Hazardous Materials (Montana Revisited)

(i took these ones on my phone and the videos too. Lucie took the one of Tim and I)

Met up with T. Cowie on the way back home from Seattle. He skated Bozeman park with his signature hazardous style. Here's a POWERFIST line I took of the kid on my phone.

shit's kinda lame I gotta send you guys to youtube for this video but whatever. either fuck blogspot or fuck me for not knowing how to upload video

anyways Tim's pretty much the man in Big Sky, MT. He goes into the deli and gets kick downs and wins snowboarding events and popularity contests and gets free bar tabs for a year. shit like that. we had a rad time with him in Montana. One day we went to Yellowstone and we're fortunate enough to come across a bear.



Yellowstone is right down the road from Big Sky by Montana standards. (It's like a forty minute ride) We happened to roll through during a National Park promotional week of some sort, where they were waiving the $25.00 entrance fee to the park. Score! There were hardly any other visitors there in late April, although it was pretty much "55 and sunny" all over MT the whole four days we were there.

PECKHAM'S PRICE by Jon Hanks

a vague sequel: (stolen internet photos once again. sorry, folks)

     Councilman Peckham jolted awake, delirious and drenched in sweat. He sat upright in his king size bed next to Brenda, his wife of twenty years.
“Jesus, Brenda, I’m finished.”
“It’s done, Ed, now shut up and let me sleep.”
Brenda Peckham had truly had it. Married to the councilman, who was at one time one of the city’s most prominent public figures and now was one of its most notoriously and unmistakably corrupt, Brenda felt she had pretty much seen it all, and at this point she was tired of seeing it. She had come to expect, as most of the town’s residents who were involved in these sorts of things had, that nine times out of ten if something dirty went down in the town’s political proceedings, her husband had a hand in it.

Last year his name had come up in a property tax scandal involving misappropriating public funds and falsifying public documents. Shortly thereafter he was in the paper again when he got into a fight with a local businessman outside of a bar in the middle of the afternoon. Most people who read the paper didn’t know that when Councilman Peckham was arrested, the police didn’t charge him on the cocaine he had in his pocket.
The councilman had skated on so much thin ice for so long, until he finally found himself with just enough power and influence to keep one step ahead of the game, as he so often called it--one step being a major reduction from his preferred modus operandi of three or four. He was a man who was accustomed to playing the game and to usually winning--via charm, smooth talking, bribery and outright theft. His misdeeds though, albeit not without a few black eyes (both proverbial and physical), had been able to provide he and his family with a very agreeable lifestyle.
But this lifestyle was not without its consequences. As Peckham grew older he found himself also growing closer to mental collapse. There was so much guilt. There were so many horrible things he had done. He began to experience highly intense periods of doubt, self-loathing and trepidation.

Peckham’s most recent exploit turned out to be the nail in the coffin, over a decade in the making. Eleven years prior, the councilman had brokered a deal through which the city purchased several acres of land for development from a failed chemical waste disposal company. The city got a cheap deal and the selling company got rid of the tainted property without having to pay for any of the cleanup.
The land in question was developed into Marshall Playground, featuring tennis courts, a baseball field, a playground, and about an acre of underdeveloped natural woodlands, that the local kids in the neighborhood took to making their own. A community grew around Marshall Playground, and it was a community of which Ed Peckham, his wife Brenda and their eight-year-old son were an active part. Picnics and baseball games permeated the park’s history and its users’ memories.
But eleven years later it had eventually come out that Peckham and his sub-committee had never actually overseen the park’s cleanup. Until a reporter from the Boston Globe wrote a story about expropriated chemical sites in Massachusetts and their connection to high cancer rates in the area, the group had been regarded in the community as heroes. But the writer’s research eventually led her to Peckham’s sub-committee and their blatant lack of follow-through and regard for public safety; their grossly outlandish display of negligence and misappropriation, as the woman had written it.
When the reporter had called Peckham and asked about the records of the work order for the chemical cleanup, he knew it was the first of many such phone calls. She eventually had obtained his home number, throwing him off his already feeble guard. The reporter’s voice was knowing and crisp through the receiver.
“Councilman Peckham, how is it that there are no public records of the work order for this cleanup? Was your office not responsible for the overseeing of this project and the filing of the associated paperwork, because I can‘t seem to track any of it down.”
Peckham knew he was screwed. He boldly told her that the cleanup had indeed occurred and that he didn’t know what happened to the paperwork but would have his secretary track it down. He also told her he was unaware of a high cancer rate in the area.
“I’ve lived in the area myself for over twenty years and everyone I know in the area is fine,” he heard himself choke out before abruptly hanging up.
The councilman was rattled. He knew he had given the reporter shaky responses at best. Everyone in the area knew about the high cancer rate. It’d be like asking someone in West Virginia if they had ever heard of black lung. He felt transparent, even over the phone.
Since the subsequent article had come out Ed had lost his job and was awaiting his criminal trial hearing in the matter. He slept very little and began to lose weight. His beard grew ragged and unkempt. He couldn‘t bring himself to go down and clean out his office.

