Robert Forto

Fortos Fort

Youth Gone Wild/Touch of Gray

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I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was July 12, 1989. I was really early for a concert and found myself playing hacky sack around the back of the Richmond Coliseum. As I was kicking around the little leather bag I soon found out that it was Rachel Bolan, Scott Hill and Dave Sabo playing with us.

They were members of a hot new metal band, Skid Row and they were opening up for Bon Jovi that night. Skid Row had a song that was an anthem for our generation, Youth Gone Wild. It was about teen angst and rebellion. Aren’t they always?

At that concert they would film a video for one of Bon Jovi’s songs, Lay Your Hand on Me and they did the song over and over. In the final cut you can get a brief glimpse of me in the front row against the barrier with a chick in a fish-net jersey–you know the ones if you grew up in the eighties. We were sweaty and gross but having the time of our lives.

That concert was just a few weeks after high school graduation and a trip that I took across country in a car that I thought was mine. That is a story for another post for sure…

In the coming months I would find myself in L.A. to see the band Living Colour call Axl Rose out on stage for being a racist and Rose later stopping the GnR show and having a meltdown mid-set before The Rolling Stones took the stage. It would be the only time I have seen the Stones unless I am able to secure tickets for them in the coming week. I paid $50 for my ticket.

I drove all the way across country three times that summer. Twice in an Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme that my grandfather gave me after the car mentioned above was returned to the dealership.

By the end of October I was in Florida with all of my possessions in a backpack and living on a sailboat with my friend Darrin. Neither one of us knew the first thing about sailing but somehow made it to Key West to see Billy Squire along the way. At some point I had fallen off the mast of the boat and broke my arm, with no money and no insurance I somehow set it by plowing a parked car, football-style.

By Christmas we were broke and hungry. The Olds had blown up and I sold it for 500 bucks to some guy on the corner. On New Years Eve we were homeless and living under a tree near the beach. My friends father quickly threw us off the boat when we found out we took it on our little trip.

Within days Darrin called his mom and she made him join the Marines on the spot. I called mine and asked for a plane ticket back to Portland, Oregon.

I started college and formed a rock band a few months later. We played at grungy clubs and I worked my way through school working the night shift at 7-11 and drinking, mostly as payment for our gigs, pretty heavily.

Fast forward to April 8, 1994. I was sitting on the beach in Fort Meyers, Florida with my toes in the sand and talking to an old beach bum that made hats for the tourists out of palm fronds. A special report came on the radio that the singer for the band, Nirvana was found dead. Just the night before our little rock band played Lithium and Come as You Are at a scuzzy bar called The Reef further down the beach. Those two songs were in heavy rotation in our set that mostly covered other bands with an original or two.

By the mid-to-the late 1990s my life was spiraling out of control. I was heavily addicted to gambling and spending my days “playing” the stock market. In one day in the autumn of 1999, I made $170,000 and it was gone by the end of the week. That is not a brag. Just the harsh reality of how reckless I had become.

The next decade is a blur of legal troubles, losing everything, my freedom, and almost my life.

I grew up. I met Michele. We married. Raised the kids. Bought a house and started a successful business. We ran sled dogs and became respectable members of our community, or so I thought.

Youth Gone Wild had come and gone but not without a lot of scars.

If we can back up just a bit, I remember playing poker in the back of one of those seedy bars in Portland’s northeast’s side were I would spend most of my time. I heard The Grateful Dead’s Touch of Gray for the first time. The Dead weren’t my favorite but I did get a chance to see them a couple of times. The last time was on the last tour before Jerry died. That will come into play in a sec.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

I am now in my late forties and struggle to make sense of the last (almost) five decades. I have spent my life doing what I wanted and paid the price a time or two. I have done everything I have ever wanted to do. I have travelled. I have seen many concerts. Met many people. Made many friends and had a lot of awesome experiences. About five years ago I returned to school as part of a mid-life crisis, just because.

There is a quote in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile you could miss it.”

I have spent my life trying to prove to myself that life is what you make it and you can’t let anything get in your way.

