The Ready Set Travel Tumbler: A Perfect Gift. By Cameron Mays

John here, once more Cameron has manuscribed and transmogrified into the digital world this week's blog. Since its the giving season, it only seems right that we highlight the gift that always gives, the Ready Set Travel Tumbler.

 

By Cameron Mays.

 

It isn’t hard to buy your office friends gifts. A candle, a gift card. Toss it in a bag with ribbon handles, throw a dollop of tissue paper, call it day. But what about your other friends? You know, those friends.
The fringe lunatics, the trash worshippers, the ramblers and the wanderers. The trees with far away eyes and the whisps of smoke in the night. The ones you don’t know why they’re your friends. You don’t even know if they’re real people or just wildcats conjured by your imagination.
One visit is enough to satiate your curiosity of the weird woods for an entire year. It’s intoxicating and sickening. You want to keep them in your circle just as much as you want to keep them out of your home. But you still need a gift for them.
Believe it or not, these oddballs don’t mind the simple things. Face it. You’re not going get them something that’s a story. So get them something to help fuel their stories, like the Ready Set Travel Tumbler by Miir. Consider the following weirdos:

GUY HARDY
The Perpetually Down on His Luck, Blue Collar, Everyday, Working Joe with a Heart of Gold That You Met by Accident:

Guy’s a guy straight from Cleveland mythology. Been working at the plant, the mill, the mine since it opened and has, by some miracle, survived every layoff, merger, and closure since then. He’s a Rust Belt Paul Bunyan, only his Babe the blue ox is a purple Ford Ranger that’s got a blown transmission sitting somewhere off Clark Avenue. His face is old, leathery. Thin as a rail and perpetually coated in soot.
That soot doesn’t make sense. They don’t use coal anymore, do they? Are there even coal mines in Cleveland? Not sure. Best not to know. He’s never not coated in the stuff. You’ve seen him at all hours of the day, wandering around broken sidewalks.
In the morning, lunchtime, night. Always coated in soot. His dusty, blackened, sad face. His ungloved, chafed hands. Carrying that little styrofoam cup of coffee around like his whole paycheck went into it. Probably did.
Those piercing blue eyes. The eyes that stabbed your soul. In them, you can see his Andy Griffith childhood in some Appalachian small town. Moved to Cleveland in the last gasp of the factory era and hasn’t left
You met him at the garden center in Lakewood on a forgotten Christmas break. He didn’t work there. Wasn’t even shopping. But he saw you couldn’t fit that big blue spruce in your tiny red Camry and offered to lug it down to your apartment on Clifton free of charge.
Before you could say no, he grabbed the tree with his giant hands. Every finger a stump. Long, yet stubby, been hit by a million hammers. Covered in that horrible soot. Well, that’s how it goes in this town.
When you get to your apartment, he’s already there. “Would you mind helping me get it up five flights of stairs?” you ask. Hell, if he’s gotten it this far, what’s the difference? In a jiff, he does just that, and when you turn around to offer him a cup of coffee or a glass of water, he’s gone. Vanished.
Boy, you’d like to get him something to just say thanks. Thanks for the tree, maybe, but you would’ve called Duncan with his big work van eventually. You want to say thanks for something else. Thanks for the endless clogging Guy does with the fiddle song of your imagination.
The Ready Set Travel Tumbler is that gift. One you can keep in your backpack, your tote, your car, wrapped and ready to go for when you run into Guy again. If you do, in between his shifts, his scrapping, his solitude.
“Guy! I got this for you!” you say when you finally catch him. He opens it and smiles. That small, gentle smile that menial labor will limit you to. “Gee, how can I repay ya?” he asks. You pat his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks for helping with that tree”.
You’ll be repaying him, alright. With a locking lid, old Guy Hardy won’t have to worry about soot from his hardworkin’ hands getting into his hot coffee, kept warm by patented Thermo 3D Double Wall Vacuum Insulation Technology. Maybe this Christmas, Guy Hardy ain’t so down bad after all.

