What others are saying about Bliss
“This book is fun to read. Most chapters have a belly laugh for the reader.”
--2008 North Texas Book Festival Award Winner
“I could definitely see a TV show along the lines of My Name Is Earl crossed
with The Office and a smattering of Friday Night Lights.”
--Liz Atherton, owner, TAG Talent
Bliss
by
Jeff Lyon
A fictional tribute to my City Hall cohorts in Lewisville, Texas…
Smashwords Edition, October 2009
Copyright © 2005 by Jeff Lyon
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Jeff Lyon
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CHAPTER 1
BLISS GROWS UP
Bliss was a sleepy little farming town located a safe but accessible distance north of the sins and iniquities associated with a big city like Dallas. Bliss was a place you drove through on your way to somewhere else. Then a steady influx of commuters began moving their families to Bliss where they could afford bigger houses on bigger lots than in cramped Dallas. Parents wanted to raise their children in the relative security of this tiny hamlet and experience its easygoing lifestyle with a rural flavor. The land started out cheap, the people were friendly and living was good.
Along with the migration of the masses came their constantly increasing needs. Building more sewer lines to carry away their flushables resulted in a bigger pookey plant to deal with them at the other end. More water lines were needed to keep all those newly sodded lawns green and a bigger water plant was needed to deliver the goods. More cars would necessitate wider roads and better lighting. More leisure time away from the stresses of the Metroplex would require more parks and recreational facilities. More of this and more of that would continue to be added until Bliss grew into the very place all the new residents were running away from.
City government blossomed right along with all the unbridled growth of public amenities and new businesses. Government feeds off its people, is ever expanding and never shrinks. City Hall in Bliss was no exception.
I entered the picture at the dawn of the building boom in the mid 80s. That building boom never really ended and managed to blur the lines between Dallas and its northern suburbs all the way to the Oklahoma border.
I began my city career in the Bliss Health Department, which was located in a historic, two-cell jailhouse in the part of the city called “Old Town.” There was a Chief Health Inspector, two regular Health Inspectors and a shared secretary in our tiny, red brick edifice.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays the County Health Department sent registered nurses to vaccinate children in our jail. They administered shots required for children to attend public schools for a fraction of the price being charged by family doctors.
Long lines would form out the front door and down the street as the beginning of each new school year approached. The faces of happy, smiling kids who had been playing together in front of the building would cloud over with apprehension when they entered the miniscule reception area only to be confronted with screaming, crying children who had been freshly needle stabbed being dragged down the hallway and out the rear exit. I gladly vacated my office for the duration of these bi-weekly events.
Sharing parking on the same lot with the Health Department was City Hall, The Library and a Fire Station. By the end of the 80s, a huge new Civic Center would be constructed across town on Main Street with lots and lots more tax consuming employees to staff it. In ten short years Bliss would attract big businesses and the population would swell from twenty-five to sixty thousand inhabitants. Rampant growth was a living thing that was going to happen with or without City Hall’s stamp of approval.
Ms. Beaula Irons was running the show from that old City Hall before the big move to the shiny new structure across town. She demanded complete loyalty from her city employees and they got the same in return from her. Ms. Beaula governed in the classic “good ole boy” style where deals were done over breakfast at the local Eggs & More eatery and reports were given orally from Department Heads and regular staff in her open-door office. Nobody crossed Ms. Beaula and got away with it. She could make or break your project or career with a whisper and smile while you and your dreams faded out of the picture.
Ms. Beaula succumbed to cancer, which was the only thing in Bliss that wasn’t afraid to disagree with her. Bliss hired a new city manager from a blossoming municipality on the eastern seaboard who came to town to promote growth and build bigger government. His name was Dick Darling and his managing style could not have been farther from Ms. Beaula’s.
Dick added upper layers to all the city departments and only chiefs were privy to his company. Reports would all be written and then rewritten until Dick was happy with them and Bliss City Council members could easily grasp their gist. There was a new boss in town and he had no time for the minutia of day-to-day routines that occupied the time of city workers at the lower end of the pay scale. Department heads were expected to take care of petty problems before they reached Dick’s ears or pay the price for failure.
The “Big Belly Boys” who had operated one-man departments became Department Heads with real staff numbers and were thrown into the game with out-of-town professionals to sink or swim. The new Civic Center meeting rooms filled with uncomfortable rubes in new ties, dress shirts and suits pitted against corporate expansion pros looking for cheap land and easy access to the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Egos got bruised and the learning curve shot straight up as many of the old school administrators were forced to dig through parts of the codes and ordinances they’d adopted but never read to come up with answers for eager developers. City slickers faced off with small town yokels, and the subsequent song and dance was a wrestling match with a liberal dose of smoke and mirrors. It was an ostentatious display and quite entertaining.
When the day came to move into the new Civic Center the word came down the line that each department was expected to move its own files to the new building. We would do this on a Saturday and like it. A lot of feathers were ruffled and the grumbling on moving day was not eased when those of us who had occupied our own offices in older buildings found ourselves elbow-to-elbow in cubicles outside our Department Head’s spacious new offices. There was dissension among the ranks that were promptly told they could hit the bricks if they didn’t get with the new program. Nobody quit.
Those heady days of explosive expansion have provided me with the grist for many humorous tales. My accidental career in city government was a hoot. Back we go to those innocent times when heading to jail in the morning meant working for the Bliss Health Department.