I was in fact very wrong. Just this past weekend I came to the realization that time passes too fast. How do I know? It was something as stupildy simple as visiting a Walmart of all places and trying on a pair of glasses. All the sudden I could read everything again clearly. If I can digress for just a second. As we age the lenses in our eyes become less flexible. To many of us this will be the first realization that we are getting old…

To some it is inconsequential. Others will blast me and say, “what the hell are you talking about. Everyone needs glasses in their 40s.” That is exactly the point. That simple, shortsighted and trivial, little step of realizing that I need glasses was a punch in the gut to me. It was the realization that we aren’t here forever and soon things will be much different than it was before.

I have lived fast. I have lived loose. I have slowed down and tried to re-connect with those I have let stray away. Just this past weekend I heard that my high school class is planning our 30-year reunion. 30 f-ing years. I will go.

Time will pass and there is still a lot to do. I am sure, all of you–my rabid readers–have had that realization a time or two that we aren’t young anymore. When was it for you?

In the words of Jerry, (and Robert Hunter)…but I also know that that we must whistle through your teeth and spit ’cause it’s alight.

Our time, oh, well, a touch of gray kinda suits you anyway.

I will get by.

Fortos Fort: Seven Years in the Making

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Seven years ago today, me and my then 12-year old daughter pulled into the driveway of a run-down cabin in the woods near the little community of Willow, Alaska. We were city slickers from Denver in search of adventure. We had come here to look at a place were we could run sled dogs and get away from the hustle and bustle of a couple million people.

My rabid readers know the story by now: I let this little girl make the decision on if this was the right place. It was and here we are seven years later. It has been a labor of love to make this house a home. It is now full of so many memories.

What do you think of the transformation?

Follow Robert on Twitter at @robertforto

Chicken in the Smokehouse

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We have had our smoke house for three years. We have smoked our fair share of sockeye salmon every July that we catch dip netting in Kasilof. We have done chicken wings and a beef brisket on a Super Bowl Sunday but we had never tried a full bird.

We decided that we would give it a try while we used the smoke house for this year’s fish catch.

We went with a maple sugar brine and it turned out great. Here is how we did it.

We picked up a box of Hi-Country custom formulated seasoning for making game birds at Sportsman’s Warehouse. It cost just $7.99 and includes everything you need. In the package is the brine solution, two cure packets and detailed instructions. We deviated a little from the instructions since we were using a smoke house instead of one of those portable metal contraptions that most people use.

We used the immersion method. You can also use the brine pump method but our fish had to be the the fridge for three days anyway so we thought we would get better results using the immersion method.

1. We mixed the brine and 1 1/2 cure packets into one gallon of water.

2. we placed the chicken in a jar pot so that the water and mixture covered it completely. We placed a small plate on top of the bird to keep it from floating to the top and put on a cover.

3. We placed the bird in the fridge for the next 72 hours, stirring occasionally.

4. On day three we removed the bird from the solution and flushed (do not soak) in fresh water to remove excess brine. Always discard the brine solution after use.

5. We allowed the bird to drip dry for 30 minutes.

6. We used a beer can stand and a can of Denali Brewing Company Ale as our beer of choice.

7. Our smokehouse reached a temperature of 190 and we used hickory pellets.

9. We left it in the smoke house for 6 1/2 hours.

10. When the bird was done it was a beautiful golden brown. We let it rest for 30 minutes before cutting it up.

We served it with a slab of ribs and some crusty bread. It was wonderful!

Follow Robert on Twitter @robertforto

Psymon

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I can not believe it I am a grandpa. First it was midlife crisis that forced me into college at 42 and instead of that fancy red Corvette but, yes it is true, my son Tyler is a daddy and I am a grandpa. I think I want to be called Gee, you know the sled dog term to turn left.

 

I hope this little guy is afforded every opportunity in the world and all of his dreams come true. Welcome to the world, Psymon!

 

Walmart Layaway

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It’s that time of year again. Walmart layaway!

Just when you thought it was safe to shop on every other day of the year EXCEPT that Friday after you have gorged yourself on bird, the worlds largest retailer has brought back memories of Christmas past when you could load up a cart and take it to the back of the store and pay with change you found in the couch. Well, at least figuratively.

