Funiculí Funiculá

I went through a stretch when I listened to the Tony Kornheiser radio show every morning. It filled the gaps as I drove job to job. I was very grateful for that guy. I came to rely him.

That’s putting it too mildly. I sort of followed him with obsession. He made everything better, knowing I had that show to look forward to the following morning. My anticipation for Tony Kornheiser’s take on whatever game happened the night before became my reason to watch it. Then he got a TV show. And his radio show was finished.

I know he has a podcast now. A couple days a week. But it’s not the same. I’m not the same either. In fact, that guy has come to deeply annoy me now. Retrospectively. His superior, wink-wink attitude. For example he was very proud of not granting interviews to athletes. Since, you know, they’re stupid.

Then it was Jim Rome on AM 800. Always funny. A Jeff Spicoli vibe. Stoned surfer guy talking about sports. Classic this and classic that. Now there was a show that would last. I came to rely on it. Sort of. I followed it with…not obsession. But I followed it. That lasted a few years. Job to job. Then AM 800 dropped him.

They picked up Doug Gottlieb. Sort of a douche. That lasted a few years. Then they dropped him.

Colin Cowherd. Always with an opinion. Always with the life-sports metaphors. “They call him lucky. You know the funny thing about luck? Yeah. I’ll tell you. The more you work? The more work you put in? It’s the same with life, by the way. I always say this. The more work you put in? The luckier you get.” They cut his show back from three hours to one, from 11:00 to noon.

Now it’s Dan Patrick, who has an encyclopedic sports mind. He’s great when he’s talking about sports. But he rarely does that. Most of the time, he’s yucking it up with his idiot sidekick, Fritzy. The worst kind of comedian. The kind who just can’t understand why nobody’s laughing. Fritzy and Dan go back and forth about movies and music and food and dude wipes and what meat they’re going to grill on their Traeger grill, and what NFL coach could beat up what other NFL coach. I’d like to like the show. But this Fritzy guy. I swear to fucking god. I can’t stand him anymore. I can’t stand to hear the way he needs to take a breath in the middle of a short sentence.

Then, at noon we get a couple local jokers.

So that’s it. The end of sports talk on the radio for me. That’s the stretch I’m in now. It’s not a big watershed moment. It’s just a thing that happens. You drop into these chutes of time. Take a ride. Get shot out the other side. Gain your balance. Then drop into another one. Take another ride. Time moves that way. Like a time machine.

Jobs move that way too. Simultaneously. With the sports and everything else. There was an air cooled rooftop chiller at Clarke University I used to take care of. Every year, about the time the cottonwoods let go, I’d get a call. They’d want me to drive up and pressure wash the condenser coil. An hour and a half to get there. A good drive. Country roads. Small towns. You go through Mount Vernon, so you can stop at Fuel, the coffee shop there, and get coffee and a homemade molasses cookie for the drive — another example of a tangential chute of time. Once at Clarke, I’d get the keys from maintenance, and be left alone, the way I like it, to haul the pressure washer up there and the hoses and hand tools. Remove the hail guards. Clean all that cottonwood off the condenser coils. It was very satisfying, seeing that sweatshirt of cottonwood seeds peel off beneath the 3,000 PSI weight of that water. To know that the chiller would run with a nice low head pressure for another year. To know I was actually accomplishing something.

For lunch, I’d always stop by West Dubuque Tap. They always had a special. Hot beef or lasagna or scallop potatoes and ham. It came with a bowl of coleslaw for a side and dessert, usually a small square of cake with frosting. The whole thing under ten dollars.

It was one of those routines that marked the passage of time. Another late spring. Kids move up a year at school. Dog gains seven more human years. Truck a year older. I liked that stretch. I liked Dubuque. The funicular. The little art museum. The big river. The empty brick and glass factories, bygone vestiges of American industry. The river museum. West Dubuque Tap. Clarke University. The air cooled rooftop chiller.

Then I stopped hearing from Clarke. I didn’t think about it much. It was just one of those things. Those lost havens. Broken routines. Impermanent points in space and time. Like the pond fountain I was hired to service once a year at the Coral Ridge Mall. One summer. Two summers. Three. Four. Five. The chillers at John Deere. Six. Seven. The air conditioners at Iowa River Power. Eight. Nine. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. All the air conditioners and fountains at all the places.

