art party

saturday night we had an art party at our house, our guests were two beautiful women from city of angels, heidi and ilene, staying at "the inn of the five graces" and, our chef was the great johnny vee with his helper katie. johny vee looks like a big blond viking and has the personality of an impressario. vee has a fantastic new cook book out called "cooking with johnny vee," resplendent with his smiling face on the cover. the theme of the evening was cooking dinner with two new mexcio artists, that's me and julie. i wore my black high top converse and ilene showed up in white ones so our feet were getting along famously. hieidi and ilene love to eat and explore restuarants both here and in LA, ironically they live in the farmers markets area of LA where juile and i just stayed for our infamous downtown art show. here's our menu, homemade corn tortillas, chile con queso, chunky guacamole, grilled salsa roja, pico de gallo, mexican lime chicken scallopine, calabacitas, and chocolate peanut tacos for the finale. we started off with wine from new mexico and johnny regaled us with stories of our local chiles and then we all set to cooking dinner together. i was on the hand made tortillas, corn masas mixed with mexican oregano, water and mixed up like a thick mud, rolled into a large ball and then put in a press and flattened into a thick tortilla and then roasted over a hot plate on the flame. i also sauteed the chicken in a pan with oil, first dipped in flour and then egg batter, and then put back in the pan in a lime juice and vermouth sauce. the girls made the rest and and then we had dinner and more wine and told stories of La and new mexico until the desert taxi came and got the guests. the food was great, the new friends had fun,the art sparkeled on the walls and the evening was altogether wonderful fun. just another santa fe tale.

first day of the season

it's an old ritual that i've repeated literally hundreds of times. loading up the truck with tools and gear and getting ready for the work to come. i have to sort out what i've got and make a mental list of what i need to get, sheetrock blades, drill bits, tips for the screwguns, extension cords, throw out stuff, locate my tools bags, knock off the dust, retape the hammers, some things are missing in action, drills bit are broken, chisels need the edge put back on them, my leather saw case is awol, but most of the stuff is there. it's hard to believe but i've done this for almost thirty years, that's a long time even for a passion and i am marveling today that i can still get up for the work, but it's been the constant in my life for a long time. i know i can't do it as well as i used to or as fast and quick, but i can still work hard and i guess when you scratch me, i bleed contstruction red. jgk

stones for wendy

it was late afternoon, twenty miles off the coast of maine, I was on the far windward side of peaks island, the sea was the deepest blue. the atlantic ocean lay in front of me, and i could see one solitary island off the horizon and then nothing but that blue sea meeting sky and clouds. i was taking stones off the beach to rebuild the foundation of a farm house i was working on and each stone had to be hand picked and sized to meet the criteria my patron wendy had determined. wendy stood on the road above me, a short stout woman balancing on her cane and as i held a stone over my head, she would remark "that's a good one," and i'd throw it into the growing good pile, or " not that one", and back into the sea. the stones had to be longish, somewhat flat and well formed at the ends so they could be not only lay flat but butted up to each other in a friendly and firm fashion. technically we weren't supposed to be taking stones from the beach but wendy was a native islander and it had been a common traditon and long practice to build walls and foundations out of stone. knowing this i was making some haste, yet i was enjoying the whole process greatly, reveling in the selection process and the variety of seemingly endless colored stones, tumbled to perfection by the sea. i stood there letting the sun warm my face, maine was cool even in the summer, the sea breezes blowing away flys and knats, making the island a paradise. i spent the summer in the middle of the island, out in a forest of tall pines in a large clearing, tearing apart shipping pallets, giant timbers nailed together with spikes that i pulled out using a hammer and bar until i'd freed them from each other and they lay there in the clearing, long black thick chunks of wood i would later manufacture into new beams and support members for the house. i could take a steel spike out at the rate of one an hour or so, very rough sledding. the spikes were roughly 3/4 of an inch wide and driven a good six inches or more into the beam, and all i had was a hammer and a steel bar, the trick was to get another piece of wood next to the spike as leverage and then pry and bend using all my strength, pulling the spike out bit by bit, until it came loose, the forest surrounding me, the day cool and wonderful, seemed to cheer me on. when i finally had all the wood i wanted, i used a old oil drum and rolled the beams onto the back of my little yellow toyota truck and lashed them on and drove them back to the house, down twisting dirt roads and quaint farm houses through the middle of the island until i arrived in the back yard with my catch.jgk

