Relax And Move On Pt. 1

“Unhitch the wagon, people. We haven’t got all day,” Tom belted, holding the gate open for two elderly women in hooded parkas who shuffled along at a snail’s pace in the gravel. “We’re burning daylight here”.
The gate flanked the Ready-Mix Cement Factory and led to a dirt road along a series of irrigation ponds near Ventura and not far from the beach. I was already stressed and we hadn’t been two minutes into the walk. Tom had us there early. He told us 7a.m. but the true meeting time for the birdwalk was 7:30. I think he was operating on military time, hurry up and wait.
“Holy shit! Got the Geriatric crowd today,” cracked Tom with a wry grin, taking a sip of his Starbucks Moca Latte which he called “his only vice”.
Tom Coughlin was our group leader for the guided birdwalk to the Saticoy Ponds. He was around forty with a grey-flecked goatee, bomber jacket, safari hat, leather work gloves, camouflage shorts with a brace on his left knee. Pink Floyd concert T-shirt. A shark tooth hung at a chain on his neck, which he swore was from a megalodon but I had seen a megalodon fossil and this was much smaller.
The sky was clear but an arctic chill brought snow to the distant peaks of Sulphur Mountain and the great Doppler Radar ball that loomed in the distance. We dressed warm for the early morning but knew the cloud cover would drift out to sea by noon time.
“I got two rules, real simple. When I talk, you do not. When I go like this,” he held up one hand, “Everyone stop and shut your traps.”
I looked around to the other faces of the small party of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society who were mostly senior citizens. My son Jacob, who is a teenager, and one other teenage girl with older parents, and I were the only ones under sixty, except for Tom. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and not troubled the slightest bit by Tom’s abrasive tone.
My son muttered, “what a douche”, just loud enough for everyone to hear but I don’t think he meant that to happen. Tom clearly heard this and I noticed a slight tic, his eye twitching uncontrollably as he gave my son the slow burn.
I was looking forward to this day because it was going to be a chance to have some “quality” time to do the father-son bonding thing. Already I could see there were going to be challenges.
“What we’re gonna do today is explore a series of ponds that are diverted waters from the Santa Clara River for agriculture irrigation and groundwater recharge. See, the water comes in here and it’s full of salt from the ocean, so they got to process it and remove the salt content,” Tom explained.
“And you’re telling us this, why?” my son blurted sarcastically. I gave him a slight nudge.
“Because you might just learn somethin’ today, youngblood.”
“What kind of birds are we going to see here, Tom?” A woman asked with eyes appearing like they were three times their normal size through thick glasses.
“We’re gonna see a lot of shore birds, Egrets, Blue Heron, ducks, lots of different ducks, and if we’re lucky, Larry might make an appearance,” he explained.
“Who’s Larry?” my son asked annoyed.
“The Bald Eagle,” Tom said.
He suddenly made a loud squawking sound two inches from my head. “LARRY!” He yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. “He answers to Larry but he’s vain, man. He’s a vain bird.”
I couldn’t hear out of my left ear for like five minutes.
Birds were scarce as we made our way along the rectangular ponds that contained only a puddle of water in the muddy bottoms. I thought this was a strange site for a birdwalk, much more industrial than I expected. Tom blamed the lack of birds on local agriculture that sprayed pesticides and spread cellophane plastic over the fields which he claimed exuded a toxic gas when hit by direct sunlight. I thought the lack of birds was mainly due to Tom’s booming voice.
“Towee! At three o’clock! In the tree to the left of the road sign,” a tiny woman named Barbara shouted, glassing a thicket of pepper trees across the 118 freeway.
“Fuck Towees,” Tom replied. “One flew into my truck and almost wasted my ass.”
“There are other people here, Tom, who might be interested in seeing it,” Barbara said.
“Fuck it, Barbara, we’re not looking at Towees. They’re ugly anyways.”
“They’re not ugly,” she said, peering through her binoculars.
“They’re brown. They got no distinctive marks. Their song is fer shit. Forget it.”
“Maybe some of these new people don’t know what a Towee is, Tom?”
“Do you want to lead this, Barbara? Can you get access to a site like this? I don’t think so. Relax and move on.”
That was his catch phrase, “relax and move on”. He generally applied it when someone was challenging his authority or doing something he didn’t care for, which seemed quite often.
I began to surmise a few things about Tom. One was that he probably smoked crack at some point in his life and another was that he had probably killed at least one human being, either by accident or on purpose.
I noticed the viewfinders of my binoculars were fogged and showed it to Tom to get his advice.
“Problem is you got moisture in your optics. Once that happens, may as well chuck ‘em in the trash,” he said.
“I think I left them in my car overnight so I wouldn’t forget them.”
“Need to spend a few more dollars, J-1. It’s like anything, you skimp on the front end, you pay on the back.”
He began calling me J-1 and my son J-2.
A friendly rivalry developed between Tom and my son, who is usually very open about expressing his displeasure at authority figures who clearly shouldn’t be.
“Hey J-2, why don’t you smile more? It ain’t that early,” Tom said. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. “Smile more and the world smiles back.”
