Vonnegut

When he died a few years ago, I felt pretty bad. Vonnegut had been one of my first loves. Slaughterhouse 5 was one of the few books I read in High School. Mr. Ellis, he named himself "El"Ellis, assigned in in A.P. English my senior year--and I actually read it. I read that, Light in August and Pride and Prejudice. Can you imagine. In any case, Vonnegut stole my heart. It was Vonnegut and the poetry of John Donne. I fell so deeply in love with Slaughterhouse 5 that I said "so it goes" to anyone who would listen for a year. This year, when I was thinking about what to assign for summer reading, I went rebel and assigned Welcome to the Monkey House. The other teachers were assigning Confederacy of Dunces, as bad a book as any fat fuck from LA ever wrote--I am glad he killed himself. Anyway, Vonnegut. I read the book over the summer, finished it today as we're going back to school next week--it was off the charts amazing. I've read "Harrison Bergeron" a dozen times, but the rest of the book is incredible. "Adam" is one of the most beautiful, touching stories I've ever read. I cried for 30 minutes after I read it. How could anyone, let alone a goyum, write a story about Jews and the Holocaust that beautiful? Vonnegut's sense of the human soul is unmatched. He must have been a wonderful man. As I child, I liked Bradbury. As I grew up, and read everything he wrote, I discovered he hated women. He does, you know. Every other story involves some fat, ugly whore who destroys a man's life. Even Bukowski liked women more that Bradbury. But not Vonnegut baby. I can't find who he hated, who he did wrong. Thank you Mr. Vonnegut. Thanks for giving me something to talk to my students about for the coming year. Thanks for caring so much about people. Thanks for not letting war turn you against mankind. I wish you had lived forever, instead of Bradbury. So it goes.

The Joys of Tannerite

Rexburg, ID is an unlikely heaven of vacation fun. The town itself is a bit tame for my taste--no bars, one liquor store (a broom closet in a gas station) and 40,000 Mormons, a number which has undoubtedly gone up since we left last week. There are no good restaurants, though we did find a good sandwich place in Rigby, down the road a spell. Rigby also has a larger (think walk-in closet) liquor store called "White Lightenin". In short there is almost no reason to go to Rexburg, which sits on the ass side of the Grand Tetons, unless you're a Mormon farmer or student at BYU Idaho. So how is it that the Coleman's ended up there again this year for a week's vacation? The Peters--Kate Peters, who I work with, and her husband John along with their kids, Andrew and Charlie. Kate's dad is part owner of a ranch complex outside of town. The ranch is on the most unusable, by conventional Mormon farmer standards, land in Idaho. Henry's Fork of the Snake River winds through the 400 acres of land that Kate's dad and two others own. It is full of swamp, woods, moose, mosquito's, trout, eagles, goats, shell casings, tire treads and mud. In other words, heaven. Heaven if you like riding OHV's at full throttle after drinking half a bottle of Seagrams 7 (don't ask, it was cheap at the broom closet), and it turns out that I do like doing that.

We (my boys, wife and the Peterses) spent week doing nothing but drinking, shooting, riding and repeating. Steve, Kate's dad, has supplied the property with every toy a person could want from the aforementioned OHV's to a two-wheel drive motorcycle (Rokon), a six wheeled amphibious craft, a sand rail, and the only fan boat in Idaho. All of these, not to mention the guns and ammo, were made available to us in addition to having John, the ranch manager, at our disposal. We went on the fan boat, to the St. Anthony sand dunes for a ride on the rail, and took 40 or 50 rides through the miles of trails on the property. The boys, 13 and 10, shot guns, drove cars, fished and wrestled--often all at the same time. My wife did all of the above as well, including the wrestling.

But that's not all, which brings me to the title of today's post. Tannerite is an explosive developed by some guy named Tanner. Anyone can buy it by the case and have it shipped to his home. It arrives as two compounds which then need to be mixed and placed in the explosive target container. That's right, I said target. Tannerite can only be ignited by being shot with a high-powered riffle. You can drop it, kick it and even shoot it with a .22 or pistol and nothing will happen; however, if you were to shoot it with a .25-06 riffle round (which I can't recommend enough) it makes as big a boom as should be legal in civilian life. Our target of choice this year was an old clothes dryer that had been replaced. The irony here is thick, given that the Colemans were out of our house for 6 weeks last year due to a dryer fire--this was payback. Julie, John and I took turns taking three round cracks at hitting the Tannerite in the middle of the dryer. John, the ranch manager, was our spotter. John Peters hit the target with a glancing blow, but it didn't blow, then we opened the drier door and I got lucky on my second shot. The dryer went up in the air, all four sides of it blown off. When it landed, the inside drum was the only thing left intact. Take that Whirlpool. That's for smoking every belonging I have. That's for sticking me and my family in a Residence Inn for a month and a half. That's for the lingering smoke smell on my entire library of books. I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have brought a piece of the dead dryer back to show the new dryer that I fucking mean business. Tannerite is therapeutic.

Thanks Kate and John, Steve, Andrew Charlie, Julie, Riley, Spencer, and the Mormon god for making Rexburg. It makes life worth living.