The End

It's hours after noon on the 30th of August, 2010, and I am bringing this blog to a close. No more will I write my once a week entry of anecdotes. With A Smidgen of Religion is kaput. It's been a good run, and one that makes me think that there is another blog in my future. But for now there is only silence and inactivity. I hope instead to sink myself into the work of completing a second novel. I am fifty pages into the story, and I like the way it is unfolding.

Bye for now.

Wheels

I was never much of a gear head. Cars did little to impress me, although I did admire the shape of some. I used to draw approximations of my favorites with colored pencils, lone images on an expanse of white background. They looked as sleek and powerful as I could render them, spewing exhausts of billowing smoke and flames. I imagined myself in the driver seat peeling out and laying rubber. I never got far in those imaginings before cops were in hot pursuit. But boy you should have seen me allude my pursuers as I gave them the slip worthy of James Bond.

The first car I actually got to drive was a tug-boat of a white family-size Ford station-wagon. I used to drive that machine one handed while stretched out and wedged into the driver's seat as if I were burrowing for comfort in a living room recliner. In doing so within weeks I broke the back of the seat. It was cocked in a screwy angle from then on for the duration of our ownership of the car.

Afterwards my father bought a gray 1976, Pontiac LeMans with black bucket seats and a shift on the floor. She was a vehicle worthy of a race track and I had a teenage reverence for that car that to this day still has a place in my heart. My sister who turned sixteen in the course of events also got to drive that car. One night shortly thereafter while drunk and emotionally volatile she drove that car up over the curb, across the length of a front lawn, through the street facing wall and into the living room of a sleeping geriatric couple. The embedded car was totaled.

When my brother turned sixteen he bought a Dodge Dart equipped with an 8 track player. He let me drive it off and on. One day I drove that car a hundred plus miles up and back from Cape Cod, at a steady 95 miles an hour. Even though we parked the Dart in the street the next morning after the trip you could smell the worn, exhausted engine the moment you stepped out the back door of our house. Some time later my brother tried to kill that car as a prelude to buying another. He drove that Dart around an oval dirt track at a reckless speed that threatened to flip the car over. Hours later he called it a draw. The car was too well built to fall prey to a rutted dirt road track.

A short while later my brother and I pooled our money together and bought a sporty little two seater from a slick talking fix 'em and sell 'em used car sales man. The first night we drove it the car protested in smoke and squeals. We had been had. The engine and drive shaft were shot. When we went back to the sales man for our money back he pointed to the dotted line and our signatures and just below that the clearly worded clause, Sold as is.

Next we got a cargo van and our father paneled and outfitted it with a bed that had underneath storage. We also installed a high end radio and tape deck and four kick ass speakers. It was party central. And no more than a couple days after my father finished with the paneling two of our soused and wrestling cohorts put several holes through the walls. The next day we patched the holes with scraps of wood, and shortly after that four of us loaded up the van and headed west. For the next several months that van was our oasis and home. When we returned thousands of miles later we promptly sold the van for less than it was worth.

Our following car leaked copious amounts of oil. Every morning we looked there was a new puddle beneath the car. We brought it to our mechanic and it did not leaked while at his garage. This happened three times, back and forth, with no resolution. On one hand you could call our mechanic methodical, on the other, slow. Our car was often tied up for over a week while he went through the motions of sussing out the elusive leak. The third time we asked him to find the leak he had our car for ten days. When he told us once again that there was no leak we wanted to brain him with a heavy pipe. Ten days he had our car. For nothing. Except of course his bill. We picked the car up late that afternoon. We hadn't had the car back more than two hours when we were driving down one of the main roads through our town. Without any warning someone in a car driving in the opposite direction hurled a rock at us. It shattered our windshield. And we were once again without a car and at the mercy of our mechanic.

That was our last car purchased together. Afterwards we each got our own vehicle and moved out of our parents home. I bought a yellow little Japanese import. This was at a time when I was among the Ranks of Cargo Of Despair and we were invited to exhibit our creative works at the art gallery of Springfield Technical Community College. As part of that show I provided spray paint and an open invitation to use my car as a canvas. A good dozen people took me up on my offer. The results was a varying riot of color, style, and technique. Shortly thereafter I paid my parents a visit. A couple of days later my mother told me that after I'd driven off following my visit one of her next door neighbors had come over and asked, "How old is your son?"

Years later there are still some autos of my youth whose shape and design I covet. They are for the most part high dollar cars with get up and go reputations. Had I only saved the color pencils of my youth I might sketch a couple autos, each one belching smoke and flame. You would think them slick and sleek and able to out run any cruiser driven by crook or Johnny Law. 'Cause that's the way I draw them.

Drop And Drill

Around the time I fell through the sky with a parachute on I took a job as a machinist. I suppose besides their timing the two were also linked in my mind because both were endeavors out of my comfort zone. Great heights made me queasy and working in a realm with thousands of an inch tolerances made me feel like I had the dexterity of a Paleolithic man.

The jump school was a no frills organization. Its runway was a length of tamped down and hardened dry mud that was situated at the end of a rutted dirt road abutting cornfields in every direction. In a small clearing nearby there was a shack for a school that was solidly built. Just off to the side of it was a three foot high platform. The learned consensus had it that landing with a parachute on was comparable to jumping down from three foot height. Thus when the time came we practiced landing by jumping off the platform. The trick was to roll naturally with your momentum when you hit the ground.

I suppose if I'd taken an aptitude test beforehand the guy who hired me as a machinist in training would have seen trouble coming. But there was no test to take and my employer remained blind to my shortcomings. All he had to go on was my fake enthusiasm and assurance that I picked up skills quickly and was rearing to learn a skill and trade that would keep me in the money for many years to come.

First thing they had us do at jump school was to sign a waiver freeing the school of all liability. After the paperwork and some thoughts of what might go wrong we were arrayed before a blackboard and introduced to the mechanics and nomenclature of parachuting. The words "velocity," "ratio" and "wind speed" came up several times in that chalk and blackboard overview.

My initial trouble as a would be machinist was the nature of oil. It was not that I was overly neat or fastidious. I wasn't. But I didn't like feeling all oily. However lesson number one in machinist 101 was that oil was your ever-present friend. It was a coolant; it was a lubricant; it was, in short, a film all over me.

