The ballad of the dirtbag
Frank and Fayhee hitch into the Four Corners

by Joe Foster

Livin’ the Dream: Testing the Ragged Edge of Machismo by B. Frank. Raven’s Eye Press 2010. 304 pages.

Bottoms Up; M. John Fayhee’s Greatest Hits From the Mountain Gazette by M. John Fayhee. Round Mountain Publishing 2010. 272 pages.

There are two new books by Mountain Gazette alums, M. John Fayhee and B. Frank. Both of these guys have legions of fans and really don’t need an introduction from me. They’ve been writing for decades about mountain life, desert life, river life and the correct way to make up lies about the adventures you have while living such a life. They both seem to particularly enjoy regaling the masses with tales of a certain type of character. Some of you may not yet have been exposed to this particularly unsavory portion of our society; that most reviled and avoided of bar stool dwellers: The Dirtbag.

You know these guys. They beg and borrow (but never (?) steal) gear, couch time, rides. They somehow end up on your San Juan trip, although no one seems to know who they are, but they’re cool enough, so whatever…

All right, I’m kind of kidding, but there is the type, the guy who fixes everything, including your stuff that he borrowed, with duct tape. The guy who is too drunk to cook dinner but makes up for it by playing his guitar around the campfire for hours and hours, or the lady who has everyone laughing so hard they can’t move their faces anymore, but needs to borrow some twine so she can fix her sandals. A bear got trapped in their car one night and now they have no dashboard, but, ya know, they’re good at guessing their speed anyway. No gear-heads, here, but people who play hard, live lightly, and are always on the lookout for that next great adventure.

Fayhee and Frank have both been independently writing the ballad of the dirtbag for decades, simultaneously firing us up, inspiring us all to go further and sometimes, just sometimes, breaking our hearts. Truth be told, each book really deserves its own review, but they happen to be appearing at Maria’ Bookshop and the Spruce Tree Coffeehouse in Cortez in uniquely styled events on June 15 and 18,  so it seems right to discuss them here, together. Fayhee and Frank will swap lies, tell tales, a back and forth of bullshitting with the words flying faster and hotter (hot air, that is) as the evenings progress; sure to be wild rides.

B. Frank’s new collection  Livin’ the Dream: Testing the Ragged Edge of Machismo is the eclectic, beautiful, erudite and often bewildering adventures and musings of a guy who, by all reports, spends more time in the desert than Moses. Surging rivers, forgotten trails, battered trailers on the edge of civilization, B. Frank lives, well, on the other side of things. He writes, like in “The Work Ethic,” of burying his hard-won Colorado Native Mountain Town work ethic under a rock in a cave in the Grand Canyon. He noticed at various times throughout his life that it had escaped and attached itself back to him, so he’d have to make that journey again to bury it deep so he could just be. This isn’t laziness, far from it, but a restructuring of the form B. Frank wanted his life to take, a singularly courageous act that, from what I could read into the deeper guts behind his words, has been the driving force behind how he lives. On the surface, this is a huge oversimplification, but deeper, in a more still and quiet place, this kind of decision, the decision to head in another direction from everyone around you, is profound. Read this book and you’ll see what I mean.

Fayhee’s collection, Bottoms Up: M. John Fayhee’s Greatest Hits From the Mountain Gazette, is a riotous, painfully honest, possibly full-of-shit (his words) collection of tales that will sneak up on you, just as you’ve finished wiping a couple tears of laughter from your eyelashes and he has punched you right in the sternum. I’ve read a fair amount of Fayhee before in the Gazette and various collections, but I somehow missed this part of his work; his ability to break your heart and remind you that living hard means laughing hard, drinking hard, but also, sometimes, crashing hard and losing even harder

One particularly powerful essay is “Trail Love, or Not,” in which Fayhee explores the ins and outs of the desperate search for a lady as at home living out of a backpack as he. Surprisingly honest and self-effacing, we see Fayhee fail, learn, reassess and finally find something different than he thought he wanted, but actually better. There were some seriously funny parts, to be sure, but overall there was a deep humility and confirmation of his own shortcomings and in the end a startlingly mature assessment of things coming from the self-proclaimed teller of tall tales and barroom punditry. This feels, to me, like the heart of this collection. Funny? Yes. Offensive? Maybe, if you lean toward the offendable. Brilliant at times? Absolutely. (Would John want to punch me for asking questions and then answering them myself? Probably.) The surprising rewards in this collection, though, are the tender and sorrowful moments that leak through at somewhat surprising times. I’ll stand behind the following statement no matter how hard this Gross-Exaggerating Bullshit Artist denies it: There is in most, if not all, of Fayhee’s stories a sincerity and an eye for truth that belies his self-proclaimed tendency to lie and exaggerate. There is a tender core that speaks of his love for the life he has chosen, and this is why he is just so damned compelling to read.

So, at 6:30 p.m. on June 15 at Maria’s Bookshop and at 6 p.m. on June 18 at the Spruce Tree, you can hear each of these guys throw some stories around. Sure to be entertaining and most likely to be shocking to the more sensitive among us, these are definitely gatherings not to be missed. •

 

 

In this week's issue...

January 25, 2024
Bagging it

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January 26, 2024
Paper chase

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January 11, 2024
High and dry

New state climate report projects continued warming, declining streamflows