Cowboy Petey Patelbow

Although born and raised in the densely populated eastern suburbs, Mr. Petey Patelbow possessed a strong cowboy need for wide open spaces, as well as a powerful streak of rugged individualism, the combination of which placed his spirit more accurately in the middle of the American desert.

Mr. Petey knew this and acted upon it at the first available opportunity. He was sick and tired of the urban rat race with its multitudes of impatient people and so, in utter opposition to their hurry, was determined to pursue his vision of not just a slower life, but a really downright slow life, what some might even call a heroically slow-motion life.

The first step was to purchase several thousand acres in an extremely remote and unpopulated part of central Nevada. High and dry basin and range desert, a world of rock and dust and various shades of ochre baking in the hot sun under clear blue skies. Mr. Petey felt comfortable with this kind of space around him - no one accidentally jabbing him in the ribs with their elbows, no one in the supermarket trying to squeeze their cart by as he was examining peanut butter labels, making him feel as though he were "in the way". No, no one was ever going to make him feel "in the way" again.

In fact, he realized that it was those people who were in his way, and once they got the hell out of his way, he could proceed west to his thousands of undeveloped, sun-parched acres. Here he would be able to live out his version of the American dream in peace and with dignity.

The second step was to acquire a dusty and banged up pickup truck resembling one he had once seen in a movie. No power locks or windows. Just an old Ford or Chevy. This was easily enough accomplished.

The third step was to do his best to grow a big, thick mustache like the one the man in the movie had. The man who drove the pickup truck. Although Petey's mustache never really resembled the man in the movie's, there was no one on his thousands of acres to point that out, so it didn't really matter. 

The fourth step was to change his name from "Mr. Petey Patelbow" to "Cowboy Petey Patelbow", or "Cowboy Petey" for short.

His land included one old well and a shack that would serve as his home.

Now Cowboy Petey was a lover of coffee and he knew that this ritual - drinking coffee in the desert - would be at the center of his new, heroically slow existence. He always had a minimum of two cups a day - one in the morning, and one at 3:05 in the afternoon. In the mornings he didn't mind preparing his own coffee, but the afternoon cup was an altogether different story.

The afternoon cup would be the occasion for him to leave the house, get into his banged up pickup and go for a ride. It would give him a chance to see his land from  multiple vantage points. So when it came time to choose the site for the coffee shop he planned to build, he selected a splendidly flat and remote piece of desert floor located fourteen miles from his shack.

At great expense, Cowboy Petey contracted the Starbucks corporation and had them oversee the construction of a Starbucks coffee shop on the chosen site. Since drilling a well at this location would have proven costly and fruitless, the water would have to be trucked in weekly. This was in no way considered an actual Starbucks store, as it was so many miles from the nearest paved, public road, but it did exactly resemble the ones found on paved, public roads. Instead of the usual paved parking lot though there was just the dusty desert floor, a detail that was part of Cowboy Petey's vision. He wanted to make sure that his truck was covered in a layer of dust at all times.

He hired authentic Starbucks baristas and put them on his payroll. The duties of the job were very specific. Every day Cowboy Petey would show up in his dusty pickup around 3:05 pm. The barista would greet him by saying "Well if it isn't Cowboy Petey Patelbow! Good afternoon!" or something like that, followed with "Will you be having your usual?" 

To which Cowboy Petey would reply "Yeppers. Hot coffee with LOTS of room for cream". He would then sit down and savor his hot coffee, served in a white ceramic cup, for typically an hour. More often than not he would read the latest issue of USA Today cover to cover. In the background would be music that was specially selected by Cowboy Petey. More often than not it would be Ry Cooder's soundtrack to the movie "Paris, Texas".

Sometimes, midway through his cup of coffee, Cowboy Petey would become almost completely still and gaze out the glass windows with an expression that some would call blank, but in fact was full of emotion.

