Bailey Days

For 27 years our little hamlet in the foothills of the Rockies has held an annual "Bailey Day"; a festival of fun with music, vendors, great food, a fun run and more. This year my dear friend Scarymarysasserfrass asked me to compose an article for the official Bailey Day Book.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to live here, or those too tightfisted to fork over the $2 for the book; here it is in its entirety.

Welcome to Bailey

I looks in the rear view mirror and sees my eyes starin' back at me like two cherries in a bowl of buttermilk. I'd been on the road for nearly 12 hour straight; ever since two wise-guys in a Vegas back-alley persuaded me to scram out of town. I was anxious to avoid a certain party in Idaho Springs to whom I owed a sum of money so I takes what I thinks is a shortcut and finds myself on some back road called 285. Not only does the altitude nearly set my nose to start bleedin' again, I think I'm gonna run into some grizzly bears or somethin'. I never seen so many trees in my life.

Denver was someplace up ahead so I keep pushin' my old jalopy along the road till I comes to this wide place in the road. "Welcome to Bailey" says the sign. "Yeah right" I thinks. "Bet they don't welcome the likes of me." Next thing I know, I almost drives straight off the road. I looks to my right and sees a giant hot dog starin' back at me. So help me God, a giant hot dog! I been on the road so long I'm whaddyacallit - hallucinatin'. I need coffee and start lookin' around. I wonder if they even have java up here, figurin' maybe the water wouldn't boil or somethin'.

Next thing I sees is steam comin' out from under the hood. Even more than a giant hot dog, steam from the hood is somethin' you never want to see when you're miles from nowhere, trust me on this.

I coast a few hundred yards and rolls into the parkin' lot of this diner on main street. "The Cuthroat Café" they calls it. "Whaddyaknow?" I thinks. "Somebody here must be in the same line of work as me." They even had pictures of fish up on the walls. Ya know, kind of a 'Godfather' reference. "Luca Brasi swims wid da fishes." Nice touch.

I ease my achin' back out of the seat and drags myself inside. The waitress is cute and sassy, just how I like my waitresses. The coffee is hot and strong, which is also how I like my waitresses. I sighs in satisfaction. "If you like coffee, you might also try Mount Bailey Coffee Shack - they make good stuff too." Says this number sittin' next to me.

"I need someone to work on my wheels" I tell him. "Someone who won't get wise and try to pull a fast one 'cause they know I'm not from round these parts. You got any auto mechanics in this town?"

"Well, sure we do." he tells me. "We got Rory & Lynn at Platte River, they'll fix you right up. This was good news so I decided I could take the time for some eats. I slides my behind onto the chair and groan as I feel the bruises under my sharkskin. A souvenir of Vegas.

"You look like you could use a little bodywork there." says this dame at the counter. "You should head up and see Doc Braun at the top of Crow Hill." I'm not sure I fancy some small town saw-bones workin' me over and say so. "No, this guy's good" says my new friend. "You could even get a massage while you're there."

"Bailey has a massage parlor?" I asks with eyebrows raised.
"Massage therapy" she says, settin' me straight. Cecilia works out of Doc Braun's office.
Her or the folks at Bailey Massage and Fitness." Pipes up some character to my left. This sounded promisin'.
"Suppose I wanted to chill here for a couple days" I says, "Is there a roomin' house or anythin', could put me up?"
"Bailey Lodge or Glen Isle" says someone.

I was startin' to like this town.

"What line of business you in, friend?" Asks this hombre wearin' a cowboy hat. I was used to dodgin' this question.
"Insurance" I tells him. I always say insurance - it sounds better than 'protection'. "Know anybody hirin'?"
"Well. We got James and Carrie at Crow Hill Insurance. You might try talkin' to them."
Two different outfits workin' one small town. Who knew there would be that much business. I could see I had a lot to learn. I walked over to the newsstand to pick up a local fishwrap; thinkin' I could get a feel for who the trouble boys in town might be. Turned out there was three papers. High Timber Times, Mountain Connection and The Flume. For a small town there must be a lot of action to keep that many newshawks employed.

