Siesta Interruptus

Make it stop!

Please, someone, make that hideous noise stop!

I wake, startled to learn that I am the originator.

Snoring? Well, sort of. More like the plaintive cry of some dread beast in mortal agony.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it! How is it possible for such a racket to be produced by the human vocal mechanism? And you want to know what the real kicker is? I was on the beach!

Yeah! Out there on the sand.

With the tanned and beautiful.

The young and nubile.

Snoring away in blissful oblivion!

So, I turn my head to the left, checking on a young family of six, sunning not three feet away. But I did it kind of stealth-like. You know what I’m talking about. Where you kind of let your head roll to one side like you have no control over your neck, hoping that should anyone be observing they’d think you were still asleep?

Like that.

Then I opened one eye just a crack to see if anyone was watching. Sound asleep—the whole lot of them.

So far, so good.

I do the same maneuver to the right adding, for the sake of variety, the one-arm-stretch-over-the-head move. I’m actually quite good at it, even if I do say so myself. To my right were two men and a woman of indeterminate age. To my surprise and utter delight the woman had her head tilted back and was emitting what can only be described as full on “snarks!”

If I have to explain that to you, maybe you should stop reading and visit another blog.

My relief was palpable.

It wasn’t me.

It was her!

I could have shouted for joy.

I could have...

“Hey, mister,” came a childish voice from behind me.

I sat up and turned around to identify the source.

A little kid stood there with beach pail and shovel in his hand.

“Yes?” said I.

The young interloper giggled and said, “Did you know you kind of sound like a goat when you snore?” before running off toward the water’s edge laughing hysterically.

And what could I say?

Plunged instantaneously from the heights of relief to the depths of crushing reality, there was nothing left for me to do but make an escape, and that as quickly as decorum would allow.

Just as I was slipping my feet into my battered but comfortable sandals, the snoring woman sat up, shook her mane of brown hair and fixed me with what I took for a baleful gaze.

“Hey!” said she.

“Hey yourself.”

”Did you know you—“

“Sound like a goat when I snore?” I interrupted. “Yes. I’ve already been told, thank-you very much.”

She laughed. “That’s not what I was going to say, but thanks for the warning.”

“You weren’t?”

“No. I was going to ask if you knew that you look a little like Bruce Willis.”

For a moment I was speechless.

“Uh, well, yeah, I’ve been told that a couple of times; I think it's the shaved head thing,” I finally managed.

With that she flopped over onto her stomach turning her head away from me.

I caught sight of the rude young man playing down by the water and watching me carefully.

I wondered how Bruce would handle this.

I stuck my tongue out at him and walked away, my ego temporarily salvaged.

The Spiderman Incident

"And don't forget the flour. Last time you forgot the flour! Sometimes I think you'd forget your head if it wasn't attached."

The young boy listened only partially to his mother's voice which, when she was in a mood like this, took on the qualities of a fork scraped across a dinner plate. He hated that sound. It wasn’t that he disliked his mother—he, in fact, adored her. It was just that being the only child left at home out of a family of six kids, and the only boy at that, he had few options when it came to avoidance. Truthfully, even when his older sisters had been home he had always been the one singled out to run "errands" for his mother. She called them errands but in reality an “errand” was anything she didn't feel like doing. Anything.

"I didn't hear you, James Edward. What did you say?" she hollered from the screened-in porch.

Ten year-old James, or Jimmy to his friends, hadn't said anything. What she wanted was for him to say something like, "All right, mom." Or, "Yes, mother." Something like that just so she'd know he was listening. 

"All right, mom. I won't forget."

He stood in the street outside their simple house under a summer sun that felt as if it were burning his skin through the long-sleeved shirt she always made him wear whenever he went outside. 

"Now you hurry back. I don't want you dawdling." 

He didn't really know what “dawdling” meant but he supposed it had something to do with him stopping at the pharmacy to look at comic books and eat candy. Jimmy loved candy and he especially loved Cherry-a-Let candy bars...but not as much as he loved comic books. He figured he could probably spend an entire day just looking at comics if Ralph, the pharmacy owner, would let him. And he probably would.