So as to create the illusion of a real coffee house, Cowboy Petey hired some customers. He decided that there should be a total of three additional customers every two days. These "customers" were screened by Cowboy Petey himself. Their only job was to enjoy their beverages as much as, and as slowly as, their employer did.

After his afternoon coffee Cowboy Petey would get back in the pickup and go for a ride around his land, delighting in his blinding sea of sun-parched ochre, an endless world of rock, dust and mountain. Anything this big, hot and dry had to be good, he thought. The only thing he liked wet was his coffee.

And the only thing he liked dark was the roast of his coffee, he mused. But this wasn't exactly true. He also liked his skin to get as bronzed as possible. A self-proclaimed sun worshipper, he was forever determined to get "revenge" on the pasty pallor of his youth. Besides, what kind of grizzly cowboy avoids the sun?

Once Cowboy Petey's vision was realized down to the detail, and he successfully lived  out his coffee routine for two consecutive years, he decided to give himself the honorary title of "Special District Sheriff", thus expanding his full name to "Special District Sheriff Cowboy Petey Patelbow". But no sooner did he assume this title than he decided that he preferred being an elected official to a self-appointed one. To solve this problem he had a few hundred flyers printed up urging anyone who read it to "vote for Cowboy Petey Patelbow for the office of Special District Sheriff". A stack of these flyers was always placed in his Starbucks, and the hired customers were instructed to take one at every visit.

Upon further thought, he changed the flyers to read "Re-elect Special District Sheriff Cowboy Petey Patelbow". That way, he could proceed on the assumption that he already possessed the title, and was simply working to keep it.

Since the election never took place, he always kept it.

A few more years passed and Cowboy Petey was happy as a clam living on his massive sun-parched parcel that at times resembled Mars when he struck upon another idea - to create a similar installation in west Texas. This he did and took  great joy in both the similarities and differences between sun-parched parcel number one and sun-parched parcel number two. Most importantly the coffee was great at both parcels. When the spirit moved him, Cowboy Petey Patelbow would drive the dusty old pickup from Nevada to Texas and back again, depending on his mood and the weather. For the most part he didn't mind the whiff of the real world that such drives provided. In this way, one man in America figured out how to live out his days both enjoyably and with dignity.

     

- Copyright 2016 by P.T. Gachot

Spitchcock

Merle Spitchcock made the observation years ago that by reducing his life to a certain, simple routine, he solved the entire problem of existence. And once the entire problem of existence was solved, he could get on with the business of his routine. His routine was, as stated, fairly simple.

At the center of Merle's world was coffee. It is important to note that Merle did not choose or seek out coffee; rather he was born into a world that just happened to drink a tremendous amount of the stuff, a world that in essence was telling its inhabitants that they could make their lives a whole lot easier and more pleasant by drinking coffee. The path of least resistance, so to speak.

But it would be unfair to characterize Merle as either a caffeine addict, or someone jumping on a bandwagon. It just so happened that, given his God-given body and brain chemistry, that he responded well to coffee and caffeine. It neither gave him the jitters nor kept him up at night; on the contrary it gave him clarity and insight and a sense of well being. It made him feel "normal", in the best possible sense of the word.

His natural chemistry and the chemistry of coffee just happened to agree with one another. And so, the fact that he was born into a world that seemed to go out of its way to make the stuff readily available to him did not present itself as a problem.

It just so happened that Merle Spitchcock's life coincided with the blossoming of a golden age of coffee drinking in America. Thanks to a thriving culture of independent coffee houses, as well as chains like Starbucks, the overall standards of coffee were raised to new levels. Again, this coincidence did not present itself as a problem to him.

On the contrary, it was an opportunity. As an adult he realized that the world was presenting itself to him as his oyster in the form of a world full of a wide variety of coffee houses. Coffee houses at which, he could go and enjoy a cup of coffee. Which he did. A lot.

