White Shag Carpets

White Shag Carpets

By Marc Alley

Christmas 2007 (i.e. January ’08)

The good memories of that room, the majesty and pure unadulterated “let the good times roll” (thank you Ric Ocasek of The Cars) feeling . . . a je ne sais quois of childhood bliss.  It was truly a room from a not-so-long-forgotten decade, the wild sixties, and who knows how it survived to 1976, in prim-and-proper Salt Lake City on the East Bench.  It was a psychedelic trip just looking at the wallpaper, a combination of pinks, oranges, golds, browns . . . If you stared long enough at the swirls, dots and wavy lines it was like you could visualize a Buddha or interpret some secret code. It was kind of like staring at the album cover of Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  and trying to figure out the meaning of all the weird little things contained therein.  The sense of funkadelic didn’t stop there, as it was outfitted with the deepest ivory-white shag carpet that could easily swallow a small animal or snack.  Rounding out the combo was a couch that was a horrifically-close shade of the same colors in more of an august harvest palette. 

This room was very unlike the rest of our Mom-inspired “country Baron broadsides Euro 80s chic” décor that was the rest of our Sugarhouse bungalow.  But that was the beauty of it . . . Mom and Dad were too cheap to remodel any basement rooms, so it fit the logic that it was ours to destroy, by default.  Even so, we treated it with a fairly high degree of respect, even though it was only “unofficially” ours.  To vacuum the acres of carpet, though, was not for the faint of heart, a Friday chore I did even back then.  You had to really know your vacuum head height settings.  Only by setting it on the highest “Austin Powers” adjustment could you prevent the Farah Fawcet-long shag from sucking into the roller and burning out the rubber belt and motor assembly.

The stark white knobs on the closets and drawers looked so purposeful against the shockingly-bright colors, like touching one would unlock a space capsule from Space Odyssey 2001.  No, they just opened into closets full of well-used board games and “educational” toys.  By “educational” I mean “wooden”.  Mom thought that anything that you had to actually build or create from natural matter really broadened your horizons, thus she provided wooden blocks, Legos, indestructible puzzles and Lincoln Logs.  It’s pretty hard to build anything sinister out of Lincoln Logs, unless it was Lincoln’s wife Mary’s sanitorium.  And build and create we did. 

Sometimes the closet did reveal some amazing finds.  One time Mom found a pair of “mystery panties” in one of the drawers and accused us of procuring them. The great meaning or portent of this find was kind of lost on us as we had no clue as to why one would want them. We never did find out whose they were, but you’d think that from the motif of the room that Mom would’ve figured out that they probably belonged to the previous homeowner.

 It was a surprising long and deep room (almost the width of the front of the house), perfectly suited for quick rugby-like “Smear the Queer” sessions and a Nerf football.  You could really get good traction in bare feet and the deep shag provided quite a bit of padding for hard falls.  A little rug-burn on the face never hurt anyone and was totally unnoticed by the “injury cops” (Mom and Dad).  I can’t remember a whole lot of injuries, but I do remember Ben throwing a heavy steel Tonka truck at my head one time. The deep carpet absorbed sound well. Injuries and fights had a self-containment feature, as any revealed tradecraft or secrets to Parents would result in disciplinary measures by “the company”.

The room also had a great location.  It was far away from the much-frequented kitchen and parental bedroom areas, with a quick access stairway to an escape route front door and shielding alcoves on the side.  What the builders in 1930 were thinking for the purpose of these small hiding spaces I’ll never know, but Brandon was able to utilize them well during one of his special “missions” to run outside bare-ass naked, touch the Peugeot station wagon, and run back.  Alas, he was betrayed as we had locked the front door; although we eventually had to let him back in as he had completed his assignment well.

The room also had the advantage of excellent southward upper-ground placement & slope away from the dreaded “water bucket”.  The infamous water bucket was courtesy of Dad who decided that he really didn’t have the time/expertise to replace the air conditioning condensation pump, which pumped the collected water back up into the old cast iron plumbing.  Therefore, to demonstrate to us the frailty of mortality and importance of military schedules, an everlasting and hellish water clock was created.  It was a ticking time bomb, and failure to empty the bucket on your allotted hour meant a flooding of the grey commercial basement carpet, wet socks, mildew and chastisement from all “bucket crew” members.  We were like a doomed Sisyphus condemned by Zeus to roll the rock up the hill, only to escape our slippery hands and roll back again.  Sure, summer meant long, sweet outdoor nights, but it also meant the dreaded water bucket rotation and 7 pm bedtimes under a still blazing sun.