A southwest wind sent a flurry of dust devils racing past the wheels of his cart—okay, wagon, but he preferred to think of it as a cart—that he always pulled behind him when going to the market for his mother. It had become an every day thing lately. Sometimes two times a day and one day last week she had made him go three times. Of course that had been the day he had forgotten to get the flour so that third trip technically didn't count. 

At the end of their little street he glanced behind him to see if she was still watching. She usually watched until he got out of sight. Today, however, the porch was empty. Jimmy thought that a bit strange that she wouldn't watch until he turned the corner like she always did. It actually made him feel kind of funny. In fact he almost turned around right there and went back to check up on her, but in the end he decided to just keep going. 

His route took him past the old Wells Fargo Bank; the city water plant; the hardware store where you could buy hay for horses and corn meal for chickens (along with just about every other thing you could ever imagine needing for rural life); past the diner where they served the best root-beer floats he'd ever tasted; past the pharmacy and then the small grocery store where everybody knew his name, where he lived and everything else there was to know about him. 

Some of them even claimed to know where his dad was, which was a sore subject with him because he hated his dad and hoped to never see him ever again. When he asked his mother what had happened to him three years earlier she just said that he'd, "Run off." Sometimes he wondered what a person did when they ran off. Whatever it was, though, he was pretty sure it wasn't good given the looks on the faces of the adults when they talked about it. And they talked about it. He figured small towns didn't get much news and when something like that happened it could keep people going for a while.

With his cart loaded down with everything on his mother's list—and you can bet he'd checked it twice, just like Santa Claus—he started the long trip home dreading the mile and a half walk through the hot sun. 

Passing the pharmacy Jimmy slowed way down and looked through the window at the magazine rack. Right away he could tell that there were a lot of brand new comic books. Comics he hadn't seen. Looking up the street toward the clock tower that was easily the tallest structure in town he realized that if he spent fifteen minutes looking at comic books he could still get home before his mom started fretting. 

He parked the cart where he could see it through the window and went inside, straight up the aisle to where the candy was tantalizingly arrayed and picked out a candy bar after squeezing and hefting a half-dozen or so. You had to be careful with candy; just because it said it was a certain size on the wrapper didn't necessarily mean it was really that size. He had actually proven this to be true with his old friend Bradley. But Bradley's family had moved away last year and there was no one left to corroborate his story. That was okay because he knew it was true.

Ralph, the pharmacy owner peered down at him from behind the counter smiling as if he were genuinely glad to see him. And he was. In fact he and the boy were good friends and Ralph tried to help Jimmy out wherever he could since he didn’t have a dad looking out for him. Like allowing him to read the comics for free. No one else got to do that. No one!

"So, you gonna squeeze in a few minutes at the rack, Jimmy-boy?" he said, winking conspiratorially.

"I thought I would, if that's okay with you," Jimmy said as he handed over the fifteen cents for the candy, which was highway robbery in his book because he could remember when it had only cost a nickel!

"Got a new Spiderman in just this morning," Ralph said in a loud whisper as if it were a secret that only the two of them were supposed to know.

Jimmy's eyes lit up as he hurried toward the rack and immediately searched for the comic finding it in just a few seconds time. Spiderman. Good ol' Spidey. He wondered what sort of evil he'd save the world from this month. But when he opened the book, the first page was torn almost completely away which meant that a good portion of page one AND page two were missing. How in the world was he supposed to know what the story was about with the critical first two pages gone? He grabbed another one—same thing. And another, and another. They were all the same.

He looked around as if to spot a potential culprit, but besides Ralph, he was the only one in the store. 

Jimmy was just about to go and tell Ralph the bad news when he heard a soft knocking coming from the direction of the big plate-glass window. Turning slowly he saw something that made his heart stand still. It was Leroy Marshall, the meanest kid in his school. He stood with his face pressed against the glass grinning from ear to ear, his long, jet-black hair looking as if it had been dipped in motor oil before being slicked back. And in his hand...the torn pages from all ten Spiderman comic books.

