The Pencil Factory & Black Coffee

 

Some great stories are life altering- How I survived- I almost didn’t make it- And that’s when I realized my dad was really my brother’s uncle…

Stories that shape and change and almost end your life.

This is not one of them, it’s a story about going to work, wanting a cup of coffee, and being clumsy.

I broke my thermos.

It was an old thermos, but not a hipster, vintage, retro type of thermos, just an old, bought at Sears in 1997 blue and white plastic thermos with a glass insulated liner regular everyday working mans thermos.

Suitable for hot coffee, hot soup, hot chocolate or cold beverages, keep the hot side hot the cold side cold for at least 5 hours every day thermos.

For clarification, I ONLY ever kept coffee in it.

Black & hot.

I had been working my job, my chosen career for several years, as a commercial photographer and photojournalist since high school, side by side with my drinking and unlicensed pharmacist knucklehead buddies- then I met a beautiful young lady, who then became my wife, and I realized, the job I had that I spent 80 hours a week doing as a teen then a 20 something, then an almost 30 newlywed, that I did every waking hour and sometimes in my sleep- was going to kill my 2 year old marriage.

So, I decided to quit- hang up the cameras, the dark room, the “extra-curricular Bolivian Marching Powder” activities and become a well-respected working-class citizen.

I was going to hang up my wild days and become a hard-working family man like my father- who spent 39 years working for the same company in San Leandro CA before being transferred to a brand-new shipping depot that he would run near our suburban house in Hayward, CA until he died at 56 years of age in 1988.

Before that Hayward depot opened up, we would often ride with my mom to pick him up at he end of his swing shift at the Caterpillar Tractor Shipping Warehouse in San Leandro CA , late at night, fighting to stray awake in the back seat of our Chryslers station wagon, and a few blocks before we approached his warehouse, the smell would hit us- The Pencil Factory-

That smell of a brand-new Number 2 pencil, fresh cedar- was everywhere.

The Pencil Factory- that’s what everyone called it, was synonymous with that part of San Leandro.

Dad worked late so was asleep when we went to school, and when we went to bed he wasn’t always home, so when we got to go with mom to pick him up, it was special-it was DAD time, and that was rare.

Dad Time and that smell of the Pencil Factory- it meant comfort, it meant home.

When I decided to give up my wild days, become the father my dad had been, I took a job with a security company- they were going to put me up at a High-Tech chip manufacturer near my home, 7 days after I was hired. Steady work, 9-5, down the street from my house.

But they told me, in that 7-day interim, I may be called to fill in until I took my regular assignment, and 2 days later they called at 2 pm, can I come in at midnight and work a shift at Hudson Lumber in San Leandro CA.

I had never heard of Hudson Lumber, they gave me the address, I wrote it on a piece of paper and put it in the cover of my Thomas Guide, and asked my bride, “I have to work a graveyard shift tonight, so I’m going to bed, wake me up at 11”.

I went to bed, she went shopping, and one stop she made was Sears, to buy me a thermos so I could have hot coffee on my rainy, thunderstorm first night for Pinkerton Security at Hudson Lumber, San Leandro, CA.

A few hours later, I followed my Thomas Guide instructions to Hudson Lumber and low and behold, Hudson Lumber, who supplied wood and wood type products to the entore3 Western United States, was in fact, the Pencil Factory.

I was so excited- I was going to have, 8 hours, all by myself, the ENTIRE PENCIL FACTORY FOR MY OWN! - to explore, to investigate, to smell.

And that’s what I did- I did my rounds, every hour, walking through the entire factory- as a security professional, I proceeded to steal pencils, small pieces of sample wood, tablets with the Hudson Lumber Logo, match books with the logo, a stapler- no logo, but I needed a stapler at home, and I did this all while wandering around leisurely drinking hot black coffee from my brand new Sears & Robuck thermos.

I thought about my dad all that night, he had died about 10 years earlier- smelling that Pencil Factory smell that in my brain meant we were almost at my dad’s work.

Coffee and pencils.

 Dad and home.

Now, I’ve had that thermos ever since- then, a few months ago, on January 7, 2026- some 29 years after my wife bought me a new Sears and Robuck Thermos, I dropped it- the glass insulator shattered, coffee poured out inside the back seat of my van-

I stared at it- and began to sob. Not a weep- a full-blown blubbering snot coming from my nose shoulders shaking wailing.

