Picking broccoli out of the car, Ep 16

juliemorrisonwrite
May 13
2 min read

Lisa fondly recalls moments from the Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff (with a cliffhanger in the reading) before Julie brings us back south to Papago Park and Zoo in Phoenix.

Mug: Sweet Shoppe, Flagstaff, AZ

From an unpublished television news memoir, “Standup Woman”

by Lisa Schnebly Heidinger

San Francisco Earthquake

Even though the Bureau wasn’t at the 1989 World Series at Candlestick Park during the San Francisco earthquake, it impacted me. An event stemming from it lodged in my mind, like a few persistent lines of song that return when you aren’t guarding against them.

I learned later that since there were so few satellite trucks there, and everyone in the nation wanted live coverage, Tom Heidinger had transmitted for 36 hours straight. Then he slept for a few hours.

A few days later, Schmidt and I walked into the Bureau mid-afternoon. The young guy behind the desk (they rotated often enough and seemed so indifferent to us that we didn’t learn their names) bestirred himself enough to say to me, “A guy left you this.” He held out a brown bag folded over.

I opened it to see a mint green women’s tee; pulled out, the front read, “I survived the San Francisco earthquake.”

It had to be Tom.

“How long ago? Which way did he leave? Did he say anything?”

The guy didn’t share the urgency of my questions with his answers.

“Not really.” A beat. “Why, you have a crush on him or something?”

A crush? On Tom? Multiple images flooded my brain screen: his straight blon hair, and also his broad-shouldered, purposeful walk; his husky voice and laugh -- the keys clipped to his belt; his essential aloneness, -- and the postcards I mailed to him from Cameron and the Canyon.

“No,” I said. “Of course I don’t.”

I went into the women’s room across from the Bureau door to buy a little time from Schmidt. I felt like I needed a minute away from his curiosity, to dismiss the absurdity of that question; get my game face on. I felt numb, a bit nonplussed. And I couldn’t deny I was devastated I’d missed Tom. I wanted to see him, awfully bad.

A crush on Tom?

In high school I had written a poem titled “The Thought,” that was something like:

“It enters,

undetected

like a germ

or the drop of water that becomes a stalactite;

So profane,

so against the party line

It is surely heresy

or salvation.”

Tom? Really?

I went into the office, showed Schmidt the shirt, and he shook his head.

“Tommy would have had to come, like six hours out of his way to do this,” he said. “He must really like you.”

“Well, I like him too,” I said lightly, thinking “hide in plain sight.”

That night I called Tom’s extension, 3452, to leave a thank you message. I felt empty as a corn husk when he didn’t answer.

Papago Ram

by Julie Morrison

A standing challenge:

who am I to approach, cross

this round earth and sky?

Picking broccoli out of the car, Ep 16

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