CHAPTER 2
I NEVER INTENDED TO BE A HEALTH INSPECTOR
I attended college a few miles up the road from Bliss in the late 70s. My folks lived on the edge of Dallas, and Bliss was just a crossroads with a smattering of car lots and filling stations on my way home to get laundry done on weekends. Bliss certainly held no attraction for a college-age raconteur.
Few things stir pride in a father’s heart like the announcement by his freshly graduated son that he is taking his spanking new degree to Colorado to be a ski-bum for a season. That ski season turned into four years and a volume of misadventures unto itself. A visiting buddy persuaded me that it was time to get a real job and give up the mountain mischief that had become my way of life. I took a hard look at the “lifer ski-bums” around me and decided he was right.
My buddy worked for one of those massive package delivery companies. He was doing quite well and would see about getting me a job. A great deal of correspondence and phone conversations later I was back in the Dallas area to start a genuine career. For reasons that still elude me a youthful indiscretion that I had been forthright and open about from the very beginning with all the people involved with my prospective employment suddenly became an insurmountable problem just days before I was to start my new job. After moving 900 miles with the lack of savings you would expect a ski-bum to possess, there would be no job delivering the world’s packages door-to-door for me.
Another college chum, Bruce Manns, got wind of my plight and called to say that he was working for the City of Bliss and they had an opening in the Health Department for the summer season. The pay was not great, but it would tide me over while I continued the quest for the ever-illusive real job.
Bruce set up an interview with the Chief Health Inspector, Rex Flint, and I drove to Bliss to meet my new boss. Pam Hayes, the real head of the Health Department and Rex’s secretary, greeted me inside the miniscule jail’s door. Pam was grandmotherly at first blush, but I learned quickly that crossing her was a mistake. Pam looked up from her pile of immunization forms, smiled and said, “You must be Ross. Get yourself a cup of coffee and have a seat. Mr. Flint will be with you in a minute.”
I went into the first room down the hall she had pointed to and got my initial taste of Health Department sludge. Rex Flint was a chain smoking, non-stop coffee drinker and the pot was left on all day. It was now early afternoon and I was sure the foam cup I poured the viscous elixir into would disintegrate on contact with the hot muck. I was looking for a plant or sink to pour it in when Rex entered to fill his cup.
Rex looked disappointed at the meager amount of coffee left stewing in the pot, but he drained it into his stained cup and said, “Pam, we need more coffee.”
He turned to leave, stopped, looked back at me and asked, “Are you my two-o’clock?”
I replied, “I’m Ross Ryan, if that’s your two-o’clock.”
Rex put his cigarette in his mouth, shifted his coffee cup to his left hand and stuck out his right hand to shake mine. Through a cloud of exhaled smoke he mumbled, “Glad to meet you. Let’s go in my office and talk.”
Rex’s office had no windows and the walls were covered with cheap, dark wood paneling. His desk barely fit across the far wall and two plastic chairs had been squeezed in front of it. It was like walking into a large ashtray. The light fixture and ceiling above his head had yellowed from years of rising smoke. He chain-smoked throughout my brief interview and made me close the door when I entered his dungeon.
Pointing at the sturdier of the two chairs Rex said, “Have a seat.”
I sat down and handed him my resume. He looked it over pausing to look up at me from time to time and then tossed it into the heaping piles on his cluttered desk.
Rex took a huge drag on his cigarette and exhaled while asking me, “So why do you want to work for the Bliss Health Department?”
My eyes watered as I replied, “Because I need a job.”
Rex took another drag and said, “You realize this is just a part-time job for the grass and weeds season?”
I had no idea what the grass and weeds season meant, but I needed work and the money so I replied, “Yes. I’m just looking for something to tide me over until I can find more permanent employment.”
Rex thought for a minute, blew out an astonishing amount of smoke and said, “Well, you’re overqualified for this position, but Bruce said you were a good man and I need someone to start next week. You’re hired. See Pam about your paperwork and come in Monday.”
I stood quickly, shook Rex’s hand and bolted for the closed door in hopes of finding breathable air on the other side. Pam had just lit up a cigarette of her own and the little entry room closed in on me as I filled out the stack of forms to become a Bliss city employee.
My new job was to drive around town in an unmarked cruiser that had been cast-off by the police department and send letters to people who were in violation of the city’s ordinances pertaining to grass and weeds, unsightly material and inoperative vehicles. I had become the mom for an entire city. “Clean that up now and I mean it!”
Both full-fledged, full-time, state certified health inspectors on our staff considered it a great degradation to have to enforce the outdoor code violations. It seemed especially beneath them to have to venture into the more unsavory parts of town and work. Traditionally, the new part-time guy is thrown headlong into the offensive locations to do battle with the riffraff and that’s where I spent most of my time.
I would naively drive my shiny, unmarked, police cruiser into some broken-down neighborhood, stop in front of a dilapidated house and begin filling out a complaint form. The card or crap game being played in the carport or garage would break up with half the players hightailing out the back and over fences while the remainder of the group would appoint someone to stroll out and see what I was up to. On more than one occasion I was approached by undercover cops who would instruct me to get the heck out of there because I was mucking up their drug sting. For this I left Colorado!