After the parachuting overview we were strapped into jumper's harnesses that were suspended from the ceiling of the shack. (There was a step stool to get up and into the rigs.) Our instructors yanked the various belts tightly and then let us dangle. But not for long. Soon they were barking commands and peppering us with problems from every direction. "Your main shoot isn't opening what do you do?" Time, like us, was suspended as we grappled with what to do. Then we climbed up on to the platform and jump off in mock parachute landings.

In a matter of a couple hours my employer had me run a job. There were eight steps to it and all eight steps had been programed into the machine which was in fact a drill press. All I had to do was make sure I used the right drill bit for each step of the job. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. I was forgetful and sometimes I put the wrong drill bit on at the wrong step. When I did so the machine screeched hideously in protest and it sounded to me like the amorous cries of two dragons fucking. Each time it happened my employer came running, incredulous and demanding. "What are you doing?" In turn I meekly told him I'd made a mistake and it wouldn't happen again. And sometimes I made it through all eight steps with no mistakes. However when I used the micrometer like he'd shown me to check my work and make sure it was within two thousandths of an inch tolerance I'd often find my work to be upwards of a quarter inch off. It was either that or I was reading the instrument wrong. But I wasn't about to ask my boss if I was. Instead I tossed the piece into the finished box and went at it again.

We were ready to jump. We were each outfitted with a parachute and a one way walky talky which our instructors on the ground would use to guide us down. On our instructor's command we piled into the plane and it zipped down the runway and we were aloft. Soon we were cruising at 3,000 feet. The ground below was a vibrant quilt work of green, yellow and gold. When it was my turn to jump I stepped over to the door and the pilot cut the engine. I stepped out onto the wheel of the plane and held on steady as I could until my instructor said go. When he did I let go. I was on a static line so as soon as I did so my parachute opened. However when I released my grips of the plane I rolled to the left and something smacked me between my lower lip and chin. I looked down and a drop of blood plopped on to my right foot. But it was one drop and one drop only. My instructor told me "Looking good," and I fell to the earth in a state of wonder.

Whether I quit or was fired I don't rightly remember. But the end of my days as a machinist came quickly which was cool with me. I was glad to be free of all that oil. As to my output as a machinist I've grave doubts that I produced in the course of my labors one salvageable finished piece of work. Oh well. I walked away with no regrets and in doing so I chalked off one more would be viable path to prosperity.

Hitting the ground was a mild jolt and I rolled with my momentum. I had to do it again. I paid for another jump and was soon aloft and looking down at the wondrous earth below me. Then I jumped and began my slow descent. After that second fall through space, as glorious as it was, I never jumped again.

Off and On Track

I was not articulate in my youth. My speech when I spoke at all was mostly monosyllabic. My penmanship too lacked finesse. It resembled scratches rendered by a sharpened stick in the sun baked earth. So I was not all that surprised when I was informed that I would be undergoing testing for my handwriting. This was in 7th grade. I was led into a small room in the suite of offices used by our guidance councilor, nurse, and principal. To my surprise two other kids were already in the room. I knew them both. They were retarded.

Looking at the test I knew right away that something wasn't right. If they were testing my handwriting why was I about to take a fill in the bubble quiz? I read the first question: You are seated at a table. In front of you is a plate with a fork and knife. Laid out on the table is a cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and butter. Are you about to A. wash your hands, B. watch television, C. eat a thanksgiving meal, or D. fly a kite? They weren't checking my penmanship. They were trying to see how retarded I was. Fuck that. I got up from the table without answering one question and went into a bathroom and had a smoke. Later that night I told my parents all about the test and my refusal to take part in it. They told me not to worry about it, and that was the end of my testing.

But it was not the end of pegging me. In the school system of our town at that time, as I understand it, they used a tracking system. Each student was assessed and assigned a track. There was the college track; the blue collar track; the dummy track; and the retard track. The one I was on was the dummy track. And it was the track I wanted to stay on. Thank you very much, retard track. Not much was expected of me. I was expendable. And I probably proved the system correct when I jumped the rails and dropped out of school in the spring of my tenth year.

Regardless of my derailment or the earlier testing that had assigned me my track I had within me a notion that I could write. This was due in large extent to praise I'd earlier received in the sixth grade for a poem I'd written about a lion. It was with echos of that acclaim that upon my dropping out of school I set out my portable Olivetti typewriter and hunkered down with thoughts of writing poetry. Within no time at all I had a couple poems, one of which compared rain on a windshield with poor wipers to vaseline smeared against glass by a seated elephant's ass. I promptly sent off my poems to Rolling Stone magazine along with a note informing them that I had set out to live my life as a poet. For some reason they neither published my poems or wrote back to me.

Daunted and crestfallen I returned to school the following September. In the course of an assignment that year I wrote a poem with a deftness not associated with my track. This led to my home room teacher mentoring me for several months the year after my schooling came to an end. Her freely given attention would lead me in time to brave a destination that was for me heretofore without rail service. College.

With skills that were rudimentary at best my initial course within those semi hallowed halls of community college was fortuitously English Composition. Our first assignment in that class, which I found in a box of school memorabilia years later, was to write a paragraph on any subject. My efforts resulted in one run on sentence and two fragments with no discernible subject. I had far to go.

After a foolish year pursuing a management degree I set my sights on creative endeavors and my writing flourished. It turned out I had raw talent. The truth of this came to the surface the more I wrote and augmented my skills through avid reading. The results drew praise from my instructors. They encouraged me to pursue writing as a career move. And off I went with a desire born in my sixteenth year to write a novel. No longer did such an aspiration seem so farfetched. I ventured on to Emerson College in pursuit of a BFA degree in Creative Writing.

Twenty years later I finally sat down and wrote that (first) novel. That it was turned down by every literary agent I approached for representation was I'll admit frustrating. But it did not diminish the joy of my accomplishment. Hot damn; I wrote a novel. And now I'm a 1/4 way into novel number two. I have also found in blogging a realm of writing rewarding to me. So I write. And as my experience has shown there's just no telling where these long traveled rails might lead me.

