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Armadillos in the Snow

Are words really necessary?

Ned Ball: A History

Ned was this really, really old guy who lived next door to us, right on the corner of 900E and 200N in Provo. He was a nice guy who would occasionally come over and sputter some random piece of wisdom that would always confuse us. We'd sometimes see him out in his backyard pruning bushes or something, and we'd hide and make strange noises, to which he'd respond in different humorous ways.

Ned was a legend in the making, though, and he needed to be immortalized. In our living room at the Hole we had two folding foam chairs at each end, with Preston's solid walnut, 60's speaker cabinets (which could literally make your ears bleed - not like the crap electronics they make today) on either side of each seat. We came across a crusty old nerf soccer ball out in our little garage, probably left over from Mark's stay at the house.

Andrew, Preston and I used to take turns sitting in the chairs, throwing the ball to each other in a sort of modified hot potato fashion. We soon began to make up arcane rules to the game, coming up with names for each player, including the "hook" and the"post" positions. One night after a strange encounter with our neighbor again, Andrew decreed that the game would forever more be know as "Ned Ball." Here I am in the midst of a game, sitting beneath the massive pen drawing Preston and I did of a scene from 'Where the Wild Things Are' which took a freaking long time to do.

We played Ned Ball almost every day, and soon had the living room crowded with cheering, and obviously incredibly bored individuals, all watching the game and singing its praises. In fact, we even developed a theme song, including the names of all of the characters. It grew and became a bit of mythology about Ned's life, placing him at the creation of Ned Ball as its first real champion. I'll try to track down the words...

Dead Dog

OK, on occassion we did some things that I am not too proud of, but in a very sick way, this one is still kind of funny. Contrary to popular belief at the time, we didn't kill the dog. Someone hit it with their car on 900E, and left it on the side of the road right near our house on 200N. We just...posed next to it.

I don't know who's idea it was to place a beer bottle next to it (I think it was Jeff Miner), but I do remember adding the little sticky note that said "Drinking and cross-walks -- they don't mix." We left the note and bottle, took the picture, and then called the county to come remove the carcass.

The sad part is that a day or so later, we saw flyers all over Provo, obviously written by a child, looking for their lost dog. Andrew joked about calling the family and telling them that we had killed their dog, but that was too mean. I think oone of us ended up calling though and telling one of the parents that we had found it, and the city had picked it up.

Really sad. But a funny pic, in a morbid, disturbing way.

Paintings

Preston and I did a lot of painting and other artwork while living at The Hole. One time I painted portraits of both of us -- as super heroes:

Preston as The Flying Ernesto

Me as Super Julio

Origin of The Hole

My first visit to The Hole was fascinating. My friend Mark Allen lived there with his wife Sue and a couple of their kids. I visited Mark with his brother and my good friend, Scott, who was in all of my industrial design classes (and who now works for Yakima). Mark was out back, working on his Porsche, restoring it from a rusty mess. Blow torch in hand, Mark said "Hey, take a look at this" to which he walked us over to the side of his house, and applied the blue flame to side shingles. The paint flittered away as if being hit with a sandblaster, but surprisingly the house did not burn. He switched off the blow torch and said "put your hand on it - its not hot" and I nervouosly poked at it. The house shingles were asbestos.

At the end of the year (sophmore) Mark informed me that they would be leaving Provo and moving back to Redding, CA, (where he went on to help his dad run the family business, and also started a couple radio and tv stations) and that the house was going to be available. Preston and I talked it over and agreed to take it on for the fall.

The place was kind of a dump -- Mark had rebuilt a car engine on the living room carpet, the plumbing was questionable, and there was 50's wallpaper throughout. But with asbestos exterior and poured plaster walls that did not allow any level of sound to permeate the confines of our living space (not from a lack of trying), we were sold on the idea. Shortly after moving in, I painted a small sign with the name of our house -- "The Hole" -- and placed it against the tree in our front yard. The sign was a constant point of friction with the house owners, who always removed it when visiting (usually to yell at me about late rent) -- but we always found it again and put it back out front.

Satan Dance

Andrew may have been mad at the world, but he loved the Satan Dance (View image). Who didn't. When the mood was right, which usually meant Andrew in his Cat In The Hat pajamas, and me in some kind of thrift store polyester shiny shirt, we put on Ministry's Stigmata and lost ourselves to the beat of the drums, the harsh and blazing sound of the synths, and the screams of Alain Jorgenson. The dance was simple enough: thrash about, allow yourself to drool, and, if you tried hard enough, to hyperventilate. It was like a mosh pit without the violence -- and without the neo-punk losers. Oh, and you had to wear a silly looking tuke (sp?).

About a year after I left The Hole, I was at a conference in San Diego with some co-workers. It was one of those touchy-feely seminar thingys where you were all there to bond and learn how to be better co-workers, and all that crap. I mentioned the Satan Dance to someone in passing, reflecting on how fun it was to just thrash around in polyester. He became offended. Not sure if it was the fact that I had a dance named after Satan, or that I occasionally wore polyester.

Did I mention it was shiny polyester? Because there's a difference, you know.

Tree Chair

Nothing more basic and pure in life than an old wooden chair strapped to the upper branches of a giant tree in your front yard, hidden away from anyone passing by on the sidewalk below. It's a great place to sit and read, to launch an attack (fruit, water balloons, etc) on passerbys, or to make strange sounds to confuse and disturb elderly neighbors working in their yards.