Ice Fishing for Brown Trout

Thirty years ago I made the stupid mistake of renting an apartment in an old, historic building in State College, Pennsylvania, owned by a non-profit organization whose very name suggested trust and respect. Boy was I wrong.

That first winter I had no heat for weeks and, when I complained, I was told to sit tight. I did sit tight, by the way, snug as a frozen bug in my sleeping bag as I watched TV and tried not to think about how cold I was. But I was patient and I trusted them. After all, this was Happy Valley, where people cared about other people more than they did anywhere else on planet Earth.

But my patience began to wear a little thin when I used the toilet one day in a bathroom that was still colder than a witch's you-know-what. After I flushed, I was greeted by an effusion of my own excrement. Apparently, it had been so cold for so long that the sewer line had frozen. I decided to investigate.

What I found wasn't an entire frozen sewer line but a break in the historic terracotta sewer pipe under the front porch and there, unimaginably, was my own frozen sewage, staring me in the face like a brown rock monster from outer space. Then I found out that the electric hot water heater was still working, even though there was no hot water in the radiator heating pipes from the cold furnace. A pick and shovel proved to be no match for The Thing From A Frozen World.

But I didn't give up — or give in — to the unwelcome presence of this creature from beyond commonsense. Like a resourceful pack rat, I shuffled 30-gallon garbage bags full of hot water from the electric hot water heater to the poop monster under the porch. It took three bags of hot water and about fifteen minutes before the turd monster melted like The Wicked Witch of the West and disappeared down the earthen slope toward the front yard. Apparently, this was the only frozen spot in the sewer line.

That tears it, I said to myself that afternoon. I went upstairs and called the local code enforcement people. The next day a man arrived who immediately became fixated on a small crack in the kitchen linoleum. He pointed to the crack like it was alive and about to consume us both. He got out his clipboard and wrote feverishly. I managed to tear him away from the hideous breach in the kitchen floor long enough to show him where I had to pick and shovel and then melt my own poop in order to poop again. I showed him and then made him touch the cold radiators. I showed him my pajama sleeping bag. Undeterred, he wrote up the non-profit owners for their unconscionable, crack-in-the-linoleum violation and left.

Later that day, a creature sporting a page-boy hairdo showed up at my back door, full of piss and vinegar. I knew she was from the goody-goody non-profit organization because hell hath no fury like a snob whose soft underbelly of elitism is exposed to a common hamburger eater like me.

"This isn't Parkway Plaza," she seethed. What she meant by that remark was that I should have felt privileged to pay her uppity organization $200 a month plus pay all my own utilities instead of complaining about the freezing cold or my frozen poop under the porch because I had been spared from paying twice that amount to live in Happy Valley's most exclusive high-rise apartment building (at that time). Being a woman, she got away with that remark whereas a man might have found himself on my kitchen floor, face-to-face with that hideous four-inch crack for which he'd been so inappropriately fined.

Not only was I totally speechless, right then and there I prepared to make quick tracks out of Happy Valley forever. It was a shock but I'd get over it. For all its posturing as the coolest and most loving and the most cultured place in Centre County, Pennsylvania, I quickly discovered that Happy Valley was nothing but a ruse, a cover up for people whose true love in life, besides the almighty dollar, is exclusivity and the limelight that goes along with it.

That was 30 years ago. I put Happy Valley, PA in my rear view mirror and never looked back. Not even once. In fact, I wouldn't go back to Happy Valley to take a crap.

Happy Valley Detour

There's a signpost up ahead: Next Stop - Happy Valley! No, this isn't about an episode of The Twilight Zone. The following tale has nothing to do with the boundless imagination of television writer Rod Serling. This is a sad-but-true (and somewhat disturbing) story of a regular guy from the real world who once found himself in the upside-down and inside-out world of Happy Valley, PA. And who lived to tell about it.

Back when I blindly believed in the goodness of people and the sanctity of old age, I used to volunteer my time at various senior citizen events. I fetched and carried like a "gopher", moved furniture, set tables, helped people to and from places, pulled out chairs and pushed them in again, and generally served and respected my elders the way I'd been taught as a boy. And I did this because I liked older people and old folks, felt at home around them, and always believed that none of them was getting a fair deal out of life anymore. I still believe that, although I'm a little more cautious nowadays about practicing that belief.

Anyway, several years ago I volunteered to hand out bingo prizes at a big senior citizen event "just a stone's throw" from Penn State University. Lots and lots of senior citizen women and even a few senior men attended this blowout and it was held in Happy Valley, PA. Where else? That's State College, Pennsylvania, USA, for those of you who, naturally, have no clue. Happy Valley is a "Marginal People's Paradise" that's presided over by Big-Sister, Penn State.

I found a folding chair behind an unused podium and sat down with my little Mini-Igloo cooler, containing a few snacks and some bottled water. I'd already prepaid for the big, sit-down lunch with the others but I had this little life raft with me, just in case. I happily waited in this spot, out of the way, until I was needed by the bingo caller. The room was soon filled to the brim with people well past their prime, guys and gals who'd finally had to turn in their lease on life for canes and walkers and electric scooters and restricted activity. My heart went out to them as it always did. Senior citizenship on planet Earth was no way to treat a lady, or a gentleman, but it was the best this backward world had to offer them at the present time.