The shag carpet room offered a respite from these various tasks and served as our headquarters for many ventures and purposes.   Ben often would set up shop in the western area of the room on Fast Sunday, where he could ply his tempting wares at escalating and lucrative drug dealer-like margins.  Nacho cheese Doritos and bite-size Butterfingers started out at only a nickel, but as supply diminished and demand increased, that same Dorito might fetch as much as twenty-five cents.  We would curse his name, and then sadly pay out more of our hard-earned change, whilst Ben would lovingly pet his large collections of erasers, rocks and rolls of pennies.  Somehow I never had the gumption or brains to plan ahead and buy supplies from Emigration Market and transport them home via bike BEFORE the lean times occurred.  I somehow suspect that Ben had stolen his master plan from a certain Great Brain book in which Tom sells candy to all of the beleaguered boys at the Catholic Jesuit School and makes a fortune, hiding the booty and loot in a statue of a Saint. Although, Ben was quite an entrepreneurial capitalist at such a young age, and you had to admit that he had great strategy and commitment to his malevolent principles.

During the winters, we were generally in a calmer mood and we’d read or play games together. Monopoly was one of our favorite board games.  In terms of Monopoly, we never did follow the correct rules.  Somehow we misinterpreted the entire point of the game, and allowed any player to buy houses for any card that they had without owning all cards of that color.  It was a brutal way to play, and we actually went out to a game supply store and bought extra houses, hotels and money.  We didn’t limit how many hotels you could have either, and when you landed on Broadway with 10 hotels, the game was definitely over.

When bored with that, we even created our own games.  I remember starting a massive, months-long game of pencil war, although maybe it was a combined effort . . . I don’t exactly remember.  The game was a popular offshoot of a popular “church” game. We taped a large, circular piece of paper (about 2’x2’) to a small, round pine table.  Then, we used our plastic stencil sets to draw a “home base” on each side of the paper with “tanks” of various sizes and abilities. We also drew rocks and other marks to symbolize parts of the battlefield and terrain.  The rules of the game were pretty basic: You would pick a tank and announce your intention to either move or shoot.  You would then place the tip of the pencil near the front of the representative tank symbol and with one hand, place the pointer finger on the top of the eraser.  With the right pressure and skill, you’d gently push the top of the pencil and it would fall away, drawing a straight line, symbolizing the “shoot” or “move” turn.  If any of the line passed through an opponent during a “shoot” turn, your enemy would blow up, represented by scribbled lines, and be erased forever with one of Ben’s massive erasers.

With the masses of tanks we each possessed, and difficulty to navigate such a large area, rates of attrition were low. So to combat this, we devised an ingenious “smart bomb” limited to a few per player, per game. This meant you could drop the pencil from the air at a height of about a foot, holding the end, and if you did it just right a small mark from the end of the #2 would make a small dot.  From the center of this dot the stencil would be used to create a massive explosion, destroying anyone in the radius. The greatest faux pas was to push too hard and tear the paper, resulting in total destruction of an area of the battlefield.  But that was the genius of the taped-down, thick poster paper.  I don’t think we ever tore the paper or finished the game . . . it was such a large “tank world”.  It was really fun to play with such simple objects, and I can still perform a “pencil shot” to this day, and I’m sure Ben and Brandon can too.

Our modus operandi eventually became more sophisticated as the world entered the VCR/Betamax age.  Mom and Dad had a pretty strict policy on any non-Sunday, non-Disney TV watching.  Any requisitions for TV usage had to be submitted for approval.  Mom had ensured Dad had installed a hardened steel coaxial lock to prevent any unauthorized watching in our shag carpet room.  We devised a clever bypass that ran through a hidden cortex, while still displaying a dummy cable that passed through the lock.  All the Love Boat, Chips and Brady Bunch we could handle was full access, baby!  Provided Mom and Dad weren’t at home, that is.

We fought hard and played hard and we had a great room to do it in. Much has been made of our fighting, but I think it’s pretty typical for any family with three boys, now that I’m older and a bit wiser.  And I also think we all loved each other a lot and felt like we had a little slice of real estate to do it in.