great white hunter

I was up on kansas street, portreo hill district, the sunniest side of san francisco, although the dense fog hung over the street until noon and then the winds came, blowing sheet rock and plywood off the house i was building. i had a debris chute build out over the side walk to a dumpster and mark and i were shoveling bricks and old lumber down the chute when the winds come up in a gust and blew the chute and mark who was standing on it into a telephone pole and scared the hell out of me, thinking mark was going to get fried but he jumped out and pissed m e off running to his truck to see if it was ok, and left me holding onto the end of the chute. we got everything righted after some pulling and moaning. i used to eat lunch down the street at a place called the jackdaw which had a little outside attriam, lattice with plants growing overhead, it was warm there and no infernal wind. birds lived in the attriam and i noticed there were a lot of parrots and exotic looking types and they would drop down out of the thicket and peck away at bread crumbs on the tables when people left. this one forelorn looking parrot guy would end up on the table next to me and i eventually suckered him over my table with some choice crumbs and ate my lunch while he ate his, always with one eye on me. we had lunch together for a couple of weeks when it came to me, how was the little guy going to make it through the winter? he'd gotten out of his warm nice cage and wasn't going back. i took my laborer Angel with me one day, armed with a paper bag and my flat tin construction box, just the right size i'd determined to cover the bread basket. here was the plan, i'd coax my feathered friend down with the usual crumb entre, angel remains still, birdy climbs in the basket, eye on me, i give the nod to angel and he slides, this is important, slides the flat can over the basket trapping birdy boy. we praticed this a number of times on the job site in preparation, me holding my hand out making angel slide the metal box over and over until he got it right. the biggest problem wasn't going to be the bird but angel, he just didn't believe in it, i know he thought i was crazy, but i was going to catch my man. we went to lunch, had some pasta, i bought angel a beer, relax i said it's going to work fine, and sure enough birdy boy saw the proverbial bread basket, lighted on the table, crawled in and ate his crumbs, a quick nod from me to angel, the shiny metal can slid into place and i had my capture, quickly transfering mr. bird into the paper bag which i punched some holes in with my fork and then i sat back and drank my beer. this all created a big fuss in the cafe, the waiters went and got the owner who came back with a long line of waiters and demanded i let the bird go, citing animal cruelty, freedom for the bird, etc, etc. i said the bird was mine and i'd caught him, he was going to a pet store and if anyone touched my paper bag there would be serious, i mean serious consequences. i loaded my bird up in my jeep and we sped into the city where i found an exotic bird emporium and when i showed the owner my catch he said, yep and austrailian so and so, never make it though the winter and i'll find it a good home. the jackdaw never would let me eat lunch again. right to refuse service, to a ruffian trapper the likes of me. jgk

the holy wars part two

they weren't all bad. there were plenty of good times with the desperados. a lot of easy going back and forth fun on the job site, it's just that the contradictions in their characters was so great, but that was part of the interesting and compelling side of the whole business. a good number of these guys were smart and talented and some were brave, as well as greedy, and crooked. not out and out thieves, just changing the contract a little here and there so the client would never know, overcharging whenever possible. they had a certain cruel, ignorant streak to them. how can ignorance and intelligence and bravery live side by side? they can and do. once in SF while working on a three story victorian i slipped off the roof and got tangled up in the gutter and Dax shimmied down and held on to the edge of the roof and grapped me and said "let go" and i did and for a moment I was in his hands totally, swinging over the cement side walk and then he literally pressed me over his head and back onto the roof. "Don't do that again," he said. we built that whole victorian house together, and he made all the hard decisions, and I had to respect that. you could find up a bond pretty quickly with someone after they saved your life, but you could never forget you were working with a caged tiger. maybe it was just his nature, and i really believed Dax wanted to be good but it was not his nature, he'd told so many lies he didn't know what to believe anymore. anyway the lies were a whole lot safer, it's what he knew. Dax was one of those guys who had his bible in his truck and would spend time reading it while i was working, he worked at that bible pretty hard and i think it was probably the only thing that kept him from being worse than he was. one of those contradictions again, he'd be reading his bible, i'd get in the truck, and he'd say something about the nxxxxxs all being ugly and then the next morning our black cement finisher big earl and he would be in Dax's truck talking up a storm like old friends. Dax loved big earl, they'd worked together for twenty years by then if not longer. earl told me in the old days Dax used to come to work everyday with a case of brown derby beer under his arm and work and drink all day, Dax calling it his fuel. Dax was also cheap, he wore those wino sneakers to work until his toes stuck out and he had the same worn red flannel shirt to match his hair for years, and he never bought anyone donuts or coffee, a coke, nada. big earl used to say he was having an elvis attack and Dax would let him slip out and get himself a dozen jelly donuts while waiting for the next cement truck. " eyes goota elvis attaaack coming on." big earl was witty,lazy, smart and a genious with the finishing trowel, he could make cement look like glass. Dax had a little book where he wrote down everyone's hours and time, if you were fifteen minutes late he docked you half an hour, if you worked a half an hour over it was on you. this was a fairly common practice in consruction. it was called the cost of doing business, Dax's way or the highway. no complaining, period about anything. even i wasn' immmune to his method. i had to watch my hours like a hawk, a couple of hours here and there from ten guys each day is twenty hours say at 20 dollars per hour thats 200 hundred dollars a day times four, is eight hundred a week savings, compound that over a year that's ten grand or so, and on and on. once we were building a coffee and tea house in SF and Dax came upon the idea to pay everyone twice a month to keep the payroll down he said, payment schedule and all. he missed a week to me and owed me 900 hundred dollars and swore he'd paid me, but the little black book didn't lie, there it was, but he drove off and thought i'd forget about it. come friday i drove to his house in the country, he had this big stucco wall around his place, and i breached it with an extension ladder and saw him in his kitchen having diner so i put the ladder right up to the window and climbed in just as he was shoving some mashed potatoes in his mouth and announced "you owe me 900 hundred dollars," and he says" you're breaking and entering, i'm going to have to shoot you and went off to a room and came back out with a cowboy hat on and a holster and a pistol and took it out and pointed it at me. He looked ridiculous standing there in his socks with the inevitable hole in his toe and i started to laugh, "ok " i said, " what are you going to do shoot me in front of your family? go write me a check you idiot," and he did and then just as i was climbing out the window, he says, " see you on monday, don't be late." contradictions, you learn to live with them. jgk.

