(Anthologized in The Best of the First Line)
I remember the radio was playing the best song.
“Snap, Crackle, Oompah, Fuck!” is how I remember it, but that wasn’t its name. It was a kind of audio montage whose backbone was Kurt Weil singing pieces from the Threepenny Opera in German, accompanied by a wheezy pump organ. It was a very old recording; the scratch and pop of the aging vinyl sounded like a pinewood fire starting up. Rearranged samples of the Butthole Surfers would cut into the mix, guitars and voices barking like the shouts of a Tourette’s sufferer. “The old motorcycle will not get us to China!,” “Fantastic Noodles!” “I’m a certified radiator now!”It’s the kind of thing that is brilliant beamed in at three am from the community radio station 80 miles to the west. In the daylight hours you just smile weakly at it and say, “That’s weird.”
Out of the window of my cabin the stars were strung up bright as electric pearls over the gleaming snows of Mt. Adams. The dog eyed me from the corner by the wood stove; he was getting used to these late night antics of mine. The look on his face said, “I hope you don’t plan on taking me outside at this hour.” “No,” I replied to him, “It’s too cold outside and besides I am naked.”
It had started two weeks ago when a new neighbor had hauled a dorky looking doublewide trailer onto the hill above my property. No sooner was the trailer operational then there appeared a brand new American flag on a pole and a great big mercury vapor light was strung to the crotch of an oak tree. Seriously bad neighbors.
I had thought about shooting out the light the first time I awoke to see it shining in my bedroom window. However, there are limitations to these kind of antics when you grow pot for a living. The thought of the Klickitat County Sheriff coming up the driveway to question me about the light was a more ornery proposition than lost sleep. Of course I considered asking them to take the thing down, but the more I thought about it the more a dilemma arose in me. What if they said no? What if we got into an argument and they decided to keep a closer eye on me? Anonymity is my oxygen. But it was getting toward the time when I would have to haul my seedlings across the hillside to the gully where they grow in the summer. I would have to make trip after trip in front of the spotlight carrying water, bat guano, peat buckets, and shovels. I couldn’t tolerate having the light there either. It was them or me.
The song was reaching a wobbly crescendo of honking saxophones, groaning organs, and the word “Barbecue” repeated rapidly with an emphasis on a different syllable each time: BAR-Bee-Que, Bar-BEE-Que, Bar-Bee-QUE! “What,” I asked the dog, “Would a Dadaist do about this?”
The dog sighed and said, “Cut off your hair.” Of Course.The answer to the dilemma was to face its absurdity head on. I pulled out a pair of blue handled shears from the desk and went outside under the stars. Leaning forward, I gathered my long blonde hair into a firm knot on top of my head and hacked through it with the shears yelling, “That’ll show them!” The dog went back to sleep.
