37. Another interview with Duane Hawkinson, owner of Duane's pretty good Smokehouse Salsa, part 1

Editor’s Note: Before she joined the biker gang, the local newspaper reporter, short on funds, requested one more opportunity to submit a story about Hawkinson. Her editor agreed, on the condition that she phone in stories about life on the road with a biker gang. She agreed. Her fingers were crossed behind her back at the time.

Reporter: First of all, it’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re not dead. (See post #18.)

Hawkinson: It’s good not to be dead.

Reporter: I guess I have to blame myself.

Hawkinson: It’s spilt milk—or Aquavit. We all make mistakes.

Reporter: I read your interview with our newest intern. (See post #4.) And I must say, the little squirt was quite aggressive with you. Did you ever feel like punching him in the nose?

Hawkinson: Fortunately, the effects of The Road to Character had not worn off yet.

Reporter: Well, I would have popped him about 10 times and then thrown him to my biker associates.

Hawkinson: Yes. I imagine that would have given him second thoughts.

Reporter: I noticed after the interview you went ahead and told a story about how you were such a rotten little kid. I liked that. I liked how you explained how your childhood experiences led to your becoming the owner of Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa.

Hawkinson: Of course, they didn’t. You noticed that?

Reporter: Well, I read it pretty fast. At any rate, unlike that other jerk journalist, I’m going to take a different approach. I’d like to ask you one open-ended question and then just let you go with it. Are you good with that?

Hawkinson: Just give me a topic, and I’ll see what I can do.

Reporter: How about your childhood. Have you ever been arrested?

Hawkinson: No, but I was shot when I was a rotten little kid.

Reporter: Tell me about it.

Hawkinson: The shooters used blanks.

Reporter: Go on.

Hawkinson: I didn’t die. Again.

Reporter: Not much of a story.

Hawkinson: Admittedly. Let me try again.

Reporter: Have you ever done something really bad? Something that’s changed how you are now as a human being person?

Hawkinson: Well, I used to spend a lot of time with the little neighbor girl. She was two years younger than me, and she was quite affectionate.

Reporter: (cracking open another beer) This has possibilities.

Hawkinson: But she moved away. Ended up very well off financially. I should have kept in touch with her, in another manner of speaking.

Reporter: Is that it? Now I’m getting frustrated.

Hawkinson: Well, I could tell you about my summers in the woods . . .

Reporter: The tape is running.

Hawkinson:  When we weren’t playing scratch baseball games, we neighborhood kids lived our afternoons in the woods, a two by three square block of undeveloped land bordering the town dump, and just a short bike ride from the heart of our neighborhood. It had been shrinking for years as new houses intruded upon its space, but for much of my youth it was like exploring the Black Hills. When you’re little, everything is bigger.

Back in the sixties (and earlier, I presume) towns had dumps as a means of expediently ridding businesses and homeowners of their obsolete appliances and old oil cans and bald tires and whatever chemical solvents that were likely to enter the aquafer for the next two or three generations. Back then: NO QUESTIONS ASKED. But I believe “No Dumping” signs evolved from these dumps at some point in the reformist 1970s. I think that was around the time our neighborhood stopped being sprayed by DDT; I can still remember the old utility truck wheezing along the street with its BUG BOMB tank fogging everything in sight, including any kids riding their bikes or playing ball in their front yards.*

The town dump was a treasure trove for exploring by the rotten little kids of the neighborhood, which included just about all of us. (The little neighborhood girl who moved away is exempted, of course.) We were free to jump inside old refrigerators or hurl rocks at empty glass jugs, shattering them or ricocheting off their plaster corners, depending upon our aim and velocity. It was a miracle of sorts that none of us was ever hurt during our activities. If someone hurtled a chunk of wood at a glass milk bottle and completely missed it, however, he could expect a long string of taunts and expletives until someone else did something even more stupid. The pee wees in the gang would boldly join in with their older brothers until dirt bombs and threats of having their heads bashed in cooled their ardor somewhat. Sometimes, we’d line up Royal Crown Cola bottles and see who could smash them the fastest with slabs of old foundation concrete removed from demolished houses no longer fit for human habitation. (We liked to explore abandoned houses, but our breaking and entering is another story.)

It never occurred to any of us that the bullet-pocked Mobile signs or oil cans or pop or beer bottles or rusted out pieces of antiques or car parts would ever be the objects of future pickers’ scavenger hunts. The future to us was pretty much limited to waiting until the weekend to sneak into an R-rated movie. The Last House on the Left was one of my favorites.

I also learned from personal experience that the town dump was a place to dispose of animals, usually stray dogs. I can still remember playing with a collie one day; it was a beautiful dog, friendly, nice temperament, with big loving eyes, and a noticeable cry in its bark. I could have petted it all day, but it ran off and never returned. About a week later, I found it in the weeds at the edge of the town dump; the terrible sounds of maggot-bearing flies swarming over it caught my attention. I approached cautiously, afraid of what I'd  find, afraid to see my new friend with a bullet wound in its head. Its once beautiful fur was splattered and matted in blood. Its eyes, gray and cloudy, were still partially opened; its tongue was hanging out—as if thirsting for a final drink of water.  It had been dumped and left to rot--left to the maggots and the other vermin. No burial. The ironic executioner: The town sheriff who supplemented his income as a dog catcher. Unfortunately, there were no animal shelters, no Humane Society (although it had started in 1954) in our neck of the woods back then. His solution was as quick and brutal as it was unjust: A .45 caliber bullet from a government issued service revolver into the brain of an abandoned pet, my new friend, if only for a little while.

Reporter: (blowing her nose) The tape is almost out. Let’s take a break for a few moments before continuing.

*DDT was banned in 1972. Lead paint wasn’t outlawed until 1978. Asbestos in 1989. Lead gas wasn’t banned until 1996. In retrospect, most of our formative years were leaden with toxins. To this day, I wonder how years of exposure had affected us rotten little kids of the neighborhood.