garcia's

garcia's was a faux mexican restuarant down at four corner's in San Ramon where all the construction workers in the area used to go after work on fridays to eat from the free mexican buffett and drink. the action would get very animated as the night progressed and the drinking could get serious. lots of shouting, loud voices, postering, an air of unrepressed aggression would prevade. these guys would all be in their construction clothes and dirty but i would have changed and worn something like black jeans, boots, silk shirt. one hot summer night, I think something always happens on that turn of a phrase, a hot summer night, i was drinking to much with the koan brothers, matty and luke. matty had a degree in english and always had a novel in his back pocket, was an old eagle scout and a pretty damn good carpenter, with a hump back from some childhood disease that had curved him over just enough to make him pissed off at the rest of the world. he was clearly the leader and elder of the two brothers, luke the younger we called him, a big rawboned guy with tattoes and a false tooth that he took out and laid on the table when he was talking. he had the habit of waving the tooth around when he got mad shifting it from hand to hand, he was a big blond good looking kid, and mean as his brother. you can't blame drinking on anyone's bad behavior, these guys were mean before they started, nastiness just boiling just beneath the surface, they didn't need a reason to be mad, anything would do. we used to call them the riverboat gamblers, they had an old long buick lowrider they'd drive up to the job site and then unload their tools from the cavernous trunk, once i looked in there when they were getting their gear and saw a shotgun under a tarp. luke was also the boyfriend of Dax's daughter, so that's how we all knew each other. this particular night we were well into six beers and some whiskey chasers, when matty said they were part indian, maybe as an excuse why they weren't holding their liquor well or just pure postering, and luke regaling us about him being some great hunter up in oregon i think or northern california and how he lay in a blind all day waiting for just one shot, " just one shot that's all i need," and then the conversation switched over to god and religion and ole luke asks me, "do you believe in god?" "Sure" i said. he leans over with an absolutely gleefull look in his eyes, and lays right into it, the floodgates open, evil pouring out all over the drinks and the stale chips and watery salsa, right at me, proclaiming , " there is no god,i don't" and showing me a knife in his boot, " i can do anything i want and party as hard as i want like there's no tommorrow," and then matty seconds that and they were clearly trying to mess with me, intimidate, scare me for no other reason than pure meaness. It was the bitch theory, through and through. luke maybe pissed off because i was his foreman and a better carpenter than he was , petty rivalry theory, and matty pissed off about his hump which really didn't look all that bad, more like he had rounded shoulders. we'd all had to much to drink by then and mistakenly i went out in the parking lot with them. Matty asked me if i want to wrestle and said he'd been a high school wrestling champ, threatening me, maybe i'd back off and evil would win out tonite, but i said sure and took off my silk shirt and we went at it right there in the lot and after some fast action i got him upside down and pinned his head against the asphalt and he gave up. luke was snorting and spitting, couldn't wait to get at me, said he was a champion football player, and to avenge his brothers honor, how about getting down in a three point stance and going at it, a last man standing type deal and i said sure. I got down in my stance and i could see he was going to try run right threw me, and then i saw the knife sticking out of his boot, so when matty yelled "Go", i side steeped and luke went head first into a car door and the hard collision didn't knock him out, he just laid there for awhile, and then they wanted to fight but i said "i'm leaving," and got in my truck to go and I saw lukes tooth on the asphalt laying there white under the street lights and said, " hey Luke, you lost your tooth'" and drove off. another pet theory of mine in those days was the desperadoes who've lost faith in humanity, in life, seek out those who haven't and try to screw with them, to make themselves feel better, twisted I know, but I've seen it so many times out there. jgk