In that moment, the smell of the Pencil Factory, memories of my dad exiting the warehouse loading dock late at night, memories of my dad laying in a hospital bed in April of 1988 all came welling up out of nowhere- all because I was clumsy and I dropped my almost 30-year-old, probably not more than $8 blue plastic thermos with a white cup and a glass insert thermos.

Yet there I was, Balling my eyes out.

Over a thermos.

And 12 cups of black coffee.

I had no idea why that hit me so hard, but it did.

So, we don’t need to climb a mountain, sail a sea, or cross the great divide to feel the massive impact of a life altering story- sometimes it just takes a late night, a familiar smell, and a clumsy hand to remind us that we’re all very fragile- like a 30-year-old thermos with a glass insert.

The Lime Cartel

There was a time when we...and when I say "we" I mean the degenerates I hung around with, and when I say "the degenerates I hung around with" I mean Ron, Bob, and myself, used to drink a lot of gimlets. 

And Kamikazes.

For the uneducated among us, a gimlet is either vodka or gin with lime juice. and ice.

We chose vodka since we were fighting the fine fight against the Soviet Union and Ivan Drago, deplete the GNP and watch the evil empire fall and all of that. 

A Kamikaze is a gimlet with some triple sec, which is just another alcohol, but it sounds fancy.

We would mosey up to the bar and order what we thought was a fancy cocktail, and after one or two or, more likely 10 or 20 , then  complain that the gimlet or kamikaze would give us a headache. 

We would, each and every time, blame the lime juice since lime juice contains citric acid, and as anyone who has ever watched the episode of Dragnet where Blue Boy took acid and started eating tree bark then when crazy even


though his parents thought acid was harmless but Joe Friday knew better and told them that acid was very dangerous, would 100 % know that acid in any form is harmful.

So, then we would switch to vodka on the rocks...because that didn't contain any acid so it was better for us.

We were smart. 

Practically doctors.

Which brings up the years I spent as an unlicensed pharmacists, but that's a blog for another day. 

The Hypothetical Road Trip...or Granny In a Bucket

 The past few years have been trying.

As we emerge from almost three years of closures, isolation, masks, and vaccine arguments, we all look for things that we can be thankful for. Things that make our days a little brighter, our minds and hearts a little happier.

Me?
I’m just glad 2022 is ending a little better than 2021 because I spent the last 5 weeks of last year driving around with a dead 85-year-old woman in the back of my van.

It wasn’t anything weird, not like I picked up a hitchhiker in Paulden and thought “Hey, I wonder what he has in his duffle bag?”

No. Nothing strange like that.

It was my mom.

She passed away on November 16, 2021, on the exact day of what would have been her and my dad’s 63^rd wedding anniversary.

It wasn’t the marriage that killed her, but quite possibly the children that resulted from that union.

I am the youngest of six kids and the oldest, my sister, is almost exactly 7 years older than me.

Yep. Six Kids, seven years.

My parents were married in the days before cable TV, Netflix, and evidently conversation, so they spent a lot of time…well, making us.

We, in turn, didn’t make it easy for them - various incidents involving mischief and mayhem, emergency rooms, principals’ offices and police stations, several cases of detention both educational and penal, and no less than three visits by the local fire truck.

Yet she made it to 85 and all but one of us kids made it long enough to say goodbye.

Since we siblings are scattered around the Southwest, our friends, relatives, and many of the people whose lives mom touched are spread around the globe, and COVID was still a valid concern among the rapidly aging population that makes up our social circle, the service was held on Zoom.  

Several hundred people near and far logged in and shared some laughs, some tears, and a lot of great stories.

My brothers & sisters and I aren’t much on pomp & circumstance, don’t go in for much ceremony, so when it came time to put my mom to rest, we had a bit of a conundrum-

What DO you do with the remains of an 85-year-old woman?

An urn for the mantle? No takers.

Maybe meet up & scatter the ashes?

Logistically it would be difficult, and we had already had a nice reminiscence with friends and family, a few of us were at the time taking care of other elderly in-laws and extended family, so travel was a challenge, and again, not much on pomp & circumstance, so what do we do?

When my dad passed in 1988, he had made the specific request to have his ashes scattered, hypothetically, in an area of California where such things were frowned upon. Frowned upon to the extent that when we asked the powers that be, we were not so politely informed that, no, it is not allowed and if we tried, we would probably be arrested.