I quickly learned to vastly broaden my definition of junk and refuse. A twenty-year old car on blocks with weeds growing out of the hood in the back yard was not an inoperative vehicle; it was an antique that was lovingly being restored. A faded couch with three legs and torn upholstery on the front porch was serviceable lawn furniture. One man’s trash as treasure almost always became my personal headache.
I once had a man arrested for not mowing his lawn. That may sound severe, but not to the neighbor who called it in because he could see the grass and weeds growing above the six-foot wooden fence that divided their back yards. When I went to check it out I could see the stuff growing over the fence from the street while seated in my car.
The home didn’t seem inhabited so I decided to open the side gate to get a look at this jungle. Behind the gate stood the biggest, mangiest, meanest looking mastiff I had ever encountered or hope to again. That dog had tunneled pathways through undergrowth and seemed most unhappy with his current situation. Fortunately, his shock at confronting me was just as great as mine to see him. In a panic I slammed the gate closed and ran for the safety of my cruiser. This provided great amusement for the watching neighbors.
The owner of this back yard run amok paid no heed to my letters and phone calls urging him to cut his grass. When he signed for my third and certified letter I wrote him a citation for ignoring me, which he also disregarded. Ignoring me was one thing, but ignoring the court got him arrested, jailed, fined and he still had to cut his grass.
When September rolled around one of the full-time health inspectors quit, which left an opening. My part-time job was over, but Rex, who I referred to as The Chief, liked my work and offered me the permanent position. I had enough science credits on my BA to qualify for certification and my six months on the job would count toward the state required one-year training period. All I had to do was take six weeks of classes, pass the state exam and the next thing you know I’m a Registered Health Inspector with the State of Texas.
The Holy Grail of a real job had yet to materialize and here was an offer that would pay the bills and provide full health care benefits. I’d become accustomed to telling the citizenry of Bliss to clean up their acts, so I signed on knowing I could keep searching for a career opportunity. I stayed with the City of Bliss for ten years, seven with the Health Department and three as the only Assistant Fire Marshal they’ve ever had.
CHAPTER 3
FRIDAY NIGHT KINGS
Friday nights during the season in Texas are dedicated to high school football. This is true throughout most of the United States, but the fever burns most fervently in north Texas and Bliss was no exception. The men and boys that participate in the games are the kings of Friday nights. A good high school football coach is revered in his community and a winning record puts his prestige over the top.
Students and parents alike adore gifted football players. Failing grades can be repaired or overlooked for promising athletes, much to the dismay of the brainier bunch in the student body. Cheerleaders, booster club members, coaches, trainers and anyone else associated with the football program gain immediate status elevation.
Bliss High School was the home of The Brawling Backwoodsmen in spite of the fact that Bliss had not been a heavily wooded, uncultivated, thinly settled area since the school existed. Outside of Bliss the team was referred to as “The Bumpkins.” Concerted communal drives had been mounted several times over the years to change the team’s name and update its image, but The Brawling Backwoodsmen were football tradition and nobody messes with football tradition in Bliss, Texas.
Slicing through the center of Bliss was a major U.S. Interstate which was the vital artery for traffic flow to all the tiny towns rapidly expanding on their own from the continued migration of adventurous commuters spending more and more of their day on the road between their country homes and jobs in Dallas. At the Main Street overpass stood a Bliss water tower in full view of the thousands of daily drivers passing through town. Emblazoned on the tower’s mushroom-like reservoir was a giant depiction of a strapping Backwoodsman with the dates of seasons that the football team had won state championships. Occasionally the Backwoodsman’s appearance would be altered to make him look more in tune with the current expectations of how a fine physical specimen should appear.
Every couple of years some merry prankster would scale the tower and endow the burly Backwoodsman with a monster Johnson. An immediate backlash of indignation would ricochet through the conservative sector of this Bible belt stronghold and the demand to quickly neuter the image would be swift and incessant. Meanwhile the actual Backwoodsmen players would swagger about as if they had newly awakened with astronomical appendages until the exaggeration was erased.
The football stadium at Bliss High School had been renovated several times over the years to keep it state of the art. Nothing was too good for the town’s gridiron gladiators. The cost to keep pace with modern football technology was augmented by the booster club, which consisted of parents of current players, former players and local businesses that knew if they wanted to survive in Bliss donations were expected.
At Friday night home games the ample arena filled with local residents to capacity. Many of the men in jeans and cowboy boots limped from injuries sustained during their own glory days as Backwoodsmen. The game’s outcome and quality of play would be a constantly recurring topic for the entire week to come until it was replaced by the next week’s contest.
While performing a routine inspection in the Bliss High School cafeteria, I was approached by a slightly built young man wearing disturbingly thick glasses who was obviously not enamored by the school’s football team. He appeared a little nervous, but strove to maintain a casual air about our interaction as hungry teenagers sauntered by with trays of bland, mass-produced food in segmented plates.
I was jotting notes on the inspection form attached to my clipboard when the lad sidled up next to me and said, “Please keep writing, but I want to ask you some questions.”
I had not anticipated a clandestine meeting in this setting, but the urgency in his voice tweaked my curiosity so I kept my head down, continued writing and said, “Go ahead.”
My informer looked around the room aimlessly and innocently and asked, “Do you guys inspect every place in Bliss that sells food?”