lets' get it over with

let's just get it over with, i'll line up all the fighting, wrestling stories i can remember. ok . there was my final row with my old partner Dax. let's get another thing straight, just because you were partners with someone doesn't mean you liked them or they liked you. you had something in common, that much is given otherwise you wouldn't be working together, but friendship that was a different story. Dax and i both wanted to make money, as fast and quickly as possible. Dax, he was a piece of work as my friend C used to say. to start off his appearance was rough on the visage. lots of missing teeth, bad tattoes of dancing girls on his arms, now faded by the sun and a scraggy red beard, a constant cigarette hanging on his lip, balancing there like a circus acrobat, and a glass eye that ozzed some white substance. big earl used to say, " that damn eye, he going to lose it, going to fall out i know it, right into the cee ment," but it never did, it stayed firmly in place and earl used to get all mixed up, swearing that Dax was looking at him out of the glass one. " I sure can't tell sometimes which eye is the dead one, i truly cain't, i swear he can see out of it, he's looking at me out of the glass one, see right through me. damn". with that one eye Dax could see a wall across the room one quarter of an inch out of plumb, he was that good. when we got to the end of the road Dax had by now tried to sue me when my father died thinking i'd inherited some money, had left me holding the bag on a contract for a job of ours that went bad, him not signing his signature on the contract, very clever, lieing about having a contractors liscense to god knows who and the whole world, lied again about having insurance, a bond, and being an engineer and my insurance company having to pay for damages on the job and among other things, lied about visiting his son in San Quenton, never having gone, and getting busted by his current wife, our secretary, with his ex wife crawling out from under his desk, whilest working on a bid and eventually losing his house on some mysterious deal to build a casino in Vegas on sacred indian burial ground which i forewarned him not to do, but him saying " if i don't do it someone else will". a piece of work. also a very smart guy, really, and intelligent, witty, even brilliant out in the field, vast experience, a better craftsman with one eye than most with two. dax was also a great talker, our clients liked and trusted him. he had a favorite saying that i came to love and mistrust, "well pisano" shortend to just "pie san." still all and all he had a sort of low down, feral charsima to him, and he really wore his amorality well, never deviating from it. he used to say i was weak, that i didn't have the killer instinct in me. his wife said he was jealous of me, because i was a believer in people and Dax had long since given up on the world and himself. "we all use each other," he used to say, condoning his own usary. we did a lot of jobs together, rode hard and traveled fast. Daxie boy was an old street fighter from Richmond a nice town he said, before the blacks moved in. I'd heard his stories about the beatings he'd laid on half the town, and how he'd never lost a fight and could have turned pro and sometimes after work we'd spar around, friendly on my part and he used to tell me i was slow. slow meaning I was weak. You've probably guessed Dax was a desperado, he loved money more than anything. when he got rich he was going to do this and that, cars, bikes, horses, planes. i heard he'd lost more than one fortune. he drank and when he did he was a mean ass drunk. we'd been through the mill by the end, his son, fresh out of San Quentin for robbery, and younger than than me was going to be his new partner and i was getting out. Dax was having a party and asked me to stop by and now i can see it was plainly a set up. when i got there he had a heat on, he couldn't hold his liquor anymore and after i had a few beers in the kitchen, and said "goodbye Daxie and good luck" and started to leave, he stepped in front of me and said, "well ya cain't leave until we settle it." "settle what ?" I asked. "you and me," right out of a western. "we got to settle it finally, who's the best," him talking loud drawing a crowd. " forget it," i said. "No." he says "right now", getting into a formal karate position. and that cold dead glass eye staring at me, i knew i wasn't getting out without something going down. right then i remembered something he'd said to me a hundred times before, that never in a fight had anyone ever touched his face, so i just leaned over and slugged him on the jaw and he went down in a heap and then struggled to his feet. " damn you i wasn't ready," and i laughed and said "this business is over" and walked out and him yelling after me, "i'm going to kill you, i'll kill you." right after that he lost his home I heard to the Mafia, but i don't know, Dax always wanted to play with the big boys. jgk