It was our room, the White Shag Carpet room, and sometimes I wish we still had it. Smear the Queer or Pencil Tank, anyone?!

Just give me the burnt one

Christmas Memory 2007

Darron Johnson

“Just give me the burnt one,” Megan says as she reaches into the garbage can to pick up the blackened cheese sandwich.

Have I fallen asleep at the grill and am now dreaming this craziness? Am I hallucinating? Maybe I did not step into my Peach Tree apartment 15 minutes ago, but actually stepped into the Twilight Zone. No, Megan is definitely pushing me—the conscious, present me—out of the way to pick up the charred refuse from the dirty receptacle. What chain of events could have led me to this rather bizarre moment in time?

This morning started ordinarily enough. Kristen and I woke up at 6:30 and got ready for the day. At 7:30 we forced down some stale Corn Flakes and marched out to our car to drive into work together. The trusty, old All-Track Corolla got us to CaseData in the usual time; 15 minutes. I went to my desk, and Kristen went resignedly to her back room exile.

After an uneventful morning of QA, I met up with Kristen to head back home for a quick lunch. She informed me that Megan and Bart were in North Salt Lake visiting Bart’s cousin Jared Lyman, who happened to be our downstairs neighbor, and that Megan might pop over as long as we were going to be around.

So far so good. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest I had fallen into an alternate reality where house guests dig through yesterday’s garbage for today’s special and hosts proudly serve sandwiches with a side of salmonella. So why do I find myself in this awkward predicament? Am I really going to have to disapprovingly slap my sister-in-law’s hand with the spatula to convince her that I honestly do not want her to eat from the trash? Surely not. And yet, she appears insistent upon eating the blackened bread. Perhaps there is something I missed, some clue in our recent interactions which might help unravel the mystery before me now.

I recall pulling into our covered parking space and walking by the pool to building 3. Kristen and I poked our noses into Jared’s place, sniffing for signs of life, but none seemed apparent. We had missed Megan, or we would miss her. We wouldn’t be home long—just long enough to cram a couple grilled cheese sandwiches down our throats and zip back to work.

We labored up the stairs and into our little home. No sooner had I dropped the first sandwich into the pan than we heard a knock at the door. Megan had arrived. Kristen opened the door to a whirlwind of hugs, hellos, laughter and merriment. When the excitement subsided, I discovered Megan and Kristen beaming at each other—elated to have even a few minutes together. I took in the scene, genuinely happy myself to witness the reunion.

Suddenly something seemed wrong. In an instant I realized what was casting a gloomy shadow over our meeting. It was smoke, and it was coming from the kitchen. I had burned my cheese toast.

You’ll remember that this is where our story began. You’ll realize why I left the lunch to overcook on the stovetop, but you’ll probably also realize that I still have no idea why the remains of this poor crust have been exhumed from their resting place and now sit on the plate of my house guest.

In a moment of uncharacteristic and surprising force I snatch the ruined food from Megan’s plate and pitch it into the kitchen sink. Before she has time to react, I crank the knob and run water over the sandwich. Nobody could possibly want to eat cheese toast that is both burnt and soggy. I smile inwardly at my genius, and then I see the horrified look on Megan’s face. I panic. To keep the mood light, or rather to restore the good humor I sucked out of the day, I offer a joke.

“Here, I’ll burn you a new piece of bread…and we’ve got some curdled milk in the fridge for you too.”

Megan’s face brightens, not because I delivered a good line and saved myself from embarrassment, but because both offerings seem to meet her expectations. She assures me that she would love nothing more than to drink our spoiled milk and eat the worst we can give her.

I’m not sure I’ll ever understand what happened here today, but I can tell you this much: If the United States ever experiences a second Great Depression, or food becomes scarce or just detestable to the average palate, Megan will not suffer from hunger or want. And I learned a lesson as well. I’ll think twice next time I consider wasting food. There may not be a starving child in China who would benefit from my table scraps, but Megan just might be dropping by that day.

Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers

There they were! Six shiny cans of Heineken (or Budweiser, Coors, Miller or the likes). The truth is, I cannot remember the brand, but indeed my brothers and I had inadvertently uncovered a six pack of beer while playing in the snow near our house on Princeton Avenue in Salt Lake City one cold, wintery morning. Mother Nature had blessed us with another thick, fluffy blanket of snow the night before and I and my brothers were taking advantage of it. That year for Christmas, we had each recently received a pair of snow pants and a pair of stylish moon boots to brave the snowy, cold winter. So, there we were…playing in the snow without a care in the world, when to our amazement we uncovered this mysterious prize. Truth be told, we had wandered off of our property a bit and for some reason were trespassing our neighbor’s property, the Kazakis’s. Forgive the spelling, but yes, this was the same neighbor that had occasionally endured one of Mom’s squash popsicles or zucchini brownies, and another time where we Alley boys took it upon ourselves to solve the bee problem in his tree with firecrackers. At least we saw it as a problem (we never bothered to ask him if he thought it was a problem). But, what a lucky man he was to live next door to three clever, conscientious kids that looked out for his well-being and steered him clear of potential hazards.

Anyway, we had never seen beer so close up without anyone else around. We had really only seen this strange, frothy brew on TV commercials where some stud was scoring a beautiful woman or making a really great catch in a football game, or whatever. But, it was usually followed with words of admonishment from Mom that those commercials were a bunch of hogwash and that alcohol would only make us miserable. Besides, sunday school taught us that drinking beer was against the Word of Wisdom. Luckily, we were armed with truth, righteousness, and wisdom and knew better…even if other people didn’t.

So, we were faced with a dilemma. What were we to do with our newfound discovery? We didn’t know who it belonged to or how it got there. Could it be that our non-LDS neighbor Mr. Kazakis put the beer in the snow to chill for a cool, crisp refreshment later on that day? No. Common sense did not rule our minds…it had to be a more elaborate scheme, like some random, evil person wandering the neighborhood planting six packs of beer in people’s yards. Yes, that was much more likely. Regardless, a problem had been placed before us and we had to solve it. We couldn’t let this evil brew fall into the wrong hands. We had to do something with it. We had to dispose of it. Yes that was it…get rid of it so that no one else could get to it.

We grabbed the cans and snuck them away to our back yard. We couldn’t just throw them away. That would be too boring. Instead, we shook up each can, popped the top and sprayed them into our garbage can. We never knew beer could be so fun without actually partaking of it! The fun only lasted about 15 minutes and afterwards, we were giggling and reeking of malted barley and hops, which by the way, sounds better than it smells. It didn’t take long for Mother to discover our shenanigans, and quickly, we were educated on why beer might be stowed in the snow. The purpose, after all, was to chill the beer for someone that may actually want to drink the stuff…imagine that. Mom told us that while beer was evil, the people that chose to drink it were not evil and that they were entitled to their own decisions.

Soon after, we were compelled to tell Mr. Kazakis that we were sorry and that what we did was an accident. Yes, we accidentally opened up his entire six pack of beer and sprayed them into our garbage can…an honest mistake. Though disappointed, he smiled and seemed to understand our stupidity. If not then, I’m sure he later appreciated our concern for him…just like when we rid his tree of those darn bees.

Baptism by Fire at ESP

Baptism by Fire at ESP, by Kristen A. Johnson

To say that working at Electronic Surveillance Programs was a privilege may be a bit of a stretch, but working with one’s siblings certainly was – at the most, it made the day pass quickly with jokes and banter…and at the least, it was always interesting. I think all of us got the special opportunity to work at ESP, and several other family friends were swiftly inducted into the Alley family “inner circle” (think Robert DeNiro from “Meet the Parents”). I can distinctly remember several fist fights, curse words, tears, and yelling – and unfortunately, I don’t think any of it could be blamed on the fact that we worked with misdemeanants and felons. It was truly amazing that any of us survived.

Even more amazing was the fact that Dad didn’t kill us. Or that I didn’t.

It was a very rainy day when I pulled into the dark, dripping parking garage (which also happened to be the lovely setting of seeing my very first drunk urinating on Dad’s champagne-colored Acura). I tromped through the potholed and puddled garage, my gray Adidas’ soaked before even reaching the door of the building. I had blasted the heater during the 20-minute drive from Bountiful High to Salt Lake, trying to dry my icy feet, but my work was quickly undone. Apparently, upkeep of the garage asphalt was not high on the priority list of the building management.

