He May Have Been Stout, But He Was Phlegm Z To Me...

I often times think about my friend Phlegm.

Yeah, I know, but that's what I called him, anyway. He was from Denmark, originally, and learned most of his English at a later time in life, so some of the finer nuances of the language- like what the hell the word "phlegm" meant- was lost on him.

His real name was Phlegm - ing, and his last name started with a Z. So I called him "Phlegm Z" and he called me "Scotty" and we were happy to be friends.

I rented a small house on a big property once many years ago, and the owner of the property was a fairly good looking Danish guy named Sten who learned his English as a teenager in Texas. When he spoke, he had a strange accent that sounded like Fog Horn Leghorn the giant rooster- "I said I said I said..."

Somehow, he met up with Phlegm Z, and when Phlegm Z was in town, Sten rented him a room above his garage and the two could banter back and forth in Danish while the rest of us had muppet cook visions and enjoyed the musicality of their arguments.

Now the best way to describe Phlegm Z is to imagine a bowling ball attached to a barrel and given short but adequate legs to support this apparatus, and then you would tilt this all about 5 degrees too far in the forward direction. When Phlegm Z moved around, you always got the feeling he was trying to keep from falling down by moving at a faster clip than gravity.

Phlegm Z was one of those head-down, full-speed-ahead people that got way too much done and made the rest of the world look like equatorial slackers by comparison.

Phlegm Z was, at one time in his life or another, a government sharpshooter, a welder, an underwater welder (deep sea) , a merchant sailor, an engineer for Chevron on one of their tankers, an Alaskan bush pilot, a commercial airline pilot, a plumber, an electrician, a deputized Marshall, a dog sled racer, a winery mechanic, a computer repairman, an air taxi pilot in New York (he once flew Yoko Ono- "She was a bitch, man!") a gardener, and a BBQ expert. He was also a crackpot car mechanic (one of the best I've ever seen) and a boat mechanic.

But he was not a carpenter, and that's where I sometimes fit in to Phlegm Z's mad scheme of things.

For Phlegm Z was, indeed, at least partly mad.

What Phlegm Z truly was, was extremely high energy, extremely smart, and extremely stubborn. This combination served him well, in life, but it also got him into trouble.

Mischievous trouble.

My favorite kind of trouble.

The sort of trouble that makes for good stories later down the track.

Phlegm Z was the worst story-teller I ever met with all of the best stories. He'd tell me a story (like pulling burrs from a wool pair of socks) and the next time he'd want to tell it, I'd butt-in and tell it for him.

In his strongly Danish-accented English, he'd follow along and repeat stuff I said, and then he'd laugh and laugh and say things like "It's true, man!" and slap his thigh and laugh some more.

Phlegm Z never knew how funny he was until I came along.

I have a whole bunch of Phlegm Z stories. I'll tell them all eventually.

But for starters I just want to explain these three photographs and tell you about the stitches and the Bobcat and the tree stump volcano you see here.

Phlegm Z was flying for one of the mail courier companies. You know UPS, Fed Ex... as a pilot that flew two 23 minute flights everyday. He had an apartment in Oakland, California near the airport, where he slept Monday through Friday night. He would wake up at 5 am, get to the airport by six, do his pre-flight and then fly packages to a small local airport where a truck would meet him, and then he'd be done for the day until 5 pm, where he'd fly packages back down to Oakland in a 23 minute flight. During the day, he would work, fixing things for people or he'd work on this little bit of property he owned sort of out in the woods a ways.

This was Phlegm Z's weekend retreat- a bit of land carved into a hillside up a long quiet driveway and in a peaceful canyon full of trees. There was a small office with a shower and toilet in the back, a trailer, as you can see, and a nice big hot tub. Phlegm Z put in a beautiful garden and a lawn, with sprinklers, of course, and lighting and bells and whistles and all kinds of fun and neat things.

His first winter there it rained and rained and rained, and the retaining wall that had been steady for 15 years, collapsed on all of Phlegm Z's handiwork.

Phlegm Z flew up one morning and found about 400 yards of mud and clay, covering everything.

Holy Crap!

I stopped by on the following weekend because I heard about what happened, and with tears in his eyes, Phlegm Z was showing me the damage and acting like a defeated man.

I felt defeated too, looking at all the mud.

I told him I had some free time if he needed any help.

His eyes lit up and the possibilities were shooting around his skull like firecrackers in a coffee can, and the next thing you know, he had a "borrowed" Bobcat sitting in front of us with a broken hydraulic pump and he's showing me how to make the switch with a new rebuilt one...

He traded the repair of the Bobcat for the use of it (and little did the owner of the Bobcat know what sort of use Phlegm Z had in mind- 400 yards of mud, for starters).

I had never driven a Bobcat before, but I got in and drove it from about 7 am until about 9:30, when Phlegm Z would show up from his flying gig and then take a few hours at the controls. We decided the best thing to do was to dump all the mud over the hill below the flat part of his property and try to use a few fallen trees as a retaining wall of sorts to hold it back. So the two of us went at it like a couple of nutters, and we put maybe 14 hours a day on that Bobcat for an entire work week. Phlegm Z drove up from Oakland Saturday morning and got right back at it. I had something I was doing in the morning, but I told him I'd show up around 4 in the afternoon to take a shift on the toy... er, um... tool.

Phlegm Z was allowed to drink on Saturdays. He didn't fly on Saturdays, so those were the days he could could crack a beer or two (or a few more) and by the time I got there, Phlegm Z was quite drunk. He was also bleeding pretty badly (goodly?) from a gash in his arm, and the Bobcat was laying upside down about 40 feet below where it should have been. Phlegm had driven the Bobcat onto newly piled dirt, and the dirt just disappeared beneath him. He was harnessed in to a roll cage and he and the machine just rolled over and over through the thick forest brush. He came to a stop just before really getting rolling down a path that would have led to the roadway a couple of hundred yards down the hill.

"You OK Phlegm?"

"WHAT? Of course I'm OK! What do you think?"

"I think you are bleeding out of that gash in your arm."

"WHAT? Oh that! Oh THAT! Yes. Look at that! (Insert Danish swear words) I'm bleeding (Sailor ahead warning!) like a cunt!"

"Yes, you need stitches, dude."

"Can you sew?"

"What?"

"Can you SEW?"

"Me?"

"Can you SEW, man!!!?"

"Yeah, I can sew."

"Let me get my kit."

Phlegm Z went into his trailer and rummaged around with one arm, then came back outside. He had a medical kit, of sorts, and he handed it to me and told me to look for and take out the needle and thread. It was a suture kit, an old one Phlegm Z had kept from his Danish army days.

"What do you want me to do with this?"

"Stitch it! Of course!"

"What?"

"Stitch my arm, man! You said you could sew!"

"I can sew!"

"Then stitch it, man!"

"You want to get drunk or something, first?"

"I AM drunk! How do you think I rolled the Bobcat, man?"

"OK..."

I jabbed him with the needle and he winced but took the pain. And I used my best stitching know-how to close up about a two inch gash in his arm. Half way through, he broke down and made me stop.

"I think I need another drink, man! (Something in Danish) That hurts to holy hell!"

I got him a bottle of schnapps out of the trailer.

You're supposed to sip schnapps and I told him so.