Maybe I should stick around. I've a bit of rhino put by; perhaps I can make a go of it here. Now I'm no boozehound you understand, but some things in life are important.
"Any hooch stores around here" I asks no-one in particular.
"Bailey liquor, right across the street." Answers this skirt from across the room. I did a double-take. Now that's what I call a babe.
"Any other hash houses in these parts?"
"There's good eatin' at Crossroads, El Rio, Plantation House and Platte Canyon Grill too."
"I'm thinking I'm in heaven." I says.
"Well cyberspace maybe," she says back. "You can check your e-mail at the Knotty Pine."
Yeah, e-mail, me!
"You goin' to be in town long?" she asks me.
"I think so," I tell her. It sounds like there's a lot goin' on here."
"Oh honey," she says handin' me a copy of the Platte Canyon Chamber Directory, "you haven't even gotten started".

I smiled, and ordered myself another cup of Joe.

"Welcome to Bailey."
Indeed.

Resident Alien Abduction

The above application has been received by our office and is in process, but it has been noted with one or more of the following exception(s).
Missing evidence(s) - Your application was missing evidence(s) that you will need to provide at the time of your naturalization interview.

Now what on earth could that mean, I wonder? The only "evidence" I’d been asked to submit with my Citizenship Application was a photocopy of both sides of my Green Card, two recent photos and a huge wad of cash in check or money order form. I’d made sure that these were all included before sealing the envelope, but as the next line went on to say "You will be notified under separate notice of the necessary evidence(s) that you will be required to bring to your interview. Do not submit any evidence(s) by mail." there’s not much I can do but wait to be told.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy of course; working with the Immigration and Naturalization never has been but it brought back painful memories of when I was first attempting to become a resident of the US.

On the advice of the US Embassy in London, Dear Wife had returned to the USA to file my petition there, while I remained in Britain, awaiting the nod to move. Things went smoothly at first with US immigration approving my application after about 3 months which was par for the course. Unfortunately, this news was never transmitted to the US Embassy in Britain who steadfastly refused to acknowledge my existence.

While nowadays, I would be able to check my status on-line, back then one had to call a long-distance number and be charged premium rates to listen to muzak for 6 or 7 hours (that’s not poetic license – I would begin the call as soon as the lines opened at 9am and sit there until late afternoon) before finally being connected to a person who would go out of their way to be unhelpful for a few seconds before hanging up, often while you were still talking. If you were lucky, the information you gave you was correct, but there was no guarantee of this.

Dear Wife, back on this side was going through similar pain but as the US had done their part, they refused to get involved further. Daily calls to the Phoenix office yielded nothing but stonewalling, while similar entreaties to the embassy in Britain merely racked up my parents’ phone bill. I was in effect, in limbo and there I might still remain if it weren’t for a little known law which requires any US government department to respond to an enquiry from a Congressman’s office within 24 hours of receipt. We enlisted the help of an assistant to our local politician and by the following day, my paperwork was miraculously found on someone’s desk. Two weeks later I was on the plane.

But of course, that was just the beginning.

Like all new migrants to the US, I had to follow a number of procedures as I progressed from Temporary Resident to Long Term Resident to Permanent Resident or the more endearing "Resident Alien". Applications to be submitted, forms to be completed, interviews to be held. That was all fair enough, but what astonishes me to this day, was the lengths the INS went to in order to make this as mind-numbingly difficult as possible.

To begin with, there was nowhere, nowhere one could find out what forms were required to be completed for the next stage. No leaflets, no recordings, no information booklets. The only solution was to sit on hold for the aforementioned 6-7 hours in the hopes that the drone on the end of the phone might tell you before they hung up. doG help you if you didn’t ask the right question (or tried to ask more than one.) They wouldn’t send you the forms, you had to show up at the local INS office for these. In a tidy display rack by the front door? Don’t be absurd. No, in order to receive a simple blank form, it was necessary to take a number and stand in line for, you guessed it, 6 or 7 hours. This just to be handed a form.