Against your better judgement, you pick up the phone. Wednesday morning, three o’clock AM. A number with a country code +95. Call says it’s coming in from a place called Naypyitaw, a place you’ve never been and will never go. Probably a scam, but maybe, just maybe, it’s her.
Thank God it’s the latter. You’ve got a million questions, but she answers every single one before you even have time to say hello. “I’m calling from a payphone in the middle of a jungle road in Myanmar!” Oh, she’s the worst. Maybe you’re a little jealous, but be glad you don’t have to listen to all that jazz.
“I’m just calling to say thanks for the Ready Set Travel Tumbler you sent me!” she exclaims. Almost forgot you even did that. Then again, everything with her is something of a blur. “Why are you in Asia?” you ask.
“Riding trains. Best trains in the world out here. Sure, Europe’s got some damn good ones. But nothing like this.” Not once did she mention trains the whole time you’ve known her. “So you like the tumbler?” She taps it against the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Oh yes. Works great. I wake up every single morning at the crack of dawn, I say three prayers to each of the four directions, then brew Jasmine tea. I put it in the tumbler and it’s hot until lunch. At lunch, I put water in it. Ice cold, usually from a well. I love the taste of well water. Every place I’ve been has its own well water taste...”
Alright, admit it. You miss her a little bit. You miss that big apartment she had in downtown, right up on the lake by the Rock Hall. Her dad owns the whole building, plus three shopping malls around Cleveland. But subtract the material world for minute, as she’d probably scold you to do. You really miss the nights you spend talking until two in the morning.
She had a million stories of a million places and you were that perpetual dreamer. Wanting to see the world, well, she’s done it for you. But she liked your stories even more. Your endless nights at the dive, wailing away hillbilly songs to anyone that would listen. Sold the trusty Telecaster and got an office job. You’ve changed. She hasn’t.
“When will you be back in Cleveland?” you ask not so innocently. “Well, let’s see, I’m trying to make my way to India to do a Silk Road thing, but there’s only so many places you can really go, I guess, but I want to because everyone has done it, you know, like Marco Polo and those guys, and...”
What a summer that was! What a romance! And she really liked you! Alright, hell. Don’t let her get away this time.“...so I’ll probably be in around then, I suppose.” Missed it! “What was that?”
You hear the distant rumble of a little scooter. “I gotta go, I’m hitching to the next station! You there! Got room atop the fruit crate?” She must’ve dropped the phone, didn’t even hang it up. You hear something, negotiations for adventure, another rumble, and she’s gone. At least her tea didn’t spill thanks to the Ready Set Travel Tumbler’s BPA free locking lid...

 

Whiskey tumblers for dad, Spanish merino wool blanket for mom. Cookbooks for your siblings, paired bottles of wine of their beloveds. Every aunt, uncle, and person somehow related to you has got a small, neat, perfect gift. “What about your cousin, Lazarus?” mom asks over the phone.

Forgot all about that kid. Guess he isn’t a kid now, anymore. But that’s the last time you saw him. You remember it so clearly. At Grandma’s house, that beautiful Italianate hidden in Collinwood. Came back from a visit to the art museum, there’s Lazarus. Frying a giant flank of lamb in Grandma’s cast iron skillet.

He’s an oddball, that Lazarus. Never really got to know him. Lived only twenty minutes away by car. Mom and dad seemed to think it was a good idea to keep a distance between you and him. Wouldn’t have hurt to grow up with him. But maybe they were right.

You always felt a little guilty about that, especially since everyone said you looked just like him. He’s ten years younger than you, and every old timer said you two looked like twins. Maybe that’s what scared mom and dad.

All those stories that would trickle out the landline from Aunt Mary. Lazarus is soaking all his t-shirts in the bathtub, Lazarus is trying to build a rocket stove, Lazarus is trying to build a rocket. And his obsession with meat! The Grandma story is burned in your memory, but “Mary would buy ten steaks a week to feed the kid” mom reminds you.

Lazarus would ask you questions. It’s normal for your little cousins to do that. But his questions weren’t normal. “Doya dream whenya sleep?” “What kinda dreams?” “Am I ever in them?” “Ya smile whenya dream?”

Then he was gone. Ran away from home. Aunt Mary knew he’d do it and didn’t do much to stop him. Kid’s gotta grow, she’d say, but she was worried sick. Anyone could see it. “Why does that kid torture your sister?” dad would ask mom. Mom would look out the car window and shrug her shoulders.

There was something about his spirit that you understood in spite of their confusion. Lazarus knew he had to see things, but he never tried covering up the faded tattoo of home. Wandering barefoot through wheatfields under hot blue skies, whistling an old hymn Aunt Mary would sing as a lullaby. You stopped thinking of him. Now, he’s back. What do you get for family you barely know so well?

You get him a Ready Set Travel Tumbler. Perfect for aimless wandering. It’s sleek as a river stone, only 12oz. Big enough to hold his morning joe and small enough to fit in the bandana he ties atop his big oak stick.