I wasn’t sure if it was a trap or a trick, but I replied, “Sure. The state says we have to.”
I think he giggled under his breath, but he managed to ask, “Then why don’t you ever inspect the snack stands at the football stadium? You should see what they do in there; it’s totally gross.”
He slowly walked away without waiting for his answer and as I had suspected this was a trap. I was certain that the small snack stands in the stadium had never had a formal health inspection and I was sure without ever seeing them that they would not pass. Those stands raked in a ton of dough for the football team, and messing with that kind of moneymaker was going to cause me major migraines.
I finished up my cafeteria inspection and as usual the lunch ladies had done an impeccable job. I did have a question for the head lunch lady about finding what looked like mop strings in the holes of their massive dishwasher spray arms. That’s exactly what they turned out to be. In their exuberance for creating the cleanest of conditions the last things to run through their industrial dishwasher at the end of the day were their mop heads. Even fastidious lunch ladies need a little oversight and the mop heads were relegated to overnight stays in a sanitizing solution in the mop sink.
I considered saying nothing of the encounter with the tattletale kid at the school when I returned to my office, but having a penchant for ruffling feathers kept me from keeping my mouth closed on this issue. Health Inspectors spend every day on their jobs telling people to do things they don’t want to do, so how hard could this be?
I took a few deep breaths and thrust myself into the fog of the Chief’s office. He must have been away for most of the day because I could easily make him out behind his desk in the haze. He looked up at me and I said, “Chief, we may have a tiny problem on our hands.”
Rex did not like waves or wave makers. He told me the secret to his survival as a lifetime city employee was to stay low and out of the spotlight and try not to tick too many people off. He closed his eyes, rubbed his temples and said, “What now?”
Oh, man, Rex was already well into his daily sinus headache. I said, “It has been brought to my attention that we don’t do inspections on the snack stands at the high school football field.”
Poor Rex never opened his eyes when he replied, “What fool brought that up?”
I had not really thought much about how to dance around that question so I plowed ahead with, “Does it really matter? You know if somebody figured it out that sooner or later it’s going to come up in some staff meeting and since our new city manager is so big on being proactive maybe we ought to go ahead and run with this thing.” Not bad for getting caught flatfooted.
Rex lit a cigarette and there was still most of one burning in his ashtray. Slowly his eyes rolled open and it occurred to me that he looked like a catfish. He wiped away any hope of a smirk from my little epiphany by saying, “Fine. You deal with it, but I don’t want to take any heat for this and I sure don’t want it to cause me any trouble at the top. You got that?”
I got it, but I was pretty sure that there was no way to keep a lid on the outcome of this mission. I was about to mess with the money that supported football tradition.
I made a call to the high school principal, who put me in touch with the booster club president, who gave me a list of supporting parents and clubs that ran the snack bars at the football stadium. I set up meetings with people who had keys to their perspective stands for Monday figuring that any problems we might have could surely be worked out before Friday night’s game.
Monday morning at stand number one I met Bill Westman. I recognized Bill as the owner of the used car lot on the east side of town. Bill gave me a big handshake and said, “You probably know my boy, John. He plays left tackle.”
I didn’t know anything about the Backwoodsmen’s team, but Bill was pride swollen so I said, “Yeah, he’s having a fine year.”
Bill unlocked the door to the simple wooden hut and I stepped inside. It was just a wooden shell with a wooden counter and a sliding screen to hand food to customers. Oh no. I took out my state supplied standard inspection form and began to write. There was no required hand washing sink, no heat source for the food, no cleanable surfaces and so the list went on and on with check marks in the violations column.
Bill looked worried and I asked, “What do you serve from in here?”
Bill’s face lit up and he said, “My wife makes the best tamales in the state. We always sell everything she can bring. It makes my whole house smell delicious on Fridays.”
Yipes! Not only was this shed nowhere near being up to code, but the food was also coming from an unapproved and uninspected kitchen facility. I had to use a blank sheet to finish writing all the violations.
I went over my comments and concerns with Bill. He was stone quiet and his face grew more ashen by the minute. When I handed him the forms to sign he looked me right in the eye and said, “We can’t do all this crap and still make money for the team. This stuff would cost a fortune. Don’t you understand? We don’t make a profit; we do this for the players.”
I said, “Mr. Westman, I’m only going by the Health Code requirements here. I’m not making any of this stuff up.”
A little vein on Bill’s forehead began to peak out from under his cowboy hat and his voice was very strained when he said, “Don’t you remember what it was like when you played football?”
I should have thought before I answered, “I didn’t play football in high school. I was on the baseball team.”
Bill could not have recoiled in horror any faster if I had just informed him that I had herpes or leprosy. He stormed out of the shack with my carefully penned inspection forms crumpled in his fist and headed for the parking lot. I closed up the snack bar, put the padlock back on the hasp and went on to the next vender.
It was pretty much the same scenario with the remaining boosters. I could have copied Bill’s violations and handed them out to the whole group. Instead of charging off in a full lather like Bill had done, the remaining stand operators were huddled up going over each other’s reports when I headed back to the Health Department.
Rex was waiting outside the back door when I drove into the parking lot. Cigarette butts had been crushed all around his feet. He walked toward me as I got out of my vehicle and pointed across the lot at the city manager’s office.
He greeted me with, “What have you done? My phone has run me out of my office and Dick wants to see us.”