Want to know what happened once you’d completed it? Ship it in the mail, right?

Wrong.

Back to the office where after standing in line for 6 or 7 hours, you were allowed to hand it to a clerk, who turned and dropped it into an in-tray. I’m not making this up. From the early hours of the morning, people were standing in a queue stretching down the street with sandwiches and thermos flasks, ready to wait for the entire day simply to ask for a form, or to hand one in. When the clerk took his break, nobody relieved him so the line stopped for 15 minutes. When he took his lunch, it stopped for an hour. If you weren't through the door by a certain time, you got turned away. One time I arrived at the front only to learn that I hadn’t been told of a particular form I should have brought. It would have taken me 2 or 3 minutes to complete and I wanted to do it there and then but the clerk refused to allow this and I was forced to return and stand in line another day.

Fortunately my employers were very understanding and allowed me time off every few weeks as things progressed. Looking around at some of my queue-mates, I could only imagine the lost productivity, lost wages and lost jobs this was causing. By the time my application slowly ground towards permanent status, I was the supervisor of my department with almost 40 people reporting to me. I can’t imagine what would have happened had I allowed them to operate at this level of inefficiency.

Finally the day arrived when Dear Wife and I were ordered to report for an interview; the final step on the road to permanent residency status (just one notch down from the Citizenship for which I’m now applying). Despite having been assured that the movie "Green Card" is pure Hollywood (as long as no money is changing hands and you’re not breaking any other laws, the government doesn’t really care about your motives for marrying) we were prepared for an ordeal.

Instead, the gentleman turned out to be the kindest, politest and most helpful government employee I’ve every encountered, before or since. The whole interview was a pleasure.

Except for when he glanced at my form and saw where I’d given my nationality as "Scottish." He crossed this out and wrote "English", explaining cheerfully "Scotland is part of England".

I realized this man had the power to screw up my life in a million different ways, and as Dear Wife was already kicking me under the table I simply gritted my teeth and muttered.

"OK"

May William Wallace forgive me.

Chewing Gum for the Eyes

"Nah, it's dead easy. You won't have any trouble, trust me."

Of course I should have known better, particularly as these words were coming from an electronics store saleschild (See
"Many Happy Returns"). However, this kid seemed genuinely knowledgeable and helpful; and after all, he had no reason to cause me pain did he? A few hours later I was beginning to wonder.

I'd had misgivings from the get-go, of course. Ever since the picture on our trusty 18-year old TV had taken on a lozenge shape and gradually became smaller and smaller, I knew that this was going to cost me a lot of money and bother. It had seen good service, since long before I'd arrived in the States and considering the amount of use it's had (Dear Wife tends to use TV for background noise) and that it had been dropped from a reasonable height during the move when The World's Most Irritating Dog ™ knocked it off the couch, we didn't really begrudge it anything.

We have an almost equally ancient portable TV, which I won in a raffle many years ago so that was brought down from the bedroom, receiving a field promotion to main TV set. I was fine with this arrangement as I rarely watch the darn thing anyway, but as I said, Dear Wife is something of an addict and she was less than thrilled. So, after weeks of listening to her whine I finally allowed myself to be worn down and agreed that yes, we could dump a chunk of our dwindling savings into a new gogglebox. Anything for a bit of peace and quiet, that's me. And the World Cup was about to start and you can't appreciate the finer points of the beautiful game on a 12 inch screen now, can you?

I figured 3, maybe 4 hundred dollars tops and we'd be in business but as you may have guessed, it's a long time since I last bought a television. Pretty much, that would buy you a shoebox with a hole cut in the front and a puppet inside. No nowadays, TV sets, like apparently everything else, require an investment several times the price of my first car. And if you'd like it to work past 2008, when the whole world will be digitalized, they cost even more.

Dear Wife took copious notes as the saleschild jabbered on in that foreign language they all have. I can't even remember enough of the jargon to make fun of it here, but at one point I had to hold up my hand and ask "You do realize, we're both over forty and haven't the faintest idea what you're on about, right?" But of course, there was no stopping him and after a while, my eyes glazed over so I wandered off to check out the home theaters (which aren't going to be an option until I either win the lottery, or figure out how to rob banks and get away with it.)