Ninth Grade Class Night

With an hour to go before the ceremony was to begin the four of us dropped hits of acid. This was in early June when I was fifteen and in ninth grade and gobbling LSD upwards of three times a week. We were at that moment huddled in the woods in a pot smoking circle not far from our school. Ahead of us was Class Night, an evening that was both fanfare and rite of passage. For we had reached after three years of tutelage a point of demarcation. The following year we would be attending high school in another part of town. Giddy and giggling we left our place in the woods and headed for the night's activities.

When we entered the school and headed for the gym we needled one another mirthfully to act straight. Just inside the gym doors was an easel on which sat a mammoth white greeting card that sparkled with glitter and sequins and had a red heart in the center of it. One of the matronly chaperones guarding the door urged us to sign the card. We snickered at the idea and stood in the doorway somewhat dumbfounded. Laid out before us in the sparsely peopled gym were two dozen tables. Each one had seating for eight people. The tables were set with paper table cloths and plastic place settings. Against the back wall was a projection screen. The other three walls and ceiling of the gym were festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and silver and gold helium filled balloons. Off to our left was a rostrum and a six foot long banquet table bearing a punch bowl and cups and a monstrous vanilla cake. With a bit of effort the four of us prodded one another and ventured forth to claim a table. We chose one that was out of the way and off to the side.

Soon the gym was filling up and buzzing with voices and laughter that ebbed and peaked and receded symphonically. No one joined us at our table. We were the only ones among the gathered who were dressed in denim. Our class mates in contrast were garbed in clothes I associated with weddings and funerals and sunday mass. There were gown clad girls in high heels, and guys in suits and ties that they'd probably borrowed from their older brothers.

By then I was hallucinating vividly and had a serious case of the giggles. I felt as tho I was bathing in a warm light. But soon I had to take a leak. On unsteady legs I headed for the bathroom. The walk across the spongy floor of the gym was a challenge that put a smile on my face. Man was I tripping. When I got to the facilities I was glad to find I had the room to myself. I stepped up to the urinal and my right leg began to shake uncontrollably. After a moment or two I smacked it with my balled up right hand. As I did so the door to the bathroom opened and in walked Brad Davis, a local radio personality. He looked to me like a puppet with too many freckles and a shock of red hair. He stepped up to the urinal next to mine and looked over at me and my shaking leg. I gave him a weak smile. He said something banal about the niceness of the evening, flushed, and departed. My leg continued to shake and all I could think was that Brad Davis must have thought I was a spastic weirdo.

I returned to the gym. Soon a head master was rapping on the rostrum for attention. Once he had it he launched into a speech about our constructive time at his school and the wondrous years we were sure to have in high school. There was mention made too of college. But I paid it no attention. I cared little about furthering my education. (In fact I would the following year drop out of school and work a succession of menial jobs; it was an experience that led me to reenroll in school the very next fall.) His words of good luck were met by hearty cheers. A slide show with humorous commentary followed. Our table's laughter was full of derision.

Afterwards with the lights kept low Brad Davis manned the turn tables. He played the latest hits on his am station. It drew the popular kids out on to the make do dance floor. Suddenly Lynn Weeks a warm and friendly girl who easily straddled the various cliques in our school was standing before me. She told me that someone wanted to dance with me. Chemically stupefied I beg off. But she was insistent. Against my better judgement I acquiesced. And presto, there before me standing at Lynn's side was a studious, prim and plain looking girl who had no doubt gone out of her way that night to look her best. I laughed in her face and doubled over guffawing at the ridiculous notion of our dancing together. Such were the cruelties I sometimes inflicted.

The evening ended with me hitchhiking home. When I entered the house my mother was in the living room reading. I joined her there and turned on the television and took a seat across the room from her. A moment later our dog Toto came into the room and sat aside the television and stared at me. Instantly I was aware that she knew I was tripping. I did my best to stare her down and I sent her a message telepathically to not somehow alert my mother that I was high. Sensing tension between Toto and I my mother marked her place in her book and looked over at me and asked is everything was alright? I assured her that everything was fine and I bid her good night. I went to my bedroom, put Electric Lady Land on my turntable, turned off the lights, and slipped on my headphones. I lay down upon my bed and was mesmerized by the liquid patterns that morphed and undulated on my darkened ceiling. My only concern was that Toto might some how betray me.

Lake Days

One of the perks of my father's job as a corrections officer at the Somers, Ct, maximum security facility in the early to mid sixties was the use of the lake on prison farm land. My father worked third shift and following his after work nap we three kids who were barely in our teens would all load into the 1950s black coup that served as our family's second car and with our father behind the wheel we would make our way to the lake. It was a couple of miles from our house and located down the end of a dirt road that snaked its way pass unsupervised laboring inmates, grazing dairy cows, rows of carrots and lettuce, and acres of corn fields. Around one tree lined bend in the road there were numerous coops twice the size of dog-houses where inmates and trustees raised pheasants that would later be used to stock hunting grounds. We would hear the pheasants gurgling and cooing as we passed by.

At the final bend in the dirt road the land opened up to reveal a volleyball net, two baseball diamonds, a basketball court, picnic tables and plenty of tree shaded parking. My father would park beneath the pine trees and we would pile out of the car and head for the water. There was a sandy shore some fifteen yards wide that bisected two picnic areas featuring grills and picnic tables. Thirty yards from shore was a floating raft constructed atop eight empty fifty gallon drums.

As we kids attacked the water my father would have a go at his pipe and shoot the shit with other off duty guards. An hour or so later he would take a dip, peacefully floating on his back as if he didn't have a care in the world.

I was an imaginative boy and one afternoon I practiced swimming with only one hand in case later on I became a lifeguard and had to rescue someone from drowning. The next day at school this cute girl told me she saw me out at the lake the day before. Her father was a prison guard too. She asked me why I was swimming with one arm. When I told her why she said I was weird. It made me wonder if I was.

Another afternoon as we three kids and the Shea brothers waited in the coup for our father to come out of the house Crazy Alice happened to be walking by. She was a neighborhood teenage eccentric who once kidnapped the fiberglass Big Boy Bob from the front of the Abdow's Big Boy restaurant. We taunted her and she snapped into attack mode cussing and hollering and clawing at the car doors. Feeling perfectly safe with the doors locked and the windows rolled up we teased her some more. This ticked her off royally. She threatened to kill us, and smacked at the car. When my father appeared Crazy Alice turned her attention his way. They exchange heated words before Crazy Alice stormed off. When my father got in the car he said we should know better. We shouldn't make fun of crazy people. We said we were sorry and off we went.