At first he would go to a coffee shop, buy a cup of coffee, and slowly size up the atmosphere of the place while slowly enjoying his coffee. He tuned into the vibrations. He liked the places that felt relaxed and welcoming and where he got the sense that he could spend the entire day there enjoying his coffee and no one would mind. While this was the case at most coffee shops, some were even less hurried than others, and these he favored.

Sometimes he would read books and newspapers, work on a crossword puzzle,  or make lists of things. When laptop computers and Wi-fi became the norm, he went out and got himself a nice laptop. Needless to say, this added a whole new dimension to the experience. It seemed sometimes that ninety percent of the other customers were also seated in front of their laptops, were also sipping mochas or lattes, and like Merle, were also slipping into a state of highly-focused timelessness. In this way, a certain informal, unplanned and silent comradery would fill up the space, which became charged with the energy of a dozen highly-focused, caffeinated brains.

In this way the coffee houses were paying homage to the original Ethiopian monks who discovered coffee, the ones who discovered that it helped them stay alert and awake during their long periods of focused prayer.

Merle discovered that he had a passion for blogging. It was the perfect accompaniment to the rest of his coffee house experience - the beverages, the relaxed but productive atmosphere, the silent comradery. His blog was about different things, but mainly it was about coffee houses. He regarded it as a long term survey of all the coffee houses he visited, the number of which increased with every passing year. While not openly stated, his ultimate, underlying goal was to visit every coffee house on the planet.
 

                                                                 *          *          *

After a long day of drinking coffee and blogging at a coffee shop, Merle would return to his studio apartment. He was a simple man with simple needs. He didn't much feel a need for proper meals, since they sometimes interfered with his routine. He could spend eight or so hours in a coffee shop and eat only one or two blueberry muffins, and those he had mainly because they went so well with his dark roast coffee. Sometimes the coffee shop did have good food, and he appreciated that; but other times he found himself mastering the art of using coffee as an appetite suppressant. He got very good at successfully tricking his body into believing it was full. But it wasn't.

And so, sometimes when he returned home to his apartment in the dark, he was seized with a fierce, punishing hunger. Something had to be done. He really didn't do much cooking, beyond frying eggs or making spaghetti. The former he had frequently for breakfast and latter made a good dinner. But it occurred to him that it might not be healthy to eat the same thing every night. He allowed himself to eat spaghetti five times a week for dinner, but after that he had to get creative. He forced himself. Heroically.

But he still could not really cook. So one night he ate an entire container of mayonnaise. It was damn good. His inspiration was good memories of cole slaw from the first half of his life. Someone - his mother, a friend's mother, who knows - had prepared very good cole slaw somewhere along the way. So, after decades of wandering the planet he had an epiphany about cole slaw. First, that he liked it, and second that maybe his enjoyment of it had something to do with mayonnaise. So he went to the store and purchased a jar of mayonnaise.

Later that week he returned to his studio apartment and was seized with a fierce, punishing and uncompromising hunger. He searched his cupboards and found the jar of mayonnaise. There wasn't much else in the house. There weren't many options. He was a simple man, and a man of action. Something had to be done. So he sat down and ate the entire jar of mayonnaise.

He wouldn't have minded if the mayonnaise were actually cole slaw, but it wasn't, and in his hunger he was not going to make a fuss about that detail. Besides, he enjoyed the way the mayonnaise tasted.

He thought about the Ethiopian monks. Evidently all they needed was coffee. Their lives were spiritual. If there was any cole slaw in their lives, he - Merle Spitchcock - had not heard about it.

                                                                 *          *          *

Another night he had leftover popcorn and tangerines. Popcorn was also one of the few things he was able to prepare well. Sometimes he would have only popcorn for dinner. If there was any leftover from the previous night, it was an opportunity to get creative. The night he paired it with tangerines, he was especially proud of himself. It seemed that the tangerines were a good counterpart that balanced out the meal.

Another discovery he made, quite accidentally, was tortilla chips and tangerines. Somehow the combination of these two very different foods produced flavors that were greater than the sum of their parts. It became a regular favorite, and he would look forward to his "tortilla chips and tangerine night" after five nights of spaghetti.