Jimmy got really mad. Madder than he'd ever been. All he wanted to do was to take one of the torn pages and stick it in his pocket for safe keeping while he stuffed the rest down Leroy Marshall's throat, which was probably a bit unlikely since Leroy was two years older, at least a foot taller and quite a bit meaner. 

Later on he would wonder why he did what he did, but in that moment there was no room for logical thought, only action. 

He got up and pushed through the front door which dinged pleasantly to let Ralph know that a customer had entered and shouted, "Give me those pages, you creep!"

"Why don't you come and get them," Leroy shouted as he took off running, laughing loudly as if it were just the funniest thing.

Jimmy hesitated, but only for a second and then was in full pursuit, the cart full of groceries and his promise to his mother temporarily forgotten. He surprised himself, and Leroy, by running him down in the space of two blocks, leaping on his back and immediately beginning to yank on his long hair as if pulling on the reins of a wild stallion.

“Ow! Ow, my hair. Le’go my hair, you little punk!” Leroy screamed in a voice drifting perilously and incrementally into a soprano range.

“Give me those pages!” Jimmy hollered in reply. “You should’n’a took those pages, Leroy!”

Jimmy rode him all the way to the ground where Leroy finally relinquished his grip on the precious pages in order to concentrate on beating the stuffing out of Jimmy, which he accomplished in short order.

“And that’s for pulling my hair, lambchop!” he said while delivering a final stinging slap to the back of Jimmy’s head before stalking off, the pages left lying scattered and forgotten on the ground.

Jimmy thought about asking Leroy what he found particularly insulting about the term, “lambchop” that would cause him to employ its usage so regularly, but decided that’d be pushing his luck. As it was he’d gotten off with only a knot on the back of his head, a slightly puffy lip and scraped knees—injuries that were well worth the effort if it meant having the Spiderman pages back.

Crawling in a rough semi-circle he gathered up the ones that hadn’t blown completely away, smoothing out the wrinkles before beginning the walk back toward the pharmacy. It was right about then that he discovered to his utter shock and dismay, that page one and two were not, in fact, related to the current story, but contained advertisements for two new comic books “coming soon.”

He started to get really mad, but decided in the end that the whole thing had been worth it just to hear Leroy Marshall scream like a girl.

Hollow Girl

It was a rare, sun splashed morning in OB, the marine layer having retreated somewhere beyond the blue horizon.

And good riddance!

I mean coming from the desert I haven’t minded the cool, misty mornings, but when the misty mornings turn to misty, windy afternoons for days on end it eventually begins to wear on you.

A four-foot swell had the surfers out in force and the premium spots on the sand were filling rapidly with beachgoers out for a day of fanciful frolic: Families with enough gear to justify a week of camping; groups of young teenaged girls whose every movement was tracked with laser-like intensity by groups of teenaged boys; middle-aged couples lounging under the shade of artfully placed beach umbrellas taking in the unfolding drama with detached amusement.

St. Arbuck’s was packed with patrons, and while the demographic defied categorization there seemed to be an overarching and pervasive spirit of good humor and conviviality in the room.

Except, that is, for one couple.

They sat in stony silence, neither glancing at nor speaking to one another, their expressions reflective of people who didn’t really want to be together.

They were an odd pair.

She: Early thirties with ill-cut, shoulder length, drab, brown hair; large, blue eyes set off by a facial bone structure and clarity of complexion that could have easily been transformed into stunning beauty under the skilled hands of a makeover artist. A gray, below-the-knee shift, that seemed more suited to one forty years her senior, mostly obscured a trim, athletic figure.

He: Fifty, with graying hair that fell in greasy strands to just below his jaw line; overly large, metal-rimmed glasses; mismatched shirt and slacks; sallow, pitted complexion with thin lips that did little to offset his rheumy, gray eyes.

She took a slow sip of her coffee, peered at the ceiling over the rim of the cup, decided that there was nothing there of interest and then looked back at down at the table.

Returning the cup carefully to its saucer, she began to arrange the items on her side of the table—spoon, sugar, creamer, water glass—all placed just so, then rearranged in seeming random order as if desperate for something to occupy her attention.