On weekends my mother who worked during the week joined us at the lake. She would pack a voluminous picnic basket and we would at dinner time cook up hamburgs and chicken on the grill and later roast marshmallows. Afterwards we'd play volleyball and take a last afternoon dip in the lake before heading home with the sun was sinking in west.

The Human Sickle

Sunday afternoons while addled and hung-over from Saturday night's excesses we played pick up games of full contact football without any protective gear. This was when I was in my mid-teens and had earned the nickname "The Clothes Line" for my sweeping sickle of a forearm aimed at my opponent's throat. I took down ball runners left and right.

I was not the only one with a nickname on those Vince Lombardi gone to seed days. There was also "Mushly" a diminutive player who was often given the ball to run with because he was squirmy and cartoon logic had us convinced that due to his size he could slip right through an opponent's legs. Also on the playing field were two brothers who were known as "Horse Man" and "Pony Boy." The latter had the build of a Budweiser Clydesdale and when he ran it was easy to see him as galloping. The former was far more gentle and had all the cute makings of a little girl's desire for her very own pony.

We played without cheer-leaders or audiences and usually downed hair of the dog libations while attending to our grid iron duties. It was not unusual for someone to call time out to refresh himself with another beer. We had after all our priorities.

Our playing field was in a neighborhood park and the end zones of it were marked by articles of clothing, for instance someone's balled up shirt. Side lines were where we left our six-packs of beer. There were also no goal posts or after touchdown kicks for extra points. Our games were strictly touchdown affairs. The only kicking involved was when we punted for kickoffs and also on fourth downs when a team failed to move the ball an estimated ten yards in the span of three plays. No matter what the reason for a punt however it engendered in both teams rebel yells and hearty tackles of the poor slob running with the ball.

In our subsequent huddles we'd occasionally smoke a joint, swig down some beer, and declare all out mayhem on a player we'd momentarily come to despise. The huddles following one of my particularly vicious clothes lines usually rallied the opposing team into a vehement unit who'd issue an all out call for blood. There was a price to pay for being the human sickle.

Lacking whistles and flags and impartial judgment we self officiated with the loudest yelling team most often winning the argument on how to call a questionable play. More often than not hotly contested calls led to ever more vicious tackles in subsequent plays.

There was also no official time for how long a game lasted. Usually we'd call it quits when the beer ran out. By then most of us would be sporting fresh lumps, cuts, and bruises. We'd limp off the field and go our separate ways all the while nursing thoughts of the havoc and revenge we would reap in the game on the following Sunday.

My sister at sunset

The mind has its phantom thoughts that are renegades from logic. They are vaporous and disappear as quickly as they arrive. Twice since my sister killed herself a month ago I have been visited by two such thoughts, both of them questioning with a unified voice, "I wonder if Karen will call me tonight?" And poof. Each of the two vanished with an attending slap; "Oh yeah, she is dead."

I haven't been able to get a hold of the fact of her demise, in part I believe, because there was through cremation no stilled body to gaze upon at her wake. Instead at a cushioned spot for kneeling there was, at eye level, a photo of her and an ornate urn. Ashes to ashes and all of that. I gazed upon those tokens of her life and death and felt the dullest pangs of loss. It just didn't seem real that my dear sister was gone for ever and ever, amen.

Her graveside service too with its priest and Catholic invocation of Jesus and the eternal hereafter provided no closure for me. The words of the priest read from a book did not sooth or console. The man did not know my sister, nor did she think herself a Catholic. She'd left that religion years ago. The service however was not for me and as I stood there at my sister's grave site I had only one hope and that was that the priest's words eased my father's suffering from the loss of his daughter, the woman who would always remain his little girl.

There is this grainy 8mm-like film loop that runs in my mind each time my unbidden thoughts turn to my sister. In the loop she is falling. Exactly where she is is murky. I can not place the location. She is falling is all I know. Whether she was pushed or slipped is a mystery. For she is always in mid fall in a space that seems to have no top or bottom. I see her falling through the air without aid of a parachute.

Besides such cinematic thoughts are those born of regrets: Could I have in someway said magic words to my sister, words that had the power to rescind her fatal and final decision? Was there another way things might have been? Could I have in my last phone call to her found the right words to fill her once again with hope of better days to come? But all my questions are for naught. They've not an inkling of power to undo all that's transpired. And to think them I've come to see is a kind of betrayal to all my fond memories of my sister when she was radiantly alive and in remission from that horrible disease of depression.

In time I trust I will adjust to her passing and the film loop of her falling will fade away and be replaced by the images of a fond memory of my sister and I: In that memory the two of us are on the beach at sunset with her beloved dog, Stella. The sun is brilliant in smeared oranges, yellows, and golds and Stella is digging up crabs and barking at porpoises. A slight breeze is blowing and I am feeling content, serene, and in awe of the magnificence before me. The moment is one of utter perfection and Karen turns and looks at me and says, "God. Isn't this great." If ever I had an obligation to her it is to remember her in that light.

A Moving Experience

Yesterday morning I boarded one bus after another in order to get to a company that had responded favorably to my earlier emailed resume and accompanying cover letter in which I'd stated that I was reliable and a hard worker. I didn't really want the job. I mean if I had a choice in the matter I wouldn't have sought it out. But I was at a point and still am today where any job will and must do. So I am applying these days to each and every possibility. For I am broke and my bills still must be met. Thus I took measures yesterday that struck me as a backward step. I grasped at a job I'd once labored at some thirty five years passed.

I was then just out of high school and the job I took was that of a helper for a moving company. It did not matter that I thought the work was not for me. I needed a job and a moving company was hiring so it seemed a no brainer. I ought to apply. It was the same bit of logic that convinced me yesterday to once again pursue the same job. As I rode those multiple busses I thought about my experience three and a half decades ago.

My first day of work back then I was teamed up with a bantam weight driver who could have stood no taller than four foot eleven. He was the driver of our team and he looked like a kid behind the wheel. If I remember correctly he had to sit on a couple of phonebooks in order to see over the dashboard. He also had a bulbous black growth the size of a monstrous zit between his upper lip and nose that had me contemplating jabbing it with a pin. As we rode to our first assignment, a delivery of furniture to a third floor apartment, he searched up and down the radio dial for an oldies station. He did so without any luck. Undeterred he broke into a Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons song. He sang off key with the shrill voice of the chemically castrated.