I cringed as my son said under his breath, “eat me”. It’s not that my son is always disrespectful to his elders but if he recognizes that someone is a little off, he will let them know it unrelentingly.
At one point Tom set up his scope and had my son check it out. “Have a look at that, youngblood. Ever seen anything like that?”
My son gave it a quick glance and offered his obviously forced grin with trademark self-effacing nod. Tom slapped him hard on the back, laughing. “See, he likes it! He’s catching on! Good man! Good man!”
I looked through the scope where he had a mangy crow in his sites which reminded me of the funny shot in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
The group began to separate but Tom kept us in a tightly bunched formation.
“I’m liable for your asses so stick together. Who’s that numbnuts way out there?”
“Carl Feinberg,” someone replied.
A stocky, hunched figure dressed for an Arctic expedition, Carl Feinberg, was engrossed peering through his telescope at something across the highway and had fallen behind the group.
“Feinberg! Feinberg!” Tom yelled and his voice echoed off the distant hills. “We stick together, man! This isn’t a freakin’ Wal-Mart!”
“I think he’s having trouble with his scope,” another birder said.
“He better not have a hypoglycemic fit like last time. I’m not waiting for that dipshit while he munches on a Twinkie.”
My son, Jacob, was starting to come awake, noticing the cute blond with braces, Degan, who was about his age. He struck up some small talk with her, leaving me alone with Tom. Jacob always had that strange good fortune some males possess that wherever they go, they always run into cute young women, even a Saturday morning birdwalk pervaded with senior citizens.
“This is a Zeiss Diascope 85 with Lotutec coating, eighty-five millimeter, baby,” Tom said showing me his telescope. “That’s a fifteen hundred dollar scope, bitch. Nitrogen filling. No fogging.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool”, he said sarcastically.
The group was excitedly watching a Peregrine Falcon perched on a distant telephone pole. Tom explained that the falcon’s favorite food was the ducks and coots that frequented the ponds, that, so far this morning had been non-existent. He was able to further illustrate this point when we found the mutilated remains of a dead coot. Most of the bird was missing, only a torn wing and tail feathers.
“Yep, that’s a coot.”
“Aren’t they the ones with really strange feet for an aquatic bird?” One birder asked.
“Yeah, actually got one right here.” Tom produced a mummified coot foot from his pocket. And sure enough the foot had talons as opposed to webbed footing. “Falcon schwacked this guy too. Seen him do it. Not here but up in Oxnard.”
I was about to take a bite out of a blueberry nut protein bar when he conveyed to me one of his unifying principles of life: “What you put into your body, is what you get out, J-1. Shit in, shit out.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Not just talkin’ food. Words, emotions, music, movies, whatever.”
“But then how do you know if it’s actually ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you?”
“You’ll know. Maybe not right away. But you’ll know.”
He then told me how he turned himself over to the will of Jesus Christ, his one true Lord and Savior after years of wandering in the “dark forest of the soul”. Personally I wasn’t sure how cool Jesus was with all the foul language.
“I ain’t saying that I totally got it licked but I’m on the road. That is, I ain’t sinless but I definitely ‘sin-less’.”
“Are you a member of both the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Audubon Societies?” I asked. “I was thinking about joining one of those groups but don’t know which is better.”
He then explained how he was a member of the Conejo Valley group and referred to the Ventura County Audubon Society as ‘stupid pricks’.
“They put out a newsletter. Big deal. Then they cry when they don’t have the funding or can’t figure out how to attract new members.”
“That’s not good,” I said, trying to sound even vaguely interested.
“Ventura Fair, this year, I ran the whole show. Paid for the booth, did the artwork, recruited like 40 new members…this was on my own time, you understand.”
“Oh yeah. I saw the booth this year.”
“That was me. I spent the whole week at the thing and I have yet to be reimbursed for the booth and the artwork. My time is my time but you’d think at least they should have the balls to write me a check after they said they would.”
“That sucks.”
“And the president of VCAS, Melinda Abrego. She can go fuck herself. Stupid, ungrateful, bitch.”
I had met Melinda Abrego once, on the birdwalk to the Botanical Gardens. First off, she was about 80 years old and secondly, was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I had ever met. Tom seemed to have it out for the elderly.
“Losers and bums. They assume society’s gonna carry ‘em on their backs.”
“Well, sometimes it’s difficult, you know, when you’re older, it’s harder to work, get around.”
“Oh, fuck you. Give me a break. Most of these jokers are on medication as an excuse. They can work just as well as you or I can,” Tom said, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. I caught a few nervous grins from elderly birders.
I found it difficult to fathom how Tom attracted anyone to his walks. He imparted very little bird knowledge along the trip and spewed unrelenting venom and negativity. His disposition was almost diametrically opposed to the birdwatching mindset. The birders in this group seemed to regard Tom as a troubled grandchild, with more affectionate amusement than disdain. It even appeared there was the subtle element of these people really wanting to humor and help Tom by being cheerful witnesses to his guided rants. I considered the wise words of Lao Tzu, “A good man is a bad man’s teacher. A bad man, is a good man’s material.”