The man held a flip-top cell phone in front of his face in the manner of one whose vision has deteriorated to the point that even with corrective lenses reading is a challenge, laboriously tapping out what I assumed to be a text message.

I suddenly found myself caught by the woman’s eyes—a gaze uncommonly stark and unwavering in its focus.

I quickly looked away only to glance back a few seconds later to find that she was still staring.

I looked down at my computer screen.

Glanced up again.

Still staring.

Just when I began to get really uncomfortable, I suddenly realized that there was no challenge in her eyes, no seduction, no humor, no interest...just...nothing.

She simply stared.

A bead of perspiration appeared on my forehead, succumbed to gravity and slowly moved downward, slipping past my nose and onto my cheek. I fought the urge to begin waving my hands in an effort to provoke a reaction.

Who were these people, anyway?

It didn’t seem plausible that they were man and wife, but neither was he old enough to be her father. Perhaps she was a younger sister, niece...personal assistant? For some reason I settled on the latter.

She flicked her eyes at the man briefly before returning to the object of her apparent fascination, i.e., me.

I mean, why me? Why not the guy seated at the table next to me? Was she trying to convey to me that I had something on my face, my head, my clothing that needed to be removed in order to save embarrassment? Did she find me attractive; hideous; enthralling?

In the end I dismissed all of the above as I realized that she was merely seeking some form of human contact, for it was abundantly obvious that, whatever their relationship, she had none from the man seated across from her.

Without preamble the man abruptly stood, brushed a few crumbs off of his protuberant belly, turned and headed for the door, pushing through it and walking purposefully toward a large, late model Mercedes leaving the young woman hastily scrambling to gather her things and hurry after.

Pausing just before exiting the store, she glanced briefly in my direction, the depth of despair in her eyes nearly palpable in its intensity.

Then, with head and eyes downcast, she trudged after the man as if walking through a field of quicksand, opened the driver’s door, climbed behind the wheel and drove away.

I stared after the car for a few seconds, pondering the significance of what I had just experienced, indeed, wondering if there was any significance at all or if the entire episode had been a mere random occurrence to be dismissed and quickly forgotten.

“Mate, do you know the password?” said a heavily accented voice off to my left.

Giving my head a quick shake I replied, “I’m sorry?”

“The Internet. Do you know the password to get on the store’s Wi-Fi?” said a twenty-something Australian Hipster.

I gave it to him and discussed briefly how amazing it was to have nearly universal Internet connection before returning to my musing.

Ultimately I decided that it wasn’t the girl’s stare that had left me in such a troubled state, but, rather, what I had seen in the depths of her eyes.

I may never see her again, I will doubtless see others who struggle against the same soul stripping despondency—even in the midst of a busy, bustling, bright and blithesome coffee shop; individuals deserving of my compassion and attention.

“That’s not it, mate!” said the Hipster.

“Excuse me?”

“The password. It’s not bloody working.”

I wrote it out for him on a slip of paper and handed it across the divide between our tables.

He laughed. “Well, then, that explains it. I heard you say something completely different.”

We talked for a few more minutes during which time I learned that he was visiting from Perth and was considering a move to San Diego to attend UCSD’s International House, home to approximately 260 students from more than 30 countries who live and learn together as a community.

Life was good. He, in fact, loved his life—loved everything about it. Wouldn’t trade with anyone.

He was filled with hope.

She was hollow.

The juxtaposition of two such disparate life trajectories was startling in its contrast.

And yet, it doesn’t require a great deal of effort to alter trajectory—ask any sharpshooter or archer.

I bid him a good day, closed my laptop and headed for my giant, red Kronan Swedish Army bike, which I’d left chained to a pole outside having lost all interest in novel writing for the moment.

Hollow girl.

The black Mercedes appeared in the periphery of my vision and then cruised slowly past; the driver’s side window rolled down and the girl gave me a funny little wave.

I waved back.

She smiled.

It transformed her face.

I pedaled slowly homeward.

Birth Control

Honesty compels me to confess that rowdy children in a small, enclosed space like St. Arbuck’s is not one of my favorite things.