Two renditions later we were at our destination and I learned on that day a fundamental truth known to every mover. There is no piece of furniture more difficult to move than a hide-a-bed couch. The reason for this is two fold: first off it's as heavy as a bear, and secondly at every pivot, twist, and turn you take while lugging the contraption it rocks back and forth and the bed partially springs open throwing you off balance. Adding to the overall difficulty that day I wound up being the person walking backwards and first up the steps. Because of the differences in our heights and the angle of the steps I had to stoop over and carry the hide-a-bed at ankle level in order to accommodate my coworker. Had he gone first up the steps we could have both carried it at chest level. It was an observation I took to heart and acted upon for the rest of that day's deliveries.

The following morning as I sat up high in the cab of our truck I happened to look out upon our fellow commuters on highway 91. When I did so I saw a wondrous sight. There below us in the car to our immediate right was a woman driving along while reading the Hartford Courant. She had the news paper spread out against her steering wheel. Every so often she blithely looked up from the paper to scan the traffic before her with a lack of concern that would leave me stupefied for many years to come.

A day later the supervisor called me and a driver who was a dozen years my senior into his office for a pow wow. We were to deliver some antique and fragile furniture to a monied customer who was a bit of a nervous Nelly and mightily concerned about the welfare of the pieces. He said he could not stress enough the care that we were to show both the furniture and the woman. We told our supervisor he could count on us.

We were hardly out of the company parking lot when the driver asked me if I wanted to get stoned. I said sure why not. He didn't have the weed on him so we had to make an unscheduled stop at his apartment. After we smoked a joint the driver complained of cotton mouth. He said he needed to stop and get something to drink. He pulled up to a liquor store and before popping inside he handed me his pot and papers and told me to roll another joint. So I did. Minutes later he returned with a six pack of beer. He offered me a one but I declined. He guzzled one down and immediately grabbed another and made quick work of that one too. We smoked the other joint in route and by the time we reached our destination the driver had consumed all the beer.

At the client's house the driver backed down the driveway. At least that was his intention. But he missed most of the driveway and ran over a couple bushes. The driver turned off the engine and abdicated his role of leadership, saying "You better talk to her. I'm too fucked up." That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Besides knowing that my eyes were bloodshot I was quite stoned and in no way wanted to speak with a responsible adult. But I had no choice in the matter. When we got out of the truck the woman was waiting for us. I apologized for running over her bushes and for being late. She was noticeably taken aback that I was doing the talking. I was the obvious underling. It did not help matters either that the driver was staggering around and fumbling with the bay door lock on the back of the truck. Eventually I excused myself from the woman and took over the task of opening the pesky lock. It popped right open and the driver with much effort climbed aboard the truck uncertainly. He told me to do the bulk of the moving while he sat in the bay of the truck. He said he would help me with the pieces that took two people to move.

Each trip I took from the back of the truck to inside the house the woman hovered at my side as if believing herself a guardian angel warding off mishaps. In this way I moved all the small items. Then it came time to move the pieces that required two men. We had a go at a sideboard and as the driver stumbled along behind me I saw a look of abject horror on the face of the woman as her suspicions were resolutely confirmed: That man was drunk.

Although there was much swaying and tipsy fumbling somehow the two of managed to complete the move without dropping or marring any one of the precious antiques. And the look of relief on the woman's face at the end of our labors was exultant.

I'm not sure if the woman ever complained about the driver's drunkenness. Were I her I would have. The driver and I never crossed paths again, and I soon quit out of dislike for the job. The following morning after a strong cup of coffee I looked for work elsewhere.

Fast forward to five years shy of four decades later. Once again I broached the possibility of being a moving company helper. By memory's sake alone you would think I'd be too wary to go down that rode again. Surely once was enough. But, and that is key, any job at this point out shines the very real prospect of being totally broke and subsequently homeless.

The Third Sunday In June

Father's Day with its greeting card provenance falls tomorrow and in keeping with family tradition I just dropped my dad a belated card in the mail scant minutes ago. My father will no doubt take it in stride when the card with my sentiments written in haste arrives some time next week days after the date it celebrates. I'm a last minute guy when it comes to sending the appropriate greeting card. I've always been so. Perhaps this is due to my missing that sentimental gene which leaves me in no rush to gush with written down emotions. Or maybe its the greeting cards themselves that have me reaching for them at the last minute, for they seldom say what it is I'd like to express. Thus forgoing words from the heart I gravitate towards cards with a humorous bent and mail them off way too late to arrive in time for the noted occasion.

I have in the past on occasion created my own greeting cards with colored pencils, magic-markers, glue and glitter, and images cut from magazines. When I've done so I have always had this nagging voice hectoring me; "They'll just think I'm just too cheap to send a real card." Or I've imagined the recipient judging my hand made card as childish and missing artistic skill.

More often than not however I've let the greeting card industry dictate how I mark the occasion with their either or choices of flowery sentiment vs humor. And usually I've opted as noted for the latter while avoiding as best I could pathos and hollow laughter. For the arrival of a day warranting a greeting card was most often met by my family with a tacit agreement of a timeout from any ongoing familial discord. This is not to say that it was a relentless battle royal under my father's roof. But it does strike me now that quite frequently when it came time to tender a card there were unresolved issues and tensions gripping the household that seemed through the giving of a card to loosen their hold for a twenty-four hour grace period.

So there I was earlier today once again in the greeting card aisle trying to choose out of twenty odd cards one that best said Happy Father's Day in an approximation of my voice. And what did I pick? I went with a card that had a photo on the front of a young boy with a finger up his nose and the message inside stating, "You're right dad. Some jobs are best handled by yourself." I added the sentiment that "Unlike your nose you can't pick your relatives. But if I could, if I had the chance, I would still pick you as my father."

It strikes me now that I made the wrong choice. Rather than weak comedy I should have gone for the Hallmark product with its endearments and unsullied sentiments. I should have overlooked that long ago strife that pitted father against son and purchased a card with a rhapsodizing text, "You were always there for me, dear old dad." But the words lacked for me the ring of truth. And I could not go forward. Had the card only said, "We had our troubles, dad, but I love you none the less," I would have gladly laid my money down. But there were no such cards to be found today. There were only those that spoke of a seamless past, one that my father and I never lived.