At that time, I was living outside of what “Polite Society” refers to as “Laws” so my brothers and sisters unanimously agreed that, if one of us was to bend said laws, it might as well be the one who had three different drivers’ licenses from two different states in three different names.

So, I packed up dad in a shoe box, visited a city park in San Francisco, and let dad go for an eternal swim in a duck pond.

While I’ve cleaned up my act somewhat since 1988, in the eyes of my family I am still the one who is best suited for disposing of a body.

So, I began planning for a road trip, with an 85-year-old dead woman in the back of my van.

In an effort to protect my then 12-year-old son from his degenerate father, and also avoid talking about the box inside the plastic bucket in the back of the van, I told him “Pop has to go to California to take care of some family stuff.”

Since my wife couldn’t take time off work, I was planning a quick out-and-back run, stopping to leave a little bit of mom at some of her favorite places, including the hypothetical duck pond.

When the trip fell on the days my son would be off school for winter break, he begged to go.

Hitting the road with your dad for a Boy’s Road Trip without his mom looking over our shoulders?

This could be fun AND trouble, but I still hadn’t found a way to casually bring up the fact that Gramma was in a plastic laundry detergent bucket behind the back seat.

Would he be a little freaked out by the fact that, even though she was now harmless ashes, his beloved Grandma was in a white bucket with a blue lid that had “Kirkland- 200 loads” printed on the side?

Does he share the same mental attitude towards the dead that his dad, aunts, and uncles do?

Or is he “Normal”?

A two-thousand-mile round trip would let me know.

Our first stop was the California-Arizona Border, the Colorado River.

Since this river splits our immediate family, I thought this would be a nice first stop in mom’s next journey- hypothetically.

We stopped, stretched our legs, took a couple of pictures, and I discreetly said goodbye to a little bit of mom.

“What are you doing pop?”

Nothing, get back in the van.

Over the next few days, we made a few more stops to visit family and I took the opportunity to say goodbye to a little bit more of mom.

That stretch of highway where she got pulled over and we never let her forget her brush with the law?

Check.

The park that we as kids hated because it didn’t have swings, or a lake or anything fun but she really loved because it reminded her of the farmland she and her family worked in the Central Valley back in the 30s?

Check.

The beach she used to take us to, even though she hated the beach but knew we loved it?

Check.

All these stops we made- important to me, important to her, and me just thinking my son was along for the ride while I was being discreet, being slick, leaving a little bit of mom behind along the way.

Hypothetically that is.

Then, on a crowded rush hour stretch of 580 outside of Livermore, CA, we were stopped.

Bumper-to-bumper Bay Area gridlock.

Those High Occupancy-Carpool Lanes that, unlike Arizona’s “2 people per Vehicle” require 3 people?

They’re moving along at a brisk pace, yet here we are at a complete stop.

“Hey Pop, how come we can’t go in the Carpool Lane like in Phoenix?”

Well, in California it’s 3 people per car, not two like back home.

After a long pause, he cautiously said … “Hey Pop. I got an Idea. If we get pulled over, can’t we just tell the cop we’ve got Granny in a bucket?”

Yep- he knew what we were doing… he knew what we were doing all along.

There’s no pulling the wool over his eyes and he truly is a Santos through and through.

Over the next few days, we continued our journey and he had just one request- Could he be the one to put Grandma, who he loved, in the swimming hole-slash-duck pond to join the grandpa he never met?

Reflecting on this Boys Road trip that took place just about a year ago, I got to thinking-

Thinking about my own mortality, my own life, my own legacy and realized something- I just hit a milestone- a big one.

My dad passed away when he was 56 years and a few months old- and just last week, if I did the math right, I turned 56 and that same few months.

On December 6, 2022, I officially became older than my dad ever was.

I have been on this earth, not counting duck pond water, longer than my father and, I don’t know why, but that was a real punch in the gut- living longer than my dad.

Since I personally never expected to live as long as I have and anyone who knew me between 1984 and 1993 is equally if not more surprised that I’m still around, I know for a fact I will never see the 85 that my mom did, but I have 1 goal.

To stick around for the next 3 years, until my son gets his driver's license, so he can put me in a plastic bucket and go on a road trip.

Hypothetically of course.