                                                            *          *          *

In the end, Merle Spitchcock led a pretty interesting life. He rarely deviated from his routine, but he did relocate to a completely different place every few years. His blog of course required new material.

He was born into a world that seemed to have an abundance of coffee shops, and the only way to experience them all was to move a lot.

It was a pretty ambitious undertaking for one man. A team of coffee drinkers may have tackled the project more efficiently. But Merle had become his own one man show. No one was stopping him, so he went ahead and did it.

He had no children, only a small pension from a government job.

In the end he did a pretty good job reviewing all the coffee houses in California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, Hawaii, New York, Japan, Jamaica and parts of Mexico.
    

- Copyright 2016 by P.T. Gachot

Hooks and Ledges

Mister Patel and Mrs. Katel did a lot of traveling in those days, and stayed in more than their fair share of hotel rooms. One of the first things they noticed upon entering a room was the presence or absence of hooks, on which to hang certain things -- coats, jackets, shirts, towels, toiletry kits and laundry bags, to name a few -- and ledges, upon which to place just about everything else -- books, maps, brochures, magazines, newspapers, eyeglasses, watches, cameras, phones, writing utensils, half-eaten bags of chips, lip balm, bottled water and laptop computers. It seemed that the user-friendliness of a room was directly proportional to the number of hooks and ledges it provided.

At first, in Mr. Patel's view, there wasn't much that could be done about a dearth of ledges, or any flat surfaces upon which you could plunk your stuff. Hooks were a different story. If a room suffered from a lack of hooks, Mr. Patel brought his tool kit in from the car and went straight to work tapping the walls to locate studs or two by fours that could support hooks. Once found, he marked the locations with a pencil, grabbed his battery-powered power drill and made holes for the screws that would hold up any number of the impressive assortment of hooks that filled his tool kit. In some cases a screwdriver alone would suffice to get the job done. In cases where there were no studs or two-by-fours to be found, he would use anchors to provide the needed support.

In those early days Mrs. Katel limited her role to helping choose the locations for hooks as well as aesthetic input on which hooks went best with the design and decor of any given room. The assortment of hooks ranged from the utilitarian to the artisanal.

This arrangement went on for several years and at first both partners were reasonably satisfied. They demanded no compensation from the management for these "improvements". For the most part the management barely noticed them, and if they did they assumed they had done the work themselves, so in keeping with the character of the room were the hooks that Mr. Patel and Mrs. Katel installed.

In time, Mr. Patel addressed the issue of ledges. He developed the habit of bringing an assortment of folding tables on his road trips. They were easy enough to set up and take down, and more importantly, they were necessary. Some hotels and motels didn't even provide a decent table. He thought, where the Holy Hell is a person supposed to play Scrabble -- for example -- should the desire hit, and should the management not provide a proper table?

Mrs. Katel thought that these folding tables were a start, but ultimately amounted to "window dressing" and "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic", as the saying goes. A hotel room needs flat surfaces, she declared.

Being a woman of action, she lost no time in packing an impressive array of lumber and power tools on their road trips that she would have Mr. Patel haul into their rooms along with the luggage. Then, after taking a long swig of water, she would typically go straight for the sledge hammer or wood saw and built as many tables, shelves and ledges as the room seemed to require. In a reversal of roles, Mr. Patel  would provide aesthetic input and help with the measurements.

The very last thing they did before settling into a room, to ensure that it was habitable, was to check that the toilet paper roll was hanging properly. In the vast majority of cases -- maybe 99% -- the hotels got it right, dispensing the paper from the front. How else would the "courtesy fold" be possible, should the hotel choose to take that route? But should someone have demonically switched the roll around -- well in those rare cases Mr. Patel and Mrs. Katel would turn the roll back to its proper position. Once that was done, and all the hooks and ledges were all in place, they could get on with the business of living their lives.

- Copyright 2015 by P.T. Gachot