Glad to Be Home (Cigar Smoke 7-3-08)

As you know, my dog, Hadley, has some pretty bad back legs. He has real difficulty getting up and cannot climb stairs any more. So while we were at my friend’s ranch in Colorado recently, we’d always be sitting on his deck, which was on the second floor. Vic and I and his two dogs and various cats and critters, would all be up there having some damn fun, and Hadley would be on the ground floor envious of all the noise and action.

So, because he’s a smart dog, he went to the bottom of the stairs, and started to bark. So Vic and I, being not quite as smart, said, “Shut the hell up, you mutt!” Finally, we figured out he wanted us to carry him up the stairs. Pretty cool, huh?

So Vic would grab him under the front legs and chest and I would grab his rear end, and we’d carry him up the stairs. At first, his heart would beat really fast, and he’d be very unsure of the whole thing, and then he gradually got used to it, and relaxed, and told us in doggie yelps to carry him faster. And we did, and he got up there and ran around and smelled a few butts, and life was good. (I don’t get any more heartwarming than that.)

But before you come to the conclusion that Vic is a nice guy, I have to say that I stood at the bottom of the stairs a number of times and barked and he didn’t do shit. He never carried me up. Not once. The bastard.

By the way, remember in my last column when I used the word “dickhead,” as in “Did you bring the steaks, dickhead?” Well, I asked Vic if he used that term with love as kind of a guy insult thing, and he said, “No. I always thought your head looked like a penis.”

Anyway, on the way home, Marge and I were driving through Arizona and we were on Highway 10, pretty much flying, and we saw an Arizona Highway Patrol car stopped by the side of the road, and we went by him, and then a few minutes later he comes up behind us with his lights flashing. I told Marge, “I guess he thinks going 90 in a 75 is speeding.”

We stop. He comes to the window. I roll it down. And he says, “Do you know why I stopped you?” And I said, “Because my head looks like a penis?” He said, “What?” I said, “I don’t know. Why?” He said, “Because you failed to move over to the next lane when you saw a Highway Patrol stopped car at the side of the road.”

I told him I had never heard of that law and that we didn’t have it in California and that I was sorry. I really, truly hadn’t heard of the law, and I was sincerely sorry. He kind of looked at me over his sunglasses and asked to see my driver’s license, registration and my insurance card. Well, I had my license and registration, but my insurance card was outdated — by a month.

He told me my insurance card was not good, and as I was looking for the right one in my special car envelope I pulled out a 50 dollar bill (that I keep for emergencies) and he saw it and said — and if I’m lying I’m buying — “Is that for the nice Arizona Highway Patrolman?”

Marge’s jaw dropped and she looked at me like she would be visiting me in jail, and she said, “Officer, I don’t know this gentleman. I was hitchhiking and he picked me up.” True love.

The nice patrolman only gave me a warning and we made it back to good old Altadena. Glad to be home. Until I opened the accumulated pile of mail. I had a notice from the IRS saying that I owed them $2,300. I called my accountant, Steve Boyer, and asked him if I had any other alternative than paying and he said, “Prison.”

So, the next day, after sleeping in my own bed, the bed with the dried bloodstain on my pillow, the bed where I use my CPAP machine to blast off into dreamland, the bed that is even softer than the Lakers, I get up and go out to the kitchen. Marge is there at the table with her oatmeal and coffee. We read the papers. And then we each take a crossword puzzle, one from the Star-News and one from the LA Times, and we start working them, and then, as always, we switch about halfway through, and we slide the puzzles over to each other.

As we slid the puzzles to each other, we both, at exactly the same time, also slid our pencils over. Did you catch that? We slid our pencils over to each other. Do you see what I’m saying? We were both incredibly moronic at the same exact point in time. I guess we figured the puzzles could only be completed by pencils they already knew. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a new law in Arizona.

Then I went to Brookside Park to get back into my routine, and within three minutes and 100 yards, these things occurred. I swear. On a stack of pancakes. A kid in a school bus said, “Is that your nose or your trunk?” and then ducked down under the window; a guy in a captain’s hat told me his dog more than liked my dog, his dog loved my dog; I overheard a tennis instructor tell his young 8- to 10-year-old students, “Quiet! I want to be able to hear a cricket fart.” I walked by the swimming pool where elderly lanky-ladies in one-piece bathing suits were doing water nymph exercises to the recorded scratchy blaring of “Mellow Yellow.”

Glad to be home.

Contact former Pasadena Weekly Publisher Jim Laris at jim.laris@mac.com.