I grabbed my briefcase and said, “Is this about the snack stands?”
I thought Rex was going to go apoplectic on me. He shook with the words, “You better hope you can explain what you did today.”
With that we marched into City Hall and straight to the City Manager’s office. I had never met the man and had only seen him drive by a few times, but today he would be well aware of Ross Ryan and I was about to get a lesson in code interpretation. It would turn out to be one of the most important lessons of my ten-year career of enforcing codes and ordinances. You see no rule in this world is black and white. Special circumstances must be applied to all decisions regarding enforcement of regulations. The goal was not to simply go by the letter of the law, but always remember it’s the intent of the law that matters. Intent would be the key ingredient in all my future decisions enforcing codes.
Mr. Dick Darling never offered me a seat when I entered his office. He was adding ashes to an already full ashtray when we came in and Rex joined him by lighting up. He spoke in measured tones and squinted just a tad when he said to me, “Are you the one causing me all this trouble today?” I nodded yes, but did not speak.
Dick went on, “I don’t want to hear from another council member, school board official, alumni or business owner about those snack bars. Is that clear?”
I nodded my head again and said, “Yes, sir.”
Dick added, “You figure out what we can do to make everybody happy and still meet the intent of the Health Codes. I’m sure there are some exceptions to be made in this case.” I nodded to indicate I agreed and he waved us out of his presence.
Rex had a meeting of the minds back at the Health Department and we came up with some creative ways to get hands washed at the stands, keep the food at the proper temperatures and the good old lunch ladies pitched in by offering the school’s kitchen for all the food preparations and storage of supplies.
I called a very long list of people to explain what was happening and went back to meet with all the snack shop operators with my hat in my hand. We did some simple renovations to make the floors and counter tops cleaning friendly and even Bill Westman shook my hand when it was all over. I don’t care who you think you are; don’t mess with football traditions in north Texas.
CHAPTER 4
YES, YOUR HONOR
Not a lot of training was involved when I began working for Bliss. My friend, Bruce and I made a few sweeps around the city with him pointing out violations and me noting the specifics and exact locations of infractions to be inserted in form letters and mailed to property owners. It was usually better not to leave the car and venture forth onto some owner’s land, so we carried a pair of binoculars to check for expired license plates and registration stickers from the street and to zoom in on debris to be itemized for removal.
A trip to City Hall would be needed to pour over public records in the tax and water department to pin down exactly who owned a parcel that needed to be brought up to code. Once the owner was documented a description of his dead car, detritus and overgrowth would be inserted into the blanks of the corresponding form letter by Pam and mailed off with a week or two given, depending on the size of the project, to right their wrongs. It was very common for property owners to hit the trifecta of code violations and receive a grass and weeds violation, inoperative vehicle and unsightly material notification in the same mailing.
Once a homeowner had been implicated as a violator, he would almost always lapse into a fit of finger pointing at his neighbors’ transgressions. After the first domino had been tipped, a wave of reports would come flooding into my office and the entire neighborhood would be thrown into clean-up mode. I resented all the squealing on thy neighbors in the beginning, but learned to accept it as these people were doing my job—locating problems and bringing them to my attention with little or no effort on my part and then hounding each other until their whole little enclave would be shipshape.
In my rookie year I took great delight in composing letters individually tailored for exceedingly blatant violators. With thesaurus in hand I made every effort to make the recipients feel as though I had taken a personal interest in their case. Even these pointed diatribes would not always move the readers to action, and I would have to fall back on sending the certified generic threat with a citation zinger follow-up. Stubborn offenders would inevitably let the sequence play out to its legal conclusion by disregarding my citation, and a warrant for their arrest would automatically be issued. Being handcuffed on the job and dragged away to jail for having a ten-year-old pile of boards they considered to be a future shed by the side of their house would often move them to set a court date and force a showdown on the issue.
When the violator turned defendant appears in court, the health inspector who issued the citation and the city’s attorney will be there to greet them. A well-prepared health inspector will have color photographs vividly illustrating the unwholesomeness of the blight to refute the glowing description the owner of the mess will inevitably present. The presiding judge will have the file depicting the chain of events that have caused us all to gather in court including copies of letters, dates of phone calls, pictures and any other communications that may have transpired.
A mere month into my tenuous health inspecting career I found myself in court facing a persistent trash accumulating citizen that I just could not sway to clean up his act.
I watched as the judge perused one of my carefully crafted notices while the defendant droned on about the overall worth of a rotting pile of lumber and debris in his back yard. The judge’s look of grave concern slowly faded to one of slight amusement as he realized the defendant was not going to mention the letter’s contents and we were easily going to win this case. The judge looked up at me from the bench, pointed at my letter and mouthed the words, “You wrote this?” Indeed I had and shook my head in agreement.
Immediately following the hefty fine he imposed on my garbage gathering violator the judge called a short recess and hauled me and the city attorney into a small adjoining room for a brief chat. “Do you read the letters these people send,” the judge asked my attorney?
With a scowl on his face the attorney replied, “Well no, your honor.”
The judge thrust my letter into the lawyer’s hands and instructed, “By all means read this one!”