It must have been ten years since I last heard from Clarke. Then I heard from them. “Hey, are you still in business? Do you still do that condenser cleaning thing?”

My son William and his wife Samantha are living in town for the summer. William is one of those rare people who was born and raised in Iowa City. And then he moved away. Now he’s back. He and Samantha will be moving to Atlanta in a few weeks. A new city for them. A new university. New apartment. New stretch. I figured it would be nice to relive the old days one more time with William. I asked if he could help me on the job. We drove up to Dubuque together again. That same air cooled chiller was still there. There was a cooling tower we used to pressure wash as well, and I notice they replaced that old thing. The new one is very fancy. All plastic and stainless steel.

West Dubuque Tap is still there. The same woman still works there. She was nice. Even though it’s a towny place and I was an outsider. She’d sell the five-dollar lottery tickets for the big jackpot displayed behind the bar — a few bottles of booze, a couple t shirts, and some chocolates and flowers. Maybe an I-Pod Shuffle. She worked the bar back then. Now she’s in the kitchen.

I ordered the special. Hot beef. William ordered a burger and fries. Then he went to wash his hands. While he was gone, the server brought the bowl of coleslaw. I started in on it. It tasted exactly the way it always had. The standard, store bought stuff. Delicious. Sort of sweet.

“Hey,” said William, taking his seat. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“That’s mine,” he said.

“It is? You ordered it?”

“Yeah. I ordered it.”

So. No coleslaw with the special anymore. Apparently.

There was a young guy at the table next to ours. Probably a college student, there being two small colleges in the neighborhood, Clarke University and University of Dubuque. They throw the term university around pretty freely in Dubuque. Anyway, the kid’s black hair was drenched in product, a devil-may-care swirl flopping over one eye. “Something about cheese,” he was saying. “It’s very interesting. Very interesting and I can’t explain it. But, listen. Listen. I love cheese. I love it. But only if it’s melted. You understand? I have a big problem with solid cheese. I have a big problem with it. I say no-thank-you to solid cheese. But if it’s melted? Look out. I say yes. I’ll take the melted. You bet. And thank you very much.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Are you hearing this guy?”

“What guy?” said William.

“Nothing,” I said. “I been looking forward to coming back here. You remember this place, right?”

William squinted. “It doesn’t look real familiar to me,” he said.

“Didn’t you come up here and help me with that coil once or twice?”

“I don’t think it was me,” he said. “Maybe it was Sam.”

“Now,” the kid was saying, “if it’s melted and then it gets cooled down again? So it’s solid? It’s not for me. No thanks.”

There was no square of cake for dessert. The square of cake is not for them. They say no thank you to cake for dessert now.

And then. Back to the job. The history of which I have apparently reassembled incorrectly. When it comes to William. And then. We packed up our shit. And then. The drove home. Along the mighty Mississippi. Out of Dubuque. Where, for a stretch, I took care of the air conditioning at The Sisters of the Presentation. And I took a call, one evening in autumn, at the county jail. And, one winter’s day, at the Eagles Supermarket near the big northward curve in 151. Where we visited when the kids were young, a very hot summer day, and walked around. Took the funicular, built by a wealthy banker who wanted to go home, way up on the ridge, everyday for lunch. For a series of years there. A hundred years ago. Back then a hundred and ten years ago. Now a hundred and forty.

Through Monticello, where, one very hot and humid summer night, I worked on the air conditioning at the Budweiser trailer at the big county fair, right on the midway, about ten yards from The Buccaneer, that boat that rollicks on the waves.

Through Anamosa. “Remember I used to take care of the school district here?” I said, pointing out the Middle school, which is right off 151. Used to be, a guy named John Fey was head of maintenance. He and a guy named Galen Harms. We used to eat lunch at a Chinese place downtown. Five dollars for the buffet.

“Did you?” said William, not giving the slightest shit.

Through Mount Vernon, where I once started up a new Trane chiller at Cornell College. Not that I mentioned it to William.

Past Kroul Farms, where I took a call on the walk-in coolers.

Through Solon. An Ice-O-Matic machine and walk-in cooler at the American Legion.

Me always looking for something that won’t break. Things always breaking. That’s the way things are. In life. As Colin Cowherd would say. It’s all pretty good. It’s alright, really. In fact, sometimes it’s beautiful. If you’re lucky, you get the chance to realize it. If not when it’s happening, soon thereafter.