Eventually I was called back and asked to choose between several dinner table-sized televisions. This didn't take too long, but naturally we'd only just begun.

"Now, you'll also need RF Cables, Video Cables, Audio Cables, Component Cables; a Monster Power Surge Protector, a kick in the nuts and would you like fries with that?"

By the time we reached the check out, it was all just so many numbers and I wrote the check in a daze. Still, it was exciting being the new owner of a flat screen TV and as we apparently had also bought a DVD player, I was looking forward to being able to watch my movies in the rectangular format in which they were filmed. We even stopped by Target to pick up a couple of DVDs in order to try it out (Apollo 13 for me, some piece of soppy junk for Dear Wife). It was heady stuff.

Unfortunately, pixies were not included in the purchase which meant I'd to complete the set up myself. I was a shade apprehensive about this, my track record with technical stuff not being exactly stellar, but the saleschild assured me it would be a snap. Plus, I've recently sharpened a chainsaw all by myself (albeit under supervision) so I figured I could probably handle this without too much problem.

OK, you already know where this is going, don't you?

Hours later, tired, frustrated and very, very cranky I sat amidst a pile of cardboard, Styrofoam and the remains of dozens of blister packs (oh, there's a special place in hell for whoever invented those fiendish items of torment), no nearer my goal of watching The Godfather in widescreen format. The TV itself worked OK, although the saleschild had warned us we couldn't expect the crystal clear, sharper-than-real-life picture we were enjoying in the store. Our basic satellite service uses low quality cables apparently and it won't be until we junk all our current equipment and upgrade to the nifty (read: expensive) High Definition stuff that we'll get the full benefit of the technology. I wasn't too thrilled about that but could see the logic behind it.

No, the big challenge came when we tried to hook the thing up through the VCR and/or the DVD player. It should have been very simple. The user manual (I can't call it an instruction book - I was assigned text books in college that were smaller than this) even contained the sentence "Connecting a VCR or DVD is very simple."

Pah!

Hooking up the VCR meant everything worked just fine until I hit the play button and received a fuzzy blizzard superimposed with the warning "No Signal". The DVD player on the other hand, worked just fine. As long as we were willing to forego actually viewing the DVD as it's running, that is.

I undid cables, did them up again, removed them from holes and pushed them into other holes. I even attempted to follow the user manual several times but nothing seemed to work. It didn't take long before I was swearing and throwing things across the room but even that didn't help. We've had the darn thing for almost two weeks now and I still haven't had the emotional wherewithal to call the store and ask them to walk me through the process.

And the World Cup went ahead and started without me. And the games are on in the middle of the day. And I have no way to record them.

It's a good job I get to work from home sometimes.

Many Happy Returns

So I’ve finally got myself an I-Pod.

OK, OK it’s not really an I-Pod. They cost several hundred dollars whereas mine was a freebie promotional item, with a corporate logo on it. Even so, it has astonishingly good sound quality, is about the size of a pack of gum and did I say it was free?

Sadly, it didn’t come with an instruction book, but there were plenty of twenty-somethings sitting around the conference room table with me.

"Switch it on by holding down this button here" explained Jassira patiently. "You can download songs to your computer, then save them to the device."
"Just like saving to a floppy disk?" I said enthusiastically, before noticing her blank stare and realizing she didn’t know what a floppy disk was. "OK" I sighed, "Go on."
"Its own memory will hold a few songs, but you’ll want to buy a memory card to store more."

Easy enough, and a couple of days later I could be found staring at a rack of tiny plastic squares in an electronics store near my office.

"So uhm, how many songs would one of these things hold?" I asked the 12-year old salesman hovering at my elbow.
"Oh, about 500." He chirruped.

500 eh? I’m not sure I have more than about a thousand songs on my computer. (The record companies’ jihad against free file swapping services put a crimp on my rapidly expanding music collection.) So, I reasoned, while it might be pricier than I expected, 500 should easily cover my needs.