Perhaps I should have looked onward and elsewhere and found a card with a neutral image and no accompanying text. I could then write happy Father's Day and sign the card with no lingering doubts of whether or not the card was an appropriate one. But I did not. Acting upon what felt like little more than an obligation, I was after all complying with a national holiday and not the will of my heart, I opted to go for the least objectionable card at hand, one with humorous intents.

Maybe some day and hopefully soon before my father's demise I will reach for a card on Father's Day and not feel governed by a past that by all rights should have been laid to rest long ago. Perhaps this smarting I still feel from childhood's discord is immaturity on my part. I won't argue the point. For the hurt does smack of an old wound that rightly should have healed by now. So who knows? Maybe with a little luck and perseverance and perhaps an act of grace I will be one day be able to offer my father a card that conveys what he extends to me, unconditional love. On this I pray.

The Bottom Line

When my brother and Hulihand and I reached the Bottom Line in Manhattan, on that long ago January, night in the early 80s the second of the two bands we'd come to see was finishing up their set. The club's manager took pity on us and our late arrival and told us he would honor our tickets for the later set. The three of us had a quick powwow. We wanted to see both bands. But if we did opt for the second set to catch each band it meant we wouldn't get out of the club until hours after the last train departed for Connecticut. We would be stuck in New York City, on what felt like one of the coldest nights on record. With coin flip logic we decided on catching the second set.

With an hour and a half to go before we would be let inside the club we scrambled off to get out of the cold. At a nearby bar my brother ordered us three brandies on the rocks to ward off the chill. When the waitress returned with the drinks my brother gave her a twenty and told her to keep the change. She replied, "You owe me four more dollars." Welcome to New York City, you rubes.

Clutching our brandies in our cold hands we commiserated with one another over our hapless adventure so far. My brother who was living and working in Danbury, had had to work later then planned. Hulihand and I who had driven a couple of hours to meet up with him were forced to cool our heels. An hour passed. Then when my brother was finally off duty and the three of us went in search of the nearby train station we got lost for over an hour. By the time we eventually found the station and boarded the train we had ten minutes to go before the opening act took the stage.

Some time later we were ensconced in the warm confines of the Bottom Line. Both bands that night, one helmed by Ronald Shannon Jackson and the other by James "Blood" Ulmer, were funky and hot and together they swayed us from any lingering doubts over our choice to catch both bands. After the final applause however the house lights came on we headed for the exit and the frigid night beyond.

We hit the streets with our breaths clouding before us. It was bitter cold and we darted into any doorway that held the promise of heat. At one point we happened upon a street where hookers were parading their wares in high-heels, miniskirts, and tight fitting coats of rabbit fur. I was struck both with pity and awe that they could be dressed so scantily on such a frigid an inhospitable night.

One of us spotted an all night porno theater and we scurried inside. For our ten dollar admission we were offered the choice between a generic can of beer or an eight by twelve glossy black and white photo of a provocatively dressed girl, the kicker being that the photo was autographed by the girl. The three of us went for the beer. (God was it lousy.) Stamping our feet in an attempt to get warm we made our way from the lobby to inside the theater proper and took a seat before the naked and undulating couples on the screen. In no time at all I was sexually aroused, but I was however many dollars short of the going price for the services of one of the come hither girls walking up and down the rows of the theater. I returned to the lobby and took a seat. The hours passed for me in a revved up state of sexual longing without redress. I stared wide eyed at the ceiling and waited for the dawn.

Morning came and we headed for the train station. Back in Danbury, my brother went his way and Hulihand and I went ours. We headed into Hartford. Hulihand wanted to do a little shopping at Capital Records a store with high sticker prices where someone had spray painted in front of their door, Capitalist Records.

The store wouldn't open for over an hour so we headed inside a nearby dive bar worthy of a Charles Bukowski poem or two. Or three. We ordered a couple of beers. It might have been only eight o clock in the morning but the bar was teeming with a lively crowd of drinkers. As I was sipping my beer a guy stepped up to the bar aside me and ordered a glass of the house red. He told the bartender to pour himself one, too. And he did. The guy raised his glass to the bartender. "To your health," said the guy and the two of them chugged down their glasses. When the bartender told the guy the price of the two drinks the guy said with a voice dripping with the obvious, "I don't have any money."

There was this woman there too who was in her forties and the obvious darling of the mostly geriatric crowd of men. She had once been it was easy to see a beautiful woman. Drink however had laid waste to her looks. Back and forth she paced the length of the bar. As she went pass each patron seated at the bar they called her by her name and plied her with drinks. At one point as she was down at the far end of the bar engaged in a conversation I saw a bicyclist who was passing by the bar's front window get sideswiped by a car. When police arrived sometime later to question folks in the bar she came running forward saying, "I saw the whole thing." No one including myself contradicted that fallen beauty's claim. For after all was said and done her allure and our fear of losing her by questioning her veracity held sway over the bottom line.

Karen Elizabeth

Three nights ago my dear sister committed suicide. The news came as no surprise. She had suffered from depression for most, if not all, of her life and had over the course of her years run the gamut from self prescribed remedies to MD written scripts for various doses of antidepressants. Nothing seemed to work for long. The agony of the disease was never far away. It mattered not that the wonders of science enabled psychiatrists to classify her as bipolar. For the naming of her affliction was not a cure. At best she was blessed through their prescriptions with short term relief from the symptoms. Such times were scattered islands of calm in a turbulent sea of grief.

From very early on my sister turned to substances as numbing cures for emotional pain and disquietude. One jovial night in our thirties as we shared war stories of folly in our youth my sister told me about one time when she was around age eleven and had done something that had upset our parents and subsequently caused herself pain. Intuitively she knew at that young age that the cure for her discomfort resided in the medicine chest. She consumed an entire bottle of God knows what with the only results being that her stool was tinted green for her next couple of dumps. Oh how we laughed that night with the telling of that anecdote.

In her teens with frequency she cried out for help through the slashing of her flesh. Her wrists from those years were a crisscross of scars.