Actually, now that I think about it, unruly kids are off-putting regardless of the environment.

And don’t get me started on the topic of inattentive, permissive parental units!

So, there I sat in my favorite coffee bar, doing battle with the bloated monstrosity also known as my current novel when the erstwhile calm was shattered by the arrival of a single dad and three—count ‘em—three young daughters.

Redheads.

Not that hair color has any particular bearing on the propensity of a child toward disruptive behavior, just stating an observational fact.

No, seriously.

How did I know he was a single dad? I think it was his eyes, the way they cast about the room as if seeking rescue, or, perhaps, at the very least understanding and compassion.

The three little darlings—approximate ages 5, 7 and 9—stormed immediately toward the pastry counter shoving and elbowing each other while at the same time shrieking in that frequency of voice that, seemingly, only young girls are capable of emitting.

“I get to order first!”

(Shriek!) “Noooo! You ordered first last time!”

“Me first! MeeeeeeeeFiiiiiiirrrrrrrsssssstttttt!!!” (Shriek! Shriek! Shriek!)

You get the picture.

The littlest one, and obvious, at least to my ringing ears, vocal champ, planted herself squarely in front of the register and refused to be budged by either of her sisters although they had at least a foot in height and twenty pounds body weight on her.

“Daaaaaaaaaddddd!” wailed the eldest. “Mary won’t move out of the way! Daaaaaaaaaddddd!”

The beleaguered father staggered forward as if in a daze, his mouth working wordlessly, arms flapping helplessly at his sides, head pinioning atop his shoulders as he scanned the menu board.

“Mary,” he said softly. “Why don’t you let Siobhan order first this morning?”

“Nooooooooooooo!” Mary shrieked. “Nooooooo! Noooooo! Noooooooooooooooooo!”

This bombast was accompanied by much gesticulation and stomping of her tiny feet.

It became quickly and indisputably clear that wee Mary was the boss in this family.

The middle child chimed in. “Why does she always get what she wants? I never get anything!” Arms crossed; chin tucked against her thin chest; the corners of her cute little mouth turned down in an epic pout.

“Now Bonnie,” reasoned dad, who by now had recovered somewhat from his previous stupor. “You know that Mary doesn’t always get her way.”

“Whatever!” This from Siobhan, with a roll of her piercing blue eyes tossed in for emphasis.

As for what happened next, I couldn’t rightly say for at that moment I had a pressing matter that required my attention, to whit heeding the insistent call of a middle-aged bladder.

I had no sooner turned on the light in the men’s room than I heard a significant ruckus filtering through the wall of the adjoining women’s room.

It seemed that the tiny trio of sisters had all simultaneously sensed the selfsame need as I.

With dad temporarily out of earshot (although I’m convinced anyone within a hundred feet could’ve heard every word clearly) Bonnie and Siobhan seized the opportunity to let Mary have it!

Rather than provide blow-by-blow color commentary, suffice it to say that the tag team diatribe involved derogatory descriptions of their younger sibling shocking to hear spoken from such young and innocent lips.

All of which eventually provoked Mary to explore aural frequencies that I am quite sure were previously unknown to human kind.

Sheer morbid fascination caused me to linger over the sink, washing and rewashing my hands as I listened in rapt attention to the unfolding drama unfolding one wall away.

Suddenly I heard a pounding coming from the hallway: Dad had arrived on the scene, yanked finally and violently from his torpor.

“What. Is. Going. On. In. There?” Followed by more pounding and, “Open this door! Right! Now!”

Now I was stuck. I mean there was no way I was going to walk out and right into the middle of a, well, domestic dispute of some proportions.

So I did what any self-respecting person would’ve done in my spot. I pressed my ear to the wall and listened.

Sadly, the concurrent decibel-intensive and cacophonous mash-up of sound that followed the father’s entrance made it impossible to distinguish much beyond the occasional,

“But Daaaaaaaadddddd!”

“She said...”

“I did not!”

“SHE DID TOO!!!”

And so on, and so on.

