued from a clothing donation bin located behind an apartment building.  The unnamed woman was found in the bin after a passerby, walking near the building, heard calls for help.

The trapped woman said she had been inside the bin for close to three days.  According to the woman’s rescuers, once a person is inside the bin, it is nearly impossible to escape through the sliding deposit door.

Once rescued, the woman explained she had been reaching inside the bin and fell inside because someone pushed her from behind.

Authorities, however, found the woman’s story unlikely.  Police records indicated the woman had been rescued from clothing bins on two previous occasions.

Here in my home town of East Helena, Montana, we call donating yourself in clothing bins three times a pattern.  A strange one.

—Mitchell Hegman

Two Dead Fish

In my dream, someone gave me two dead fish: a perch and a small ling.  The fish were in a plastic sandwich bag and not yet eviscerated.

You might think I would recognize who gave me the fish, but I did not.  My dreams are always strange and disjointed and comprised of only a few conspicuous details in an otherwise nebulous environment.

For no outward reason, I carried these dead fish with me throughout the day, the pair of them squishing around within a plastic bag inside my coat pocket.

I kept checking on the fish throughout the day.  A day devoid of feature beyond the fish.

Having the dead fish in my coat pocket did not strike me as particularly unusual or unpleasant.  By the end of the day, however, the pretty silk and butter skins on the fish had turned dark and papery.  The eyes of the fish had glazed-over and turned a pale gray.

I woke from this dream feeling calm and rested.

Apparently, carrying around two dead fish suits me just fine.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Copy Cowboy

If you have lived around cowboys all of your life, as I have, you can pick one out even if they are wearing a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat.  Especially an old cowboy. 

Old cowboys have a certain air about them.  They stand solid wherever they are standing. They look straight ahead.  Their jackets wear vague scars.

While picking up some printing from a copy center the other day, I stepped in line behind a couple other customers, including an old cowboy I would place in his mid-seventies.

I listened as the cowboy talked with the employee behind the counter. The cowboy wanted to pay 13 cents cash for a single copy, but the machine he had chosen had taken his credit card.  He quickly came to realize he was stuck with using the credit card.  The clerk could not covert to a simple cash transaction.   

The man caught my eyes as he stepped away after finishing with the clerk.  “Technology,” he grinned.  “Not sure it’s helping.”

“Not always,” I agreed.

He eagerly flashed his copy in front of me. It was a photograph of a rodeo cowboy diving head first from his horse to bulldog a steer at a rodeo.  “This is my old steer wrestling partner from up in Stanford.  This was take in nineteen-seventy-two.”

“That’s a great photograph,” I told him.  The photo was taken head on with a long lens and was part of an old newspaper article.

“That’s a beautiful horse there.” the cowboy added.  “Fast and strong.  He brought it up here from Oklahoma in the middle of the winter.”

“Takes a good horse for that job,” I said.  “And that is a tough racket.”

“Had more than a few friends hauled away.”  The cowboy agreed.  “But you know, I was never seriously injured.  Took a few horns to the chest, but nothing that crippled me up.”

“Lucky!” I said.

“Yep.” He smiled again and tucked his copy and original under his arm.  “Lucky, for sure.  Well, you have yourself a good day.”

“Have a good day yourself, sir.”

I watched him walked away.

That certain cowboy swagger.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Name of Things

To become an electrician, you have to learn a lot of stuff.  Here in Montana, 8000 hours of on-the-job training is required to complete an apprenticeship.  Just learning the name of the various parts and tools used is daunting.  For me, learning the names of conduit fittings proved particularly difficult when I worked with a particular journeymen.  Every conduit fitting sized ½ inch through 1½ inch was referred to as a “do-hickey.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Walking

I walked a little yesterday.

I find comfort in walking the empty roads cutting through the sage and mixed grass near my house.  I admire a sun—like the one often standing above me here—that is not afraid to cast a hard shadow.

I don’t need much.  On most days, a single eagle slowly spiraling up into the sky within an updraft is enough.

Both essential and exquisite, that.  

I have found a certain beauty in everyplace I have been so far in my life.  But give me first the open land.  Give me the long expanse of unchecked prairie aspiring to become foothills, and then snow-capped mountains.  That is exactly where I want to walk.

—Mitchell Hegman

On the Ice

I can walk on water.

It’s not a miracle.  The deal is, the lake below my house has frozen over.  On any given day you can look out to the lake from the back door of my house and see ice fishermen, ice skaters, maybe even a four-wheeler scooting across the lake ice.

I think it’s fair to say we take walking across the ice on a lake for granted.  Fact is, there exists a good portion of people populating this planet who are unable to fathom such a thing.  Back in 1993, Uyen and I invited a family—recently transplanted from Florida—out to our house for Christmas dinner.

Following is my journal entry from December 26, 1993:

We invited a couple and their teenage son out for Christmas dinner yesterday.  Uyen works with the husband at the Post Office.   They don’t know anybody in the state, having just moved here from Tallahassee, Florida—a town that strikes me as somewhat self-indulgent and redundant in the use of our alphabet.

"We want to die in the mountains," Barbara, the wife (who is, incidentally, pretty in a chipped tooth, bossy way) remarked as we ate our dinner.

 I almost told her I wasn't terribly interested in croaking at all, but instead I listened to her say, "We love the mountains.  Real mountains.  We've always wanted to live in the West.  Colorado.  Utah.  Nevada.  Montana.  Wyoming.  Idaho. The West!"

“West”, she said, as if it were the very savings account holding the family fortune.

After dinner, we took them down to the frozen lake.  The surface remained utterly still and perfectly flat.  A dusting of fresh snow covered the ice.  They'd never before seen a frozen lake.  Gingerly, the three of them stepped onto the lake.

Mother.  Father.  Son.

They tested the surface by swishing their boots around.  They bounced.  “Oooohing,” all three of them padded around in baby circles.

"I can't believe this," Barbara said.  "I've got to write back to my friends.  This is pretty!  I'm walking on a lake!"

And the rest of us watched her spin, handsome in her grinning, dyed-red-hair, shivering way.

On Sunday, I walked down to visit friends out fishing on the ice.  The ice there is presently eight inches thick.  I sent some photos to Desiree in Manila.  She has never seen snow.  The thought of walking on water is more than a little intriguing to her.

Fishermen on the Open Ice

Ice Houses

Inside an Ice House

—Mitchell Hegman

To Eat Beautifully

“You don’t eat beautifully,” said the woman sitting across the table from me.

“What?” I asked.

Let’s stop here for a moment.

I grew up in East Helena, Montana.  I, and most of my friends, learned what I would consider decent table manners.  Naturally, a few of us became outliers in the realm of good manners.  I know a few slurpers.  I have also been exposed to my share of double-dippers, finger-lickers, and (cringe) two fellas not opposed to pulling a plate up to their face and licking it.

But I am no outlier.

So…let’s start over.

Several years ago, while at dinner in a quiet restaurant, the woman sitting across the table from me said: “You don’t eat beautifully.”

“What?” I asked.  I was a bit stunned.

“You should learn to eat beautifully.  You make noise.  Sometimes, I can hear the fork click against your teeth.”

“That’s a problem?”

“It’s not beautiful.”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

As I mentioned, this conversation occurred many years ago.

I must admit, beyond that night I have not made efforts to eat beautifully.

—Mitchell Hegman