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Daily Speculations
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True Stories by Steve Keely
Hobo Memoirs
I’M BEGINNING TO THINK LIKE THEM
When I was 28 and a retired veterinarian, I spent a year sleeping in a coffin.
It was simple, pine and lined with electric blankets against icy Michigan
nights. It was the logical progression to riding boxcars on-and-off around
America. Before that, I built a box in a closet in a garage to stay in. Prior,
my worst nightmare surfaced on getting lost after hours in an Auckland, New
Zealand House of Mirrors and kicking doors until the janitor unlocked the real
one. Where did this small fetish begin? Mother used to open my boxes inside
boxes each Christmas that unlocked a love passage. Bless her understanding heart
for allowing me as a child a pet pocket worm.
I suppose the idea of digging a burrow, moving in, and observing my fellow
creatures came from a besotted visit once to an Anchorage, Alaska bar. Looking
up from their drinks, patrons gradually became aware that in place of the usual
bar mirror stood a wall-to-wall glass window. It permitted a menagerie of
rhesus monkeys to cease cavorting on spruce branches, and every few minutes to
examine us drinkers with great amusement. We were each others’ floorshows.
I just put the finishing touches on my burrow at the Sand Valley rancho, and
urge visitors. I meditate and type ten-feet beneath the desert floor. It’s
cool, quiet and airy with one side open and a stair to the surface. No mammal
near the tri-section of California, Arizona and old Mexico can claim a deeper
burrow. I like to think Captain Nemo would turn in his grave. The twist is an
open side wall of ¼” hardware mesh flush with the vertical dirt. A half-dozen
species scuttle in auxiliary tunnels off my main bore and peek. There are
various rodents, snakes and giant scorpions, so far.
Sand Valley, California is a round sandbox crosscut by dry washes and ringed by
600-foot mountains. A single access track from the town of Blythe leads an hour
to the pristine 100-mile circle where seven residents survived the past summer
that decimated 30% of the population. That heat, and the adjacent Chocolate
Mountain Bombing Range where daily jets pepper 1000-pound bombs leaving gaping
craters, are the other reasons I built the hideaway.
Too far-flung for a backhoe, imitators do well in starting with a pick as well
as shovel. Stake a 10’ x 8’ plot the size of a camper shell and put on thick
gloves. Toss the initial four feet of dirt far from the hole to make space for
the deeper, harder earth. One hundred hours later, jack the camper onto four old
tires and put two more in front of it. Come-a-long the camper over this path,
advancing the freed set of tires like a sweating Egyptian toward the cavity.
Slide it gently in on pipes. Place the tires as vertical retaining walls between
the shell and dirt, and the pipes as beams for a false roof. Pile on the dirt to
complete the project.
The lair ceiling is flush with the desert floor so one unknowingly walks among
the local creosote bushes, ocotillo, barrel cactus and tweeting birds. It’s
equipped with a computer and the rare desert waterbed that doubles as emergency
storage. Water is hauled an hour from a well. Solar panels via an inverter
provide electricity. The showcase mesh supplants TV. A tarantula called Thing is
the hand-sized doorkeeper. The annual fixed expense at the rancho is $35
property tax.
The den is virgin. The portal is too small to admit large bosoms, and I prefer
slim girls dating back to the coffin. Above all, I love practical ideas, and the
creatures lurking beyond the wire think me no queerer than I them. Three lessons
from living ten-feet under are: Laugh at yourself. Never laugh at anyone else.
Jump at life like a Jack-in-the-box.
For more of Steve "Bo" Keely's writings
Visit the Hobo page on www.greatspeculations.com!