Except of course, it didn’t store 500 songs. What the little twerp forgot to tell me that this all depended upon the file format. Mp3, which makes up the bulk of my pirated collection, is the largest file size and as a result, the memory card I’d bought would only hold about 250 before crapping out.

Another thing I discovered was that my little freebie player isn’t exactly overloaded with features. Among other things, it’s unable to sort songs by artist or folder; one can only scroll through them one at a time. I did however learn that the device’s own memory could store almost 150 songs and as saving and deleting was a snap, I reasoned it made more sense to dispense with the memory card altogether, and simply download whatever songs I felt like listening to before leaving the house.

Which also meant I could get a refund on the wad of cash I’d plunked down for the memory card. I checked the receipt and learned that all items could be returned within 30 days provided they still had the original packaging and were in ‘like new’ condition. No problem there so I was back at the store a little less than 2 hours after I left.

"I’m sorry, I can’t process the return" said the clerk.
"Oh, why not?" I asked.
"You paid by check so we’ll need to wait 2-3 days before giving you the refund." (Yes, I still like to use a check book. As you’ve probably gathered by now, I haven’t spent much time on technology’s cutting edge.) However, the explanation sounded reasonable so I put everything back in my desk before returning the following week.

"I’m sorry, I can’t process the return" said the clerk.
"Oh, why not?" I asked.
"You paid by check so we’ll need to wait 7 business days before giving you the refund."
"Really? The last guy said 2-3 days."
"Nope, 7 business days – sorry." He said; although he didn’t sound very sorry at all.

So back I went, on the 8th business day.
"I’m sorry, I can’t process the return" said the clerk.
"Oh, why not?" I asked.
"The receipt says (Dear Wife’s name) – that’s not you."
"No, that’s because her name appears first on the check, look." I showed him my check book.
"I’m sorry; she’ll have to be present for us to issue the refund."
"We live 50 miles away. Are you seriously telling me she’ll need to drive all the way in just because my name is second on the check I’ve just shown you?"
"Yes, I’m sorry Sir."
You know how some people can say "Sir" and make it sound like "You stupid piece of crap."? That was how he said it.

"Not to worry" I told Dear Wife. "You’re going to Safeway on Tuesday and the electronics store has a branch in the strip mall. You can return it there."

Except of course, she couldn’t.

"I’m sorry, I can’t process the return" said the clerk.
"Oh, why not?" Dear Wife asked.
"The package has been opened."
"Well of course it’s been opened. That’s how he learned it wouldn’t do what your salesman told him it would. And anyway, the receipt says ‘All items can be returned within 30 days provided they still have the original packaging and are in ‘like new’ condition’"
"But it’s been opened, so it’s not in ‘like new’ condition."

I was more than a little ticked off when she told me.

"Let’s have you come with me to the original store." I said "We’ll sort this out once and for all."

Dear Wife had to come downtown this week on a different errand, which is fortunate as we’re getting dangerously close to the thirty day mark and I had no intention of getting stuck with a memory card I didn’t want. She called my office when she arrived and the pair of us set off for the electronics store together.

I was pumped.

No crap this time. No excuses, no flannel, no weaseling. I would start out polite, but if there was any nonsense, I would switch straight into customer-from-hell mode. I’ve dealt with enough of them in my time to know how it’s done and I was loaded for bear.

The clerk whistled as he entered the information in the computer. I kept myself tense, alert, breathing steady and even but poised like a mountain lion ready to strike. I could take him, I reasoned. Drag his skinny little butt over the counter and bludgeon him to death with the display of cell phone holsters. Just give me the signal.

"There we go Sir" he said, breaking my reverie. "If I could just have you sign the return slip, we’ll be all set."

And so we were.

Moments later we were back out in the sunshine, refund in hand. No muss, no fuss. He didn’t even want to see Dear Wife’s ID.

"So you didn’t need me to be here after all?" she asked.

"Oh, I don’t know" I replied. "That little bugger might have been stronger than he looked."