By inches then yards she sank ever lower into a morass of liquor and drugs and she sought with ever increasing intake to plug that self sinking hole. But the substances rather than stopping up the hole only served to widen and deepen it and the sucking of that hole became the only sound until finally she was the very hole, a chasm as deep as a beaten down soul.

The subsequent years passed in a self eradicating void of turmoil, chaos, and despair.

Then she found her way into the rooms of AA. Over the next twenty years she adhered to the 12 Step way of life. She surmounted the physical cravings for liquor and drugs and slowly went about the work of rebuilding a self. She made restitution and amends and took to sharing with others what had been given so freely to her. In doing so she became a warmly regarded member of a world wide fellowship. And she knew a life rich with purpose.

Depression however continued to dog her. It was a disease that one doctor had warned her would only worsen with age. I wonder now how that statement contributed to her decision made in the grips of despair to end her life. Was she thinking it's only going to get worse when she swallowed that fatal dose of pills? I think now too how I might have gone about my last few conversations with her. Could I have said something, offered a shred of hope, that might have swayed her lethal hand? In the end I am left with my questions and the dashed hopes that I could have in some way rescued her from the jaws of depression. It was a child's wish I know, one not given to the facts. For no one has power over another's depression.

She was of course more than her afflictions. When she wasn't under the pounding hammer of depression her smile was genuine, warm, and inviting. Her wit was likened to a friendly jab that tickled and her compassion seemed to know no bounds. She was generous beyond her means and an avid and thoughtful listener. She was my most trusted confidant. My secrets I knew never went beyond her. Through her time in the rooms of AA her friends were legion. For she touched many lives with humility, warmth, and grace. Her death leaves a wide vacuum behind and I will miss her until the day I die.

Half A Couple

The day was bright and I was playing with my army men in the sand dunes of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, in late August, of my eleventh year when we met. She was the teenage daughter of one of my mother's friends and I was instantly smitten. It was my first time being so. Until that moment girls hardly interested me. But she was different. The sun through her hair was burnished a deep yellow and her limbs were lithe and her smile brilliant. Then and there as if in a trance I gave up my plastic soldiers and pretend war games and blundered forward betraying my heart. With winks and nudges the gathered adults made note of my new maturity and my abandonment of toys. Such a big boy they said and my chest ached with the knowledge that I was the object of such scrutiny. Several nights later this golden girl of my first romantic yearnings served as a babysitter for my siblings and I. So struck was I by the prospects of the two of us being together alone upon the bedtime hour of my siblings I pretended sleepiness and went to bed at their bedtime, too. In the safety of my bedroom I stood at my door with my ear pressed against the wood listening as hard as I could to that girl on the other side who I would never in reciprocated passion touch.

When I was fourteen I swooned for a girl named Corrie and I knew an aching that held sway over me with a power that was oppressive and gothic. When she rejected me for another I wept and kept to my bed as a vampire to his coffin. For weeks I grieved and had no taste for life without her. But eventually I had to move on.

Over the next three years I was a dumb animal in regards to relationships. With a grope instead of a caress my attempts at intimacy were more of a wrestling match. Then I met Linda. I was a senior in high school seventeen years old and hanging out at a local bar. We hit it off and she gave me her number. I called her a couple of days later. When she asked me what I felt like doing I told her I felt like going to a motel. She chuckled and said she was game for it. I asked my mother if I could borrow her portable radio and when she asked why I told her because I'm going to a motel with a woman. She was a bit flabbergasted but said Ok. You can borrow it. That night Linda initiated me in the hows of sex and coital satisfaction. We stayed a couple for a few weeks but my age and more to the point my immaturity came between us and pushed us apart.

In my twenties I met Joan. She was a sweet and sensitive girl a couple years younger than me and though by age and definition a woman I thought of her as a girl. I tormented her by driving too fast with only a pinkie on the steering wheel and yelling out lines first uttered by Frank Booth in the movie Blue Velvet. Somehow she was able to put up with me and my limitations. I shared less than equally and remained aloof and dark and brooding. I was in a nutshell a mess and when it came time for me to move to Boston in pursuit of school I parted ways with her.

It was also during this time that I hooked up with Kathy. She was on one of her periodic outs from my band mate, Steve. She and I were carnally one and I experienced in her waterbed exploits and satisfaction worthy of several torrid paragraphs in a Harlequin romance novel.

I did not have another relationship until midway into my thirties. Her name was Laura and she drank more than I was comfortable with. I knew this even before I wooed her. Loneliness is a serpent with an apple. And I bit into that fruit. We shared a rocky year together. Me with only one foot in. I led her on not brave enough to face reality that we weren't really a good match.

My early forties saw me in several Friends With Benefits relationships. None were serious or all that long lasting. Nor did they sate my romantic longings. They were sexual and flat and void of any deep emotional connection.

Now I am in my fifties and have not dated or been in a relationship for over ten years. There is also no one on the horizon of possibility. I am alone. But the hours so no longer drain or cause me to weep. I have grown comfortable with myself and my company. Perhaps at some point a woman will enter my life and I will put down my current toys of escapist thinking. And together we might make a go of it and maybe even take a walk along the beach beneath a burnished yellow sun.

Further Frayed

Somewhere along the way in 7th or 8th grade our gym coach Murph The Surf assembled us in the gym before a movie screen and showed us filmed highlights of his gridiron career as a offensive linesman for the triple A football team the Hartford Knights. It only added to our coach's mystique. He had earlier at one point won us over with awe when we clandestinely watched him, while seated in his office, smoke a Marlboro down to the filter in less than ten drags. Was that cool or what? So when he showed us his 16mm exploits we watched with rapt attention. At one point during the screening Murph The Surf let it be known that this was the play in which his leg was shattered thus ending his career and his hopes for eventual NFL glory.

Our coach had the demeanor of a well regarded uncle. He doled out discipline sparingly and kept us in line with whistle blows and an occasional shout to cut it out. During dodge ball games, easily the highlight of my years in junior high school, he wasn't opposed to taking a throw now and then at someone squirming against the far wall with bunched up thoughts of getting hit.