Eventually the dad said—in his outside voice, I might add—“That’s it! We’re outta here!” to the apparent chagrin and collective displeasure of the sisterhood of the traveling shrieks.

“Out to the car! All of you! I can’t take you anywhere!” mumble, mumble; wail, wail; shriek, shriek.

And off they went.

When I felt it safe to emerge from my place of refuge, I did so just in time to spy the dad herding them all into the family minivan, wee Mary’s mouth seemingly locked open in perpetual, wailing complaint.

I didn’t envy him the ride home.

Glancing at the barista as I retook my seat she nodded her head slowly while saying, “Birth control!”

“As in, he should’ve practiced it, or that scene was effective birth control for you?”

“Yeah,” she said with a grin. “That’s it.”

In Which RG Sells His Soul

6:00 AM Sunday morning.

It’s quiet here in the desert on this already sizzling Sunday—88º and if the local weather wags are to be believed we’re on our way to 111º today.

And, based on sixteen years experience here in Las Vegas, when it comes to predicting heat, I believe them.

I’m up early because...well, I don’t really know why.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.

When I woke up at 5:30 I immediately began thinking of all the things I had to accomplish today and realized with grudging clarity that my mind was, yet again, dictating my sleep schedule.

Don’t you just hate that? I mean the way your mind overrides your body’s need for sleep, jumping up and down, flapping its arms and screaming, “Up! Get up! We’ve got stuff to do! Come on, you slug-a-bed!”

So, I grabbed my computer, the Sunday fishwrap, aka the local paper, and headed out for my favorite St. Arbuck’s for some reading, writing and ruminating.

Pulling in to the parking lot I noticed a group of people seated in a rough semi-circle in front of the establishment’s front door—people who vaguely resembled the staff.

I parked my SUV, got out and walked toward the dour looking assemblage and realized with some consternation that it was, indeed, the Sunday morning staff.

Noticing that all the lights were off inside the store, I said, “Did I not get the memo?”

The manager just shook his head and smiled wearily. “Our water is turned off.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” replied a barista with a tired yawn. “I got here at 4:00 AM to open, went inside and there was no water.”

“And no water, no coffee!” said the manager bitterly.

I asked, “What are you going to do?”

“We’re waiting for a plumber to show up, and providing feeble excuses to our regular customers as to why they can’t have their morning coffee,” the manager said with a wry grin.

I was immediately torn between my pressing need for caffeine and the voyeuristic desire to pull up a chair to watch the drama that would undoubtedly unfold.

“Well,” I said. “As much as I’d love to stick around and watch you practice crowd control, I gotta go.”

“Bye, RG,” said the group in dreary unison as they turned their attention to the next staggering coffee enthusiast.

“Enthusiast” is a word I routinely substitute for “addict.” It sounds so much more palatable.

Back in my car, I sorted through a list of options, which included, but were not limited to, going home and actually making a pot of coffee; going next door to the bagel shop...okay, I was kidding about those two. I’m such a kidder sometimes. I often crack myself up I’m such a kidder.

I drove out of the parking lot and went up the street to my backup St. Arbuck’s; parked my car and walked toward the front entrance.

Much to my surprise and utter vexation, the front door was closed and locked!

I peeked in through the window and spied the craven staff huddling behind the counter—in the dark—casting furtive glances my way.

“We’re closed,” mouthed the lily-livered manager with an awkward grin.

I looked around the immediate area to see if I was on one of those “Gotcha!” videos or something.

I was not.

It was real.

They were closed.

The manager finally came out of hiding and walked toward the door.

“Our sewer...” something, something,  “and we can’t open.”

I said, “You’re kidding!”

She stood on the other side of the glass and just shrugged her shoulders. “Well, it’s not the end of the world. You could just go over to...”

“They’re closed too!” I said, probably louder than necessary.

“What?”

I nodded my head vigorously in reply.

She turned and yelled the information to the rest of the staff, who, in turn slunk deeper into the darkness.

“Well,” she said with an attempt at an encouraging smile. “Good luck,” before turning and, with a little wave over her shoulder, joining her spineless, cowering staff.

I hollered, “At least the other guys had the courage...” they weren’t listening, so I just turned around and stomped back to my car.