On this ill-slept night , Peckham chopped a line of cocaine onto the mirror by his bed stand and gazed out his bedroom window into the stark moonlight. The light glistened off of the river’s mouth and shined brightly in Peckham’s eyes as he snorted the white powder up his nose.
He immediately chopped out and snorted another large line and got dressed. He was not exactly sure what was compelling him to do so, but he knew he had to get out of the house. He walked out into the moonlight, and down toward the seawall that guarded his and the other big, ornate homes from the unpredictable winds and tides of the mouth of the river on his left.
Walking along the seawall, he turned right on Perkins St. and up toward Marshall Playground. He knew there was nothing he could do now, as he absently walked through the playground. He remembered teaching his son, who was now off at college in Colorado, to catch a baseball right where he stood.
He found himself pulled toward the thicket of pricker bushes beyond the outfield. He passed through the gap in the sagging chain link fence, overrun with marsh reeds and wildflowers, that led into the neighborhood kids’ homemade BMX trails, a series of winding narrow passages made out of mud and tree stumps, that the local kids stunt-jumped their bikes off of.
He passed through the opening and walked over the muddied trails, a thin stream of mucus dripping from one of his raw nostrils. Snorting furiously, as some defiant act against the drip at the back of his throat. Peckham knew kids drank and partied out here and that the trails were dangerous as hell, but as he carefully navigated the muddy path in his loafers, cocaine dripping from his nose and down his throat, miserable and dejected, he couldn’t help but envy the fun these kids were having.
His shoe sunk deeply into the muddied trail, squishing the roach from some teenager’s joint firmly into the mud underneath his loafer. He missed his son more than ever.

MARSHALL PARK by Jon Hanks

here's a little short story thingy that's kind of like part 1 in a weird series that's vaguely inspired by Perkins Playground
-i stole all the photos from various websites 'cause i thought it looked wicked naked

