Lake Havasu City, Arizona is one the most fun places to be on Planet Earth, especially on a Holiday weekend when the Southern California partygoers flock in.
On such a weekend those that might normally indulge in a few cocktails might get caught up in the moment and find themselves poop in the pants plastered, those that normally indulge in more plant-based forms of enjoyment might partake in Fatties that would be the envy of Snoop Dog and shrooms that would make Hunter S. Thompson see things he ain’t never seen before. Those that normally don’t partake in nude slip-and-slide and then forgot to slather their entire body in SPF-One Bazillion sunscreen would certainly turn pasty skin that usually never sees the light of day bright lobster red.
But as fun as it is, Havasu was a difficult place for a working-class person to migrate to with the expectation of maintaining the same standard of living that is attainable in a locale with much higher wages and with comparable housing costs.
Such was the lesson learned while living there for a short while back in the day. I had landed a dream job that was super pimp and fun and exciting and mentally challenging, but with less than stellar pay and the savings were subsidizing the rent. “How do you do it?”, I sullenly asked a friend who seemed to have it all.
This was just a few short years before the housing crash and Great Recession.
“It’s easy, dude!”, he replied, “you just buy a house and then use the equity as your personal ATM. Need something? Refinance! That way there is no 4×4 payment for you and no payments on your lady’s SUV. No boat payment. No payments on yours or your lady’s Harley. Heck, no payments on your girlfriend’s Harley either! It’s just that easy!”
Everything about that type of financial planning was unsettling to the staid Upper Great Lakes mindset. We ultimately left Havasu and returned to the Northwoods and then bought and slowly fixed up and paid for a house, bought and methodically paid off new vehicles, and either built or refurbished a few toys out in the backyard workshop. But in the back of my mind lingered the allure of fuck the bank, as well as work on Monday, as well as it all and let’s have fun, as well as you if you don’t like that and as well as it, I am wasted! There may be hell to pay tomorrow, today is today!
The day the markets crashed, I thought about Havasu from the comfort of my paid for house and lamented the hell they may have to pay that day but was also green with envy of the fun they had no doubt enjoyed just the day before.
To further bolster the bank account once back in the Northwoods, the decision was made to work rotational shifts away from home in the very lucrative oilfields. While the placement of the decimal point on an oilfield paycheck was indeed dizzying, the work was very difficult and lonely, and employment was very market driven and nomadic. Work schedules and jobs could be downright erratic. Time spent away from home varied from weeks to months and locations varied from patches in Texas to the Arctic to North Dakota back to Texas then Colorado then back to Texas then back to North Dakota. There may be a forgotten patch or two in between as well.
In between the not so certain oilfield stints there was local employment with a forest products producer and hauler who graciously accepted me back into the fold each and every time the price of crude suddenly dropped a few bucks per barrel, resulting in us oilfield employees being ignominiously sent packing.
It was on the 5th of May during one of those in-between stints, while hauling a load of pine wood chips from the U.P. to a paper mill in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, that thoughts of Havasu entered my mind. I wondered about how much Cinco de Mayo fun they were having and how much poop was in the pants of the drinkers and how much giggly nonsense was going on amongst the Ras’s and how much blistering skin was created by the newbie nudies. And I felt like I was missing out.
After delivering the load the truck needed fuel.
At the regular fuel stop for that run worked an ever present feisty, chatty, witty, engaging, highly entertaining and somewhat elderly lady. Hers was also a busy shift, as there was always a few of midnight cowboys at her late-night counter.
“Cinco de Mayo this, Cinco de Mayo that!”, she exclaimed to the driver ahead of me. “What is Cinco de Mayo and why should I care? Everybody keeps wishing me Happy Cinco de Mayo and I just don’t know!” The driver offered no explanation and simply chuckled and walked away.
“There are only 5 minutes left in the day, but Happy Cinco de Mayo to you”, I heartily wished her at my turn to approach the counter.
She immediately launched back into “Oh, here we go! Cinco de Mayo this, Cinco de Mayo that! Everybody wishes me Happy Cinco de Mayo and why should I care? I don’t even know what that is!”
“The 5th of May is the celebration of a battle day in Mexico”, I replied nonchalantly while signing the fuel slip.
She stared back blankly and offered no response and suddenly there was the horrible sound of the needle scratch and the imploding realization that I was worse than the most obnoxious heckler in a comedy club. I had disrupted her spiel.
“It’s…it’s really a big deal in the Southwest”, I stammered. “In fact, on the 5th of May when I lived in Arizona everybody drank too much, smoked too much, and would rip off their swimsuits while out in the hot sun and get horribly sunburnt in places not meant to be sunburnt. They called Cinco de Mayo Cinco de Drinko!”
“Oh, THAT Cinco de Mayo! Do you know what Cinco de Mayo means in Wisconsin?”, she shot back and with that gracefully cast forth an imaginary fly-fishing rod with an imaginary line arced in a perfect lazy-S and with an imaginary tied fly racing straight past the corner of my mouth.
“No,” I unwarily replied, a split second before the imaginary hook was set.
“Oh my, yes! That Cinco de Mayo, it’s on the 5th of May you know!”, she chirped merrily. “That Cinco di Mayo in Wisconsin means that outside screwing starts today!”
I and the handful of drivers lingering about burst into laughter so hard that it could have forced milk out through our nostrils had any of us been indulging in dairy products.
On the long ride home, there came not only the 6th of May but also more time to ponder. Then came the realization that while those in Havasu may have been having an awful lot of fun, they were not having all the fun. Heck, in Wisconsin outside screwing starts on the 5th of May. Just ask the little old lady who used to work the night shift at the Kwik Trip!
Happy Outside Screwing, Wisconsin.
The Unexpected Minimalist 