I remember those days back in the 1970s when my mom loaded us kids up in the family truckerster and head across the river to the K-Mart store in Chesapeake, Ohio.

It was a day trip back then. It wasn’t a quick stop to the neighborhood corporate behemoth like it is today. We would almost always go with the Dunn’s from down the street…

Ah, the Dunn’s. Dovie, the mom of the clan reminds me of Janis Joplin in bellbottom cords and flip-flops. Greasy, dirty (and I mean dirty) blonde hair and breath that reeked of Virginia Slims. Her husband Scott terrified me. When I went over to “play” he was always laying on a flowered davenport encased in fabric so rough it would give you rug burn. He would lay there in his cut-off jeans shorts and nothing else. He would prop one of those tall, glass bottles of Pepsi on his wide girth of a belly.

I was smitten with Michelle. Mitchy to her friends and forlorn prepubescent suitors like me. She was a year older than I and looked like Marcia Brady to me. Well, not really. She always had a rats-nest of hair that seemed to always be tangled and she wore terry cloth sorts and tube tops and sandals with socks pulled to her knees.

Then there was Cathy. This little girl was three or four years my junior, about the same age as my brother, Ryan. This girl had a set of lungs on her like you wouldn’t believe. Every time I met her she would round the corner at the top of the stairs and start to cry that would lather into a scream. Within minutes she would embattle herself under the dining room table amongst a gaggle of half eaten Frito’s, long forgotten Legos and brussel sprout or two. She would stay there until we were long gone.

This was in West Virginia. Yes, that place. Does that not explain things? No? You have never been there then.

Back to the K-Mart adventure. As we entered this fotress of solitude, bookmarked by Waldenbooks and a Radio Shack, we entered into a world only known by those of the middle class with little discretionary income. In the 70s it was a big deal to get out. It was an even bigger deal to have to traverse the unknowns and cross state lines to get there. As we grabbed our buggy, that’s what my mom always called them, us kids scattered like flies with mom or Dovie screaming, “meet us at the cafeteria for lunch in an hour!”

Amongst omnipresent announcements of blue light specials and Victoria Principal displays, us kids grabbed toys, school supplies, jeans made in China, toothbrushes, car batteries, and bags of those disgusting orange peanut candies, onward as we rushed towards the cafeteria for lunch.

At the back of the store we all unloaded our arms of schwag into the buggies and headed around the maze of barriers to the serving line. The cafeteria was a destination when we went to K-Mart. Only on the most special occasions (ie. layaway day) would we get to eat in those hallowed halls.

I would always order the same thing: a burger with mayo and shredded lettuce. With that I would get a cold order of fries and a 16 ounce drink I still had to hold with two hands. As lunch ensued we would disgorge our experiences of the morning shopping extravaganza and patiently wait until all finished their meals.

After lunch we would head over to the layaway desk. In reality it was just a doorway on the back wall, and the clerk in her smock would tally up our wares and collect a meager deposit from mom.

As I look back on our K-Mart layaway experiences it is a funny thing. I do not ever recall ever seeing those purchases we so diligently collected again. I don’t know if they were lost in the vast warehouse in the back of the store or they just never made it home because mom didn’t have money to retrieve them from the Big K. I guess its sort of like binge drinking in college. You know what’s going on when you go in, you know what’s happening for a period of time while its going on, but you just don’t have all the facts when you are done. But, boy it sure was fun!

I think mom might of tipped the clerk-in-the-smock to just push the kids purchases aside. “We won’t be needing those,” she would whisper under her breath and she whisked away an errant feathered bang, pointing to the cap guns, matchbox cars and yes that 12-volt car battery.

So I guess I have truly come full circle. Just the other day I walked into Wally-World and headed to the back of the store. I summoned a blue-smocked clerk, who I assume was working for the company only for its generous dental insurance benefits, and asked for some help. I left empty handed but something with my name on it was left to go “in the back.”

I just hope that by December 15th I have the cash…

Have you ever used layaway? Tell us your experiences.