Steve never seemed to tire of telling Craig and Jason to stay off the trails and out of the woods.
“You’ll just stick to hanging at the playground and ball field if you little fuckheads know what‘s good for you,“ he had warned them just the day before, jabbing his brittle finger into Craig‘s small chest as he had done it.
But now on this day with Steve’s warning ringing hot in their eleven-year-old ears, the boys were powerless against the forbidden allure of the woods‘ homemade BMX trails. The trails were originally built and established by the older kids in the neighborhood, mostly by Craig’s brother, Steve. Craig and Jason wanted to ride the trails like Steve and his friends had done before them. Steve used to live for riding bikes, but now that he was older, it seemed to them that he was trying to hog the woods all to himself, and it wasn’t to ride BMX. Steve, like most teenagers in the neighborhood were no longer really interested in riding bikes. They used the woods and the old BMX trails as a place to go make out with girls or smoke pot.
Craig knew none of this when he went by Jason’s house to retrieve his friend for the day‘s activities. Jason quickly clambered down the weathered front steps of the split federal that his father rented for the two of them, the springs of the screen door whining in the early summer sunshine.
“Whatup sucka!” Craig greeted his friend. “You ready to rip up these jumps or what?”
“You ready to keep up?” Jason responded as he pulled his bike from his father’s storage shed.
They pedaled hard off the sidewalk, across the street and through the small playground where they had both grown up--in the sandbox as toddlers, in summer at day caps and pick-up games on the cracked basketball court--and now as a jump-off point for their daily boyish mischief.
Craig led the race out across the ragged infield and depleted pitcher’s mound and onto the unkempt grasses that were the outfield, toward the chain link fence that separated the ball field from the overgrown woods and their BMX trails. As they pushed their bikes through the chain link fence and out toward the clearing Jason nearly smashed into his friend’s back. Craig was stopped dead in his tracks and petrified to see Steve and one of his buddies laughing and smoking some weed on a log very close to the clearing.
The younger boys froze, thus far unseen by Steve and his cackling stoned friend.
“Let’s get out of here,” Craig whispered. Jason was already creeping his bike backwards through the fence.
“Damn dude, that was close,” Jason exclaimed when the boys were back out on the ball field.
“No shit huh,” Craig blurted. “My brother would’ve rung my frickin’ neck if he knew I saw him smoking pot!”
“I guess we’re not gonna get to ride those trails today after all,” Jason said as he squinted into the sunshine.
“Yeah, we’ll have to try another day,“ Craig responded pragmatically. “ Let’s ride downtown and check out the flea market or something.”
Jason was truly crestfallen. It had been about a week ago when he and Craig had first tried to ride the trails. They had spent a few afternoons since covertly stomping out a new hole in the fence while ducking Steve and his friends coming in and out of the old one. The younger boys lived their lives in fear of Steve and his buddies, but they resented them more. Even though most of them were now getting their licenses and were able to leave the neighborhood, and even the town, they still hung out in the woods all the time, and didn‘t even ride the trails. Jason truly loved freestyle BMX and he hated the fact that the older kids had quit doing it, yet still monopolized the trails.
The next day the boys met up around noon under the oak tree in front of Craig’s house, its branches allowing as much sunlight to hit the sidewalk below as they would all day. The plan was to get out on the trails while Steve was still at his part-time job at the grocery store, and to be back by the time he was out. Barring one of Steve’s buddies showing up for an early afternoon toke or date, the boys were free and clear to ride the trails for a good chunk of time.
Riding over narrow muddy passages, spring-loaded with jumps and bumps that Steve and his friends had fashioned out of the forest’s gargantuan root systems and fluctuating ground levels, Jason and Craig were both ecstatic. Smiles were permanently plastered on their faces as their small legs whirled them through the gullies and gulches and overgrown mossy jumps and hits.
Hours passed and the sunlight waned.
“Man it’s getting kinda dark,” Craig realized aloud. “I bet my dad’s almost home. Steve too. I should head home for supper.”
“You think I could come over?” Jason asked his friend, expecting the same “sure” that he usually got.
Jason ate at Craig’s house quite often, a fact that was not lost on Craig’s parents who at best had strained relations with Jason’s drunken father.
“I don’t think so man, my mom says that she can’t feed the whole neighborhood all the time. She says your dad should do something for you guys for a change”, Craig blurted through the unfiltered cruelty of a child.
“Oh, okay man. That‘s cool,” Jason reeled. “Well I guess I’m gonna stay back here and ride the trails for awhile more then. I don’t really have to be home at a certain time like you do. My dad’s probably asleep on the couch and he might take me up to Wendy’s later anyway. I’d rather have that than your mom’s food.”
“Whatever dude,” Craig sneered. “I’ll see ya tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Jason agreed.
And then Craig was gone, headed back the way the boys had come, to have dinner with his family.
Jason was content to have the trails to himself in what was left of the fading daylight. He found a certain confidence in being alone. He allowed himself to whoop and yell as he worked on his jumps and tricks.
He started watching the pros on the X Games at a very young age and it wasn’t long before his dad had gotten him a BMX of his own. The bike soon engulfed the boy’s entire world. He wanted to one day be a pro BMXer like his hero, Ryan Nyquist.
Pedaling down the decrepit, homegrown BMX trails Jason caught air off a large jump and tried to do a tailwhip like Nyquist.
Something was wrong.
In the dark forest evening Jason felt time slow down and almost stop. He felt the gravitational pull of one of the large oak trees calling him out like a noisy alarm clock, distant and unrelenting.
He pictured his father dozing on the couch with only the TV on and Craig and Steve goofing around at the dinner table in their brightly lit kitchen. He pictured his mother-long-since moved away from he and his father. He pictured Ryan Nyquist doing a backflip at the X Games. He pictured a number five with cheese from Wendy‘s, his favorite.
Mid-air, the eleven-year-old boy heaved his bike away from his flailing body and smashed into the ninety-year-old tree, whiplashing his skull against its thick bark, and knocking all the vibrant life out of him nearly instantly.
Jason’s body slumped across the muddy trail. With his bicycle mangled laying beside him, his brain gave out, and he died.

Walking

On the way to work today
I saw some skateboarders
They were hippie-jumping a bench

On the sidewalk in front of me
Here comes an old lady
In a mobilized wheelchair

And here I am
Walking
In Between