I was in a tight spot!

I had to have coffee and I had to have it soon.

“Ah-ha!” said I, as a realization suddenly wormed its way into my consciousness.

I say, “Ah-ha!” a lot when encountering a brilliant thought.

While I hadn’t been there in a while, I knew of another St. Arbuck’s less than a mile away.

“Perfect!”

With a renewed sense of purpose I drove toward caffeine heaven, confident that my drowsiness would soon be addressed and eliminated.

You can imagine the sense of mind-numbing horror when I drove by my last bastion of hope and saw a sign in the darkened window proclaiming that a kabob restaurant was “coming soon.”

“What the heck is going on?” I said out loud to absolutely no one.

I panicked! Beads of cold sweat began to coat my brow as my mind cast desperately about for a solution to the situation at hand.

While it shames me to admit it, figurative tail between my legs I did what anyone in such a tenuous position would’ve done.

You know, the coffee at the golden arches isn’t really all that bad.

Marshmallows And Things That Go “Boom” In The Night

Ocean Beach is quiet on this morning after Independence Day.

The thickening marine layer drizzles its excess, watering vegetation, slicking the roadways and rendering yesterday’s carwashes frustratingly futile.

Outside of St. Arbuck’s two TV trucks with distended satellite uplink towers are parked in proximity to the massive community cleanup effort being waged against the mountains of marshmallows littering the main beach.

Yes, I said, “marshmallows.”

While no one is entirely certain when the tradition began, each year following the Ocean Beach Pier fireworks show, a massive marshmallow war is waged between several thousand participants.

And in honor of OB’s 125^th Anniversary I decided to join in the festivities.

Well before the fireworks finale, the fight was on!

We started on the sand at the main beach by the pier with a crew of eight, including my daughter, her husband and several of their friends. But like an ever-growing amoeba we eventually spilled over onto the area around Abbot and Newport Avenues where those of us from the beach formed an ad hoc coalition to battle the guests of the Ocean Beach Hotel who were ensconced on the balconies mercilessly peppering all of us on the street.

They had the high ground...but we had—Tat, da, da, dah!!!—SUPER MARSHMALLOWS!

Those suckers were the size of my fist!

The ICBM’s of marshmallow fighting.

The Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon of sticky soldiering.

The Neutron Bomb of...okay, I’ll stop.

At some point I discovered that I had lost contact with our crew and there were only two of us left.

My aide-de-camp was a young, German tourist who had come along with another friend of my daughter’s.

We were a good team, scavenging the street for discarded ammo, passing it off to whoever was in the most strategic position at the time.

The most satisfying moment of the night came when I nailed a particularly arrogant and quite drunk bloke on the balcony right in the kisser. Knocked his head backward and dislodged his silly “gangsta” cap.

I may or may not have done a joy dance in the street.

Mein deutscher Freund was laying waste to any and everyone in his path. So effective were his throws that I eventually abandoned my own efforts entirely, turning my energies, instead, to the acquisition of ammunition for the rocket-armed foreigner.

So enamored was he with the experience, he vowed to take the tradition back to Germany with him.

At one point everything came to a dead stop as a massive “boom” filled the air and the sky to the south lit up with unusual intensity causing our surroundings to briefly take on the appearance of broad daylight.

We later learned the source of the illumination: San Diego’s famous Big Bay Boom, which was to be an eighteen minute fireworks extravaganza shot off from four strategically placed barges, went bust as all of the fireworks were triggered simultaneously through a technician’s glitch.

I wouldn’t want to be that technician.

The fifty thousand attendees were not amused. Not at all amused.

Back in OB, the "Battle Royale" resumed, enjoyed with good-natured civility by all.

We, however, had run out of ammo and, with arms hanging in limply by our sides, slogged through the tacky muck coating the streets and sidewalks and made our way back to my daughter’s house to await the return of our original crew.

I’m happy to report that we had no casualties save for the soles of our shoes, which had been rendered gummy, gooey horrors.

I’d do it again.

Only next time I’m bringing...a marshmallow shooter!

Oh yeah!