No one in the room smiled or waved or nodded at me. What they did was stare. They stared and stared. And it wasn't because I was a lot younger than they were. I was in my early 50s and would be one of them before any of us knew it. Besides, there were plenty of volunteers and workers at this shindig who were my age or younger. Anyway, they continued to stare at me until I wanted to rush to a mirror to see if I had a smudge on my face or something objectionable peeking out of my nose. But I knew instinctively what it was, why they were staring at me like I was "a little green man from mars" or something worse. It was worse. It was my clothing.

My cargo shorts didn't say "Dockers" on them anywhere. My sneakers were not Nike or Adidas or Reebok. The crown of my ball cap was way too high by collegiate standards and it didn't sport a cool Nike logo or the name of a U.S. Virgin Island on it. My shirt wasn't an expensive golf shirt with a tiny Izod Lacoste alligator on the left chest. It was a teal-colored T-shirt that said "Penn's Cave" on it and that made it all too common in Centre County, Pennsylvania, Land of Penn State and Penn's Cave. That was it, then. That had to be it. An alien, redneck hick from The Mountaintop (that's anywhere in the Snow Shoe, Clarence, Moshannon or Pine Glen area of Centre County for those who, naturally, don't know) had entered their shallow world of superficial things and symbols and meanings, and they didn't like it one darn bit.

Then, before I could even hand out my first bingo prize, a short-haired female head appeared over the podium from the front. I craned my neck to engage her eyes with mine. She was somewhere in her late forties or early fifties, I imagined, maybe older, and I waited for her to speak. Maybe she was about to welcome me aboard or she wanted to introduce herself or thank me for my volunteerism. I waited patiently and quietly for what she had to say. Then she spoke. Her voice was chilling and clipped and her words were unforgettable.

"Don't mess us up," said the talking head. "Don't mess us up," she repeated, her carefully-controlled hostility making her point very clear to me. "Because, if you mess us up, I'll kill you." Her penetrating stare assured me that this was no joke, no prank. She was serious. And then she turned on her heels like a Gestapo Agent and disappeared into the mostly older female crowd. I was even more speechless than before. I wanted to open the little Igloo cooler and crack the seal on the first bottle of water in the worst way. But assuaging my sudden bout of "cottonmouth" might have been some act of "messing up", I wasn't sure. I wanted to consult someone, somewhere, about what I'd just been told but that might have also been some way of "messing up". So, until someone finally hollered bingo, all I did was just sit, sit, sit, sit. And I did not like it. Not one little bit.

I apparently "didn't mess up" and successfully verified each bingo winner's winning numbers and eventually handed out the last of the bingo prizes. But I was a little taken aback by the fact that no one spoke to me as I did this. No one said "Thank you." No one smiled or nodded his or her head. They just kept staring and staring at me as if staring at me would somehow make me go away and not come back. I tried to blame my own imagination or some hidden paranoia but I snapped out of that zone when I realized that seeing is believing and the sound of silence cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Afterward, I found out that the terrible little face at the podium with the great big warning for me belonged to none other than the person in charge of this big shebang. I found that very hard to believe, at first, but then I reminded myself that this shindig was taking place in Happy Valley, not the real world. I ducked out before lunch was served. They could keep my lunch money, like bullies on an elementary school playground. I'd lost my appetite.

When I tried to figure out what this misdirected hatred toward me was all about, the only thing I could come up with was the fact that this disturbing incident had transpired in Happy Valley, a locally infamous Shan-gri-La where little enclaves of dysfunctional people huddle together against the natural, normal, everyday, outside world. Beyond this unhappy bubble of screwed-up humanity which is incredibly called Happy Valley, telling a complete stranger out of the clear blue that you will kill him, is considered to be a terroristic threat. And inside this bubble (or outside of it, for that matter), any man telling anybody a similar thing means a swift and irrevocable trip to the slammer for him. But, in Happy Valley, PA, whenever a woman tells a man that she will kill him, it's considered to be therapy.

Did I ever volunteer to help out at subsequent senior citizen events? You bet I did. On numerous occasions. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays a Baby-Boomer go-for from the swift completion of his appointed rounds. I just never volunteered for any more events of any kind in Happy Valley, PA, that's all. In fact, if I ever did volunteer to serve my fellow man and fellow woman in such a place as Happy Valley again, it would be either a cold day in hell or an unplanned and unexpected visit to The Real Twilight Zone.

Talking with John Lee Hooker

It was either 1978 or 1979, I can't remember which year, that I met blues singer John Lee Hooker. He was standing on the concrete porch at the Scorpion in State College, Pennsylvania, which was a tavern with a nice stage and plenty of tables. He was wearing a big hat and he smiled broadly at everyone coming up the steps.

I shook hands with him and told him how much I liked his music and how unique and how stirring I thought his style of folk/blues was to experience and he thanked me for that. His eyes had a far off look to them as we talked, as if they were looking past me and scanning the horizon for someone or something, so I let him go. There were others waiting in line to greet him.

How a man of his stature came to play a small tavern in an alley in a Pennsylvania college town mystified me somewhat. I guess he needed the money. After I'd heard and experienced his incredible performance, I was mystified all over again by the fact that John Lee Hooker had been on a stage where mostly local and regional rock bands had played. His performance was so moving that I had goose flesh for a long time afterward.

And that's how I met John Lee Hooker.

Videos added on 6-15-12 to enhance the reading of this post