The attorney poured over my handiwork and stifled a grin when he came to the part where I had informed our newly convicted transgressor that, “...his filth and slothfulness would not be tolerated in the city of Bliss!” Evidently my blunt statement had jarred open some legal door for a libel suit, though the facts of the accusations were pretty plain to me. From that time on I was compelled to use only form letters, which were read by the Chief prior to Pam mailing them.
Occasionally I found myself defending some judgment call or decision I had made in the field and long forgotten. I responded to a complaint from a proprietor at a strip center store that sold health food and vitamins to investigate an odor that permeated the shop and made the owner and her employees nauseous. This unpleasant phenomenon occurred when the pet supply and grooming outfit in the next store would wash and dip dogs.
The health food store’s owner was one of those thin, pasty looking gals who greeted me with a venomous sneer as soon as I walked in her door. She immediately began to assail me with a litany of physical woes she’d suffered from inhaling the noxious vapors that emanated from the pet shop. She was one unhappy camper.
It is always wise to seek the other side of any accusation so I went next door to chat with the pet shop folks. The owner was very cooperative, most apologetic and with nothing good to say had no comment regarding the health food lady. He had been lambasted by her daily regarding his release of alleged poisonous gases and was eager to resolve the problem.
I started my investigation by checking the label of pet shampoo/dip they were using. There were no dire health warnings in the manufacturer’s fine print and we carried on with the probe.
Next I interviewed the workers who spent hours each day up to their elbows in the stuff and not one had suffered any ill effects. None of the owners had submitted any complaints or reservations after reclaiming their animals, which had been saturated with the offending substance and no customers who had entered the shop during the dog-dippings reported any problems. Last but not least, not one single pet whined or seemed to act adversely to being immersed in the maligned mixture and that’s how I worded my report.
I did discover that the owner of the strip mall had saved a few coins by not extending the dividing wall between the feuding shops all the way to the roof when he carved up the space to make two stores. The common air space above the drop ceilings allowed the rich aroma of pet shampoo to waft next door unimpeded. Being a drama queen prevented the health food storeowner from caring about this revelation. She looked me square in the eye and said, “By god, those people are slowly poisoning me and they’re going to pay! You obviously don’t know what you’re doing. Get out of my store and don’t come back.”
I did go back to perform her routine health inspections, but she always hid in the back while I was there and had an assistant sign my report. There was an ugly incident regarding some bootleg goat’s milk being sold from her place, but I never proved anything and hoped that my dealings with the wan one had ended.
It was four full years later that I was called to give a deposition in a room with no less than six attorneys regarding my findings at the pet shop. The case had finally come to court. I regretted my crack about the pets not complaining, but stuck to my guns regarding the lack of toxicity in the shampoo’s vapor. Our little round table discourse was not friendly and I was thankful for the records I’d filed.
Bulging Eyes attorney asked me, “Mr. Ryan, what qualifications and training do you have that make you an authority in this matter?”
I replied, “I am a licensed Health Inspector with the State of Texas.”
Sharp Suit attorney counters with, “Do you have any formal instruction in the detection of dangerous odors and gasses.”
I shot back, “Nope!”
Bulging Eyes smelled blood and hit me with, “What makes you think that you are capable of deciding that the dog shampoo in question was not toxic?”
I checked my notes and flippantly retorted, “I could not find any written indication that the vapors from that product could cause inhalers to suffer and other than the complainant, I could not find a single beast or human who had a problem with the stuff. I fell back on a big dose of common sense to draw my conclusions.”
With that said the city’s newly hired female attorney, Sheila Swift, called for a short recess and performed the equivalent of pulling me out of that meeting room by the ear. In her adjacent office Sheila scolded me, “You will not add anything to your answers. Make your replies simple, direct and void of personal feelings. You got that?” Boy, did I ever.
We went back into the meeting and the rest of the show consisted mostly of yes and no answers on my part. Even the health shop lady did not get a rise out of me when she said, “You didn’t do your job correctly back then and you’re still incompetent.” I asked the stenographer if she got that accusation and Sheila gave me the hairy-eyeball, but we managed to finish up the proceedings without any more private tutoring.
There was no mistaking the fact the health food lady still hated me and I was never called to court. Her attorneys must not have viewed my testimony as a plus for her case. A friend who served on the ensuing trial’s jury called to tell me the judge ruled against the health food lady. I could muster no surprise or compassion for the verdict.
CHAPTER 5
HOW DID I END UP HERE?
It’s one thing to move out of state to be a ski bum for four years after leaving home for four years to attend college, but moving back in with your parents with eight years of living single under your belt is not a recipe for a harmonious domestic environment. It’s not that Jack and Donna Ryan were ready to kick their oldest son out on the streets, but having him reoccupy his old room was a situation they had not anticipated.
To complicate matters further one of my older sisters had returned to the nest with a husband and two preschool age children while they constructed a cabin in the country. My poor father who had seen all but one of his kids grow up and move out of his house was now faced with them returning and dragging along offspring of their own. I had to get out of there fast.
In my last year of college I lived in an attic room with a friend from high school days. His father had the foresight to help him into a house where he could rent rooms to his buddies while we all attended the same north Texas university. Bart Pollex still lived in that house and was still renting rooms. It was not a massive stride forward, but I was one step ahead of my boyhood bedroom when I moved back into Bart’s place.
An instant added bonus to living north of Bliss meant the daily commute to work was suddenly much easier. It would be many years in the future before traffic between Demon and Bliss would attain the same ugly congestion as the clogged driving arteries of the immediate Dallas area.