After saying my hellos to those in the front office, I settled into my dreary work in the “back room” of the offices of ESP. Not only did my work require little more than the skills of a monkey, but I am now aware that the work I did was most likely completely unnecessary. I organized, re-organized, re-labeled, and re-filed the sad histories of the men and women who had drifted through ESP (once ESS) for DUIs, possession of illegal substances, and a myriad of other petty (and not so petty) crimes. It was also here that I saw my first full-body (or at least, full-back) tattoo (a beautiful reproduction of the Salt Lake Temple), was propositioned by a doctor to move to Oregon and grow marijuana, drove the misguided man who had taken his son to the mountains and starved him on watermelon and lettuce, and met – in the flesh, from Biblical fame – Potiphar’s daughter.

But on this day, I was actually glad for the windowless comfort of the back room. Because that meant I also had total monopoly of the microwave, and for a genius like me, a microwave and a little creativity was all I needed.

I had already stripped off my soaking socks and was happily watching them rotate through the microwave window when Dad interrupted my self-congratulatory glee. He was leaving to pick up some food for the office, and had come back to see whether I might like something. He threw a puzzled glance at the microwave, wondering whether I had already helped myself to a frozen burrito or a snack from the “on-your-honor” box out front (side note: I think I still owe a couple bucks to that cardboard box, or at least to petty cash).

“I’m microwaving my socks, Dad,” I explained. “Your daughter is a genius, huh.”

I think he mumbled something like, “Yes, very smart” and left with a concerned look on his face.

I shrugged and popped open the door. My socks were in much better shape and almost toasty, but that 30 seconds on high hadn’t quite cut it. And this definitely wouldn’t do – the toes of the socks were still icy cold.

I put them in for another 20 seconds or so (since I’d had no previous experience with the exact science of warming socks, I figured I could keep an eye on them through the window, like popcorn). But not five seconds had passed when blue flame suddenly erupted from the microwave. I snatched the burning socks and rushed down the hall to put them out in the drinking fountain.

I stood there, barefoot, on the cobblestone and contemplated my smoking, blackened socks that were now lying pitifully in the drain. I regretfully slopped them into the nearby garbage can and sighed. Such a good idea, but I had gotten greedy.

I strolled back down the hall, thinking, Phew. That was close.

I had just settled down to filing again when a woman from the adjacent office began screaming, “Fire! Fire!”

I guess I hadn’t counted on the fact that others might smell my error, even if they hadn’t seen it.

Later, as I stood – sockless – on 400 East with the rest of the evacuated employees from the building, I tried to look innocuous and innocent as I arranged my guilty conscience into a look of bland concern. The Salt Lake City Fire Department had been called and was searching the building for the source of the smoke; as there were no roaring flames, they began to allow people to file back into the building. In the muddle of people, the Fire Chief had been trying to locate the occupants of our suite and had been pointed in our direction.

“Sir,” the Chief addressed Brandon, “is this your office? The source of the smoke seems to have originated from your supply room. Was anyone using the microwave recently?”

Brandon looked over at me. “Kristen, you were back there. Were you using the microwave?”

“Uh, no. Uh-uh.” I mumbled, shaking my head.

“Are you sure? I thought I heard the microwave going…” Brandon began.

“No, no,” I interrupted, “not that I know of.”

The fire chief led us back to the supply room where his crew had already begun taking down the ceiling tiles.

“They say it’s not the microwave,” he said to the room.

“What’s going on here?”

Oh, heck. I’d forgotten about the one witness to my ridiculous crime – Dad, just now returning from picking up lunch was understandably concerned about the firemen milling about his offices.

“Someone reported smelling smoke, and we believe it originated in this room. Was someone using the microwave?”

Dad shot a piercing look at me. I smiled weakly and tried to subtly shake my head.

“Well,” Dad said, his eyes still boring into mine, “if no one said they were using the microwave, then I guess not.”

“Too bad,” the chief sighed. “I guess we’ll have to take the rest of the ceiling down.”

An hour later, the fire chief poked his head into the front office – where I had gone to avoid watching their wasted efforts – to report that it must have been a faulty ballast in the ceiling, and it had to be replaced. Oh, and by the way, he was also pretty sure that the microwave was defective and it ought to be thrown away – for safety’s sake.

And perhaps I ought to stay in the front offices, I added mentally, for safety’s sake.