An additional boon was the availability of beer. Texas is a funny place when it comes to drinking regulations and the invention of ‘dry-counties’, ‘dry-cities’ or even ‘dry-areas’ within a city is a Bible belt phenomenon that never made any sense to me. Bliss was dry. You could not purchase any form of consumable alcohol in Bliss, but the adjacent town of Hollyhock Hill would be glad to sell you all you wanted and reap the rewards of tax dollars and profits in the process.
There were no beer stores between Bliss and my folk’s house in a suburb west of Dallas. When I was growing up people had to drive into Dallas to buy spirits or to consume them in a bar, club or restaurant. It was called “crossing the river” because the Trinity River was the dividing line between our dry suburb and wet Dallas.
Forbidding people from buying alcohol in my hometown did nothing to deter anyone that wanted to drink from doing so; it just meant they would have to drive back across the Trinity liquored-up to get home instead of drinking at home where it was safer. Many beer runs or nights on the town ended with a crash on the long bridges spanning the Trinity River or on the well-worn back roads that lead to legal liquor stores.
North of Bliss I could buy beer on my way home, which was often comforting after being yelled at all day by taxpayers who felt they were entitled to verbally abuse a public official. Demon was damp, which meant they could sell beer and wine, but not hard liquor. This concession to the college age drinkers in town had come after many failed campaigns to get the good churchgoers to legalize adult beverages. People still had to drive to buy liquor or drink it in a watering hole or restaurant, which put them back on the roads happily impaired. It’s all very confusing and will always remain that way.
On my meager salary I could live comfortably at Bart’s. There was a second renter in one of the two downstairs rooms to help cover the cost of shared utilities. Having three bachelors in the place did not always make for the tidiest of environments, but there was always someone to grouse with about work, watch sporting events or join for carousing about town.
After my summer stint the salary increase that came with obtaining full-time health inspector status allowed me to move into a place all my own. I lucked into a modern duplex that had been vacant for months. I could not have afforded all the rent myself, but the owner was desperate for some income so she let me have it for half the normal rent with the proviso that I would allow a roommate to move in if she could find one that we both deemed acceptable.
I had barely settled into my fortunate situation when I discovered the place was haunted. I kept a small nightlight burning in the living area of my digs and awoke in the middle of the night to see shadowy figures walking around my dining room table. I immediately sought the protection afforded by hiding under my covers and didn’t peak out again until my involuntary shivering abated. By that time the shadows were gone.
I got out of bed and turned on every light in every room of the house and looked into every corner and closet for a logical explanation for my sighting. I found nothing. I checked to make sure all the drapes were tightly closed and no light could get through from the outside to dance around the room and cause apparitions. The place was sealed up tight. There were no drafts and no explanations for what I’d seen.
A few weeks went by and I never breathed a word about my ghosts to a soul for fear of being branded a lunatic. I didn’t really believe in ghosts and had mostly forgotten about them when I awoke in the wee hours one morning to find the shadows cavorting around my living room once again.
This time I bolted out of bed and switched on the lights. There was nothing there. I went through the total house search routine again and came up clueless.
My silent ghosts returned on many nights after those first sightings. They never made noise, never moved anything and never bothered me. I can’t explain why I would wake to see them shuffling around my living room when they were so darn considerate and quiet. I found the courage to call out to them on a few occasions, but they never acted like they heard me and kept milling around unless I got out of bed, which caused them to vanish.
One night my girlfriend stayed over and I was awakened by tiny, rapid kicks, like a nervous rabbit might make, to my right leg. She was wide-eyed and pointing into the living room when I rolled over to see why I’d been rudely aroused. I looked through the doorway to discover that she had espied my specters.
I lay back down and calmly said, “Denise, it’s only the ghosts; go back to sleep.”
Denise whispered, “What do you mean, it’s only the ghosts?”
I wearily answered, “They’re here all the time. Trust me they won’t bother you; now please go back to sleep.”
Denise didn’t sleep much the rest of that night, but the ghosts didn’t bother her either. I was happy that someone else had seen them and we would both encounter their wispy forms on future nights.
My original six-month lease came and went with no roommate. I agreed to go on a month-by-month extension and four more months slipped by. Then my landlady announced that she’d given up and sold the place. The new owners planned to live there and I would have to vacate in thirty days. I wondered if she knew about the ghosts, but I didn’t want to ask for fear of sounding unbalanced.
I found a slightly run-down house in one of the older neighborhoods of Bliss and moved. My ancient landlord was an old school bubba and after we agreed on a deposit and a monthly rent amount, the deal was sealed with a handshake. The house was small and harbored a lively bug population, but I had it all to myself and it was only blocks away from the Health Department in Old Town.
Six weeks rolled by and there was a knock at my door around dinnertime one evening. It was my aged landlord with sad news to go with the big sad eyes with which he greeted me. He had come to tell me that his children were taking control of his assets and they had sold my house in the process. I would have to vacate the place in two weeks.
I was in no way prepared for this revelation and asked, “Can’t I talk with the new owners? Maybe they’ll rent the place to me?”
My subdued landlord shook his head and replied, “No, the new owners plan to move into this house. They are a Mexican family with six kids and I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to try and make room for you.” He shuffled off to his truck and slowly drove away.
I was more than a tad panicky. With no written lease I knew I had to be packed up and gone in fourteen days. There had not been many places available in my price range when I found this one, and Bart was renting my room to a new attic dweller in Demon.
I went into urgent search mode for a new abode. In all of Bliss I could not find a single listing in the paper that I could afford. I had resorted to driving up and down residential streets in my quest of a place to live between checking on complaints at work. That’s when I stumbled on a tiny garage apartment a block from my current house and even closer to my office.
I was cruising slowly down a very small lane looking for the address of a violator who was alleged to have been harboring four inoperative vehicles on his property. I located the small wrecking yard in the middle of the block and began to write down the dead vehicles’ descriptions and license numbers.
I got the goods on my outlaw and drove on down the street. There at a ninety-degree bend in the end of the road were two women working from a small truck on a garage apartment barely visible from the street. I pulled into their drive and walked back to the open door of the tiny structure.
The ladies who greeted me inside were domestic partners that owned several rental units scattered around Bliss. One was wearing paint-splattered overalls and the other had on a business dress and heels. They were arguing about the color being applied to the kitchen cabinets but stopped in mid fight to see what I wanted.
I said, “Good day, ladies. Is this place for rent?”
Heels answered, “It will be in a few days if we can get it fixed up by then.”
Overalls chimed in, “Don’t worry, I’ll be done when your ad comes out in the paper, that is if you’ll leave me alone long enough to finish my work.”
Heels turned on Overalls and said, “You’re dragging this project out too long. I’ve already paid for that ad and I need to be able to show this place to prospective renters.”
Overalls lifted the brush in her hand and pointed it toward Heels and said, “I told you not to worry, now leave me alone and let me finish the job.”
I cut in on their argument, “Excuse me, but I may be able to solve your problem.”
They both stopped bickering and looked at me again. Heels asked, “Just how is that?”
I said, “I need a place to live in seven days. I’m currently living just around the corner from here, which would make the move easy and I work for the city at the Health Department two blocks away.”
Overalls asked, “Why the sudden urge to move?”
I admitted, “I’ve had my place sold out from under me and I only had a verbal lease.”
Both ladies laughed at my confession. Heels stopped first and said, “Well, you’ll have to sign a real lease if you rent from us, and we’ll need to check your background information.”
I responded, “I have no problem with that.”
Overalls wrinkled her brow and asked, “Don’t you even want to look around the place?”
I laughed and shot back, “Unless some of it is underground I think I can see it all from here.” That was a fact. The little two-car garage was one open room with a small kitchen area in the far corner. A tiny bedroom and bathroom had been added on the back. My king-size bed would fill the bedroom with just enough space to open the drawers of my dresser if I was not standing in front of them when they were pulled out.
Both ladies walked over and shook my hand. Heels said, “I’m Ruth and this is my partner, Beth. Welcome aboard, that is assuming you checkout OK.”
I said, “Ladies, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ll be a good renter.”
Beth warned me that, “I won’t be done here for a couple more days, but you can move in after that.”
Ruth knitted her brow, gave me the once-over and asked, “You do realize where you are don’t you? I mean we always have a devil of a time renting this place because of the street’s name.”
I shook my head and confessed that, “Yes, I’m painfully aware of the street’s name and feel as though I’m about to pay some dues for all the times I’ve made fun of it. I would never have dreamed that I would have this street name for an address, but I’m desperate and if the price is right I can handle the teasing.”
Ruth shot me a rent amount that was almost half of what I’d been paying and I agreed to a six-month lease. That is how I ended up living on Fagg Drive and renting a miniscule garage apartment from two of the nicest lesbian landlords anyone could ever hope to do business with in this life. I stayed at the Fagg Drive address for five years. It was just too cheap to give up and I loathe moving.
Living on Fagg Drive compelled me to do some research into how the tiny street got its name. One of the founding fathers and a former mayor of Bliss had been born a Fagg long before the family name carried today’s stigma. There were very few people outside of Bliss and not many Bliss residents who knew the history behind the street’s moniker.
Divulging that I lived on Fagg Drive would always draw laughter or scorn, but never a neutral response. The amount of times I had to repeat my address when I moved to this new location was astounding and time consuming when I had to weather the inevitable over-reactions. There were forms to fill out for the bank, utilities, work and credit card companies. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that all my friends and family members were going to let an opportunity to lampoon me for living on Fagg slip by unheralded, and they didn’t disappoint.
I resorted to spelling Fagg instead of pronouncing it when giving a verbal account of my new location. My favorite conversation regarding my unusual address occurred while renewing my Playboy subscription. I called the magazine’s delivery department to report my change of locale and was put on the line with one of those gals that cooed in a smooth voice that sounded as if she had just swallowed a quart of cocoa butter. Her phone nom de plume was Heather.
Heather breathlessly answered my call, “Hello, this is Playboy. What can I do to make your day better?”
She sounded so intimate and I answered, “I moved and need to change the address on my magazine subscription.”
Heather oozed back, “Well we wouldn’t want you to miss a single issue, now would we?”
I feigned concern saying, “Heavens no! I’d get so far behind on my reading. Some days those articles are all that keep me going.”
Laughingly Heather asked, “What is the name and new address for your subscription?”
I gave her my name and the street number and then spelled out, “F-A-G-G Drive.”