In 9th grade we got a new coach and his name was spelled phonetically Man-duh-noo-doe. He had a hockey background and a stare I can only describe as icy. He quickly let it be known to one and all that he would not stand for any bullshit. He was the antipathy of Murf The Surf and I did not care for him. That year even though Man-duh-noo-doe was the new football coach I tired out for the team. I had it in mind to impress my father. There was at that time in our household a rift between the two of us that seemed irreparable. And I thought that maybe, just maybe, that my showing an interest in sports might bring us closer together.

The initial thing we had to do that first day of football practice after school was run the quarter mile track four times around. I was a laggard and Man-duh-noo-doe blew his whistle at me and told me to show a little hustle. The next day when I clocked in with a particularly fast forty yard dash he scoffed at my time with disbelief and had me run it again. I ran a second time with impressive speed and the coach regarded me then in a higher light as someone with a little potential. We spent the rest of the afternoon running sprints until the end of the practice when we once again ran four times around the track.

Also trying out that day for the team was a girl in our school named Sue who had a reputation of being a whore. She said she wanted to be a Center for the football team. Man-duh-noo-doe demonstrated how a quarterback held his football waiting hands high and tight against the crotch of the Center and asked her if she was sure that was the position she wanted to try out for. She said it was. The coach gave it some thought serious or not and told her this was no place for a girl. She seemed quite disappointed, as was I'm sure our quarterback.

At this point I should tell you that through out the the practices I joked and kidded and acted as if football was just a lark. I tell you this in order to give weight to what follows. The coach put me in the center of twelve players standing in a circle. What transpired was called if I am remembering correctly, "The bull in the middle." It was an exercise in which each of the twelve players had a number and the coach called them out in no particular order and each time he did so the player with that number charge at me, the bull in the middle. Man-duh-noo-doe called out the numbers with swift speed and did so I believe to show me a lesson. The players rushed at me from all sides some times two in the course of one breath. And I experienced in those minutes in the middle an animal fear as I stood and fought for what seemed my very survival. Each player that rushed me I slung to the ground, one after another, and I found in spite myself that I had a taste for conquest if not blood. By the time Man-duh-noo-doe called an end to the exercise I was gasping for breath and grunting and ready to take on all comers and the coach had a look on his face that said, now you are mine.

Man-duh-noo-doe had a way of getting his message across. At one point in his tenure he decided to teach a lesson to a student who had fallen out of his favor. The student was blindfolded and ordered to get on his back. One kid then held his feet down and another his shoulders. Next the coach told the student on his back to try as hard as he could to do a sit up. But the kid at his shoulders firmly held him down. As he did so the coach pulled down his pants and underwear and straddled the student with his naked buttocks in the direction of the student's face. A moment later the coach called out, now, and the kid holding down the shoulders of the student let go and the straining student completed his sit up with his face winding up imbedded in the crack of the ass of coach Man-duh-noo-doe.

By the second day of training my taste for vanquishing opponents that had been whetted in me through The bull in the middle exercise waned and I was once again goofing around between wind sprints. Coach Man-duh-noo-doe spied me doing so and blew his whistle. He told me to hit the showers. I was off the team. When I got home my father asked me how was practice and I told him I'd been kicked off the team for smiling. He was not amused and the rift between us that I'd hope to mend was further frayed. It would remain so for many years to come.

A Case Of The Blues

There I was with Ronny O. We were seated on a highway guardrail somewhere along a vast uninhabited stretch of land a hundred miles from home at three in the morning on a muggy Thursday. Nearby was Ronny O's broken down beetle. The two of us were commiserating over our vehicular misfortune and also marveling at the luck of the couple who had earlier occupied the VW's back seat. They had just moments ago thumbed a ride with the very first vehicle to come along, an eighteen wheeler. Ronny O was reluctant to abandon his bug. But we were both weary and ready for bed. We gave ourselves another half hour's wait. If rescue didn't come within that time we too would stick out our thumbs. I was eager to go for I also had hanging over my head a recent ultimatum: if I missed work again or came in late without a reasonable excuse I would be fired. And there I was with less than four hours to make it under the wire at seven AM. It didn't look good. I sighed and wondered how I managed to wind up in such a predicament.

The evening had started out with such pleasant expectations. Two hundred miles from our homes at a club in rural Rhode Island, the Fabulous Thunderbirds were appearing. It was a perfect reason for a road trip. I met up with Ronny O and he introduced me to a young and enthusiastic couple who were like us fans of the blues. The four of us hopped into Ronny O's bug and headed east. Along the way Ronny O regaled us with choice selections from his vast collection of recorded blues. We bopped to the music and talked with merriment about the show ahead at a club in the hinterlands of the tiniest state in the union.

We made it to the club with a minor hitch. We'd been given faulty directions and our two hour trip had turned into three. But we made it and we paid our way in. A short time later I got some pot from Ronny O who had no papers or pipe to go along with it. I spent a frustrating twenty minutes asking every long hair patron of the club for papers. Finally I got one and I headed outside to roll up a joint. In the parking lot I leaned against a car with my head bent down and went at it. I crimped the ends of the paper and dropped in the pot. When I had it perfectly rolled I lifted my head and stuck out my tongue to lick the glue. That's when I saw the police cruiser stopped directly in front of me some four feet away. I immediately pictured myself calling my father to tell him I was in jail. The cop who was driving frowned at me and shook his head as if to say, "You dolt." I shrugged my shoulders and crumpled the joint and let the contents fall to the ground. The cop shook his head once again, "Loser," before driving off. I went back in the club.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds were hot that night. They had the club rocking until two in the morning. Afterwards we headed out into the night completely sated.

In no time at all we were lost. We wound up driving down a bumpy dirt road that paralleled the highway we wanted to be on. But we couldn't find a way to get to it. The dirt road took us deeper into the woods. We must have been on that rutted road for close to an hour before we finally found a our way to the highway. We all sighed with relief. Finally, we were headed home.

A short while later the back seat couple were whispering urgently. "What's that smell?" "It smells like something burning." A minute or two later they spoke up. "Something's not right." Ronny O turned on the interior light and we saw that the bug was full of smoke. We were on fire. The couple screamed for their lives and before Ronny O could make it to the side of the road and stop the guy of the couple tried to climb over me and get to the door. It was pandemonium inside the bug. Ronny O hopped out while the bug was still running. The rest of us scrambled out with the sheer conviction we were escaping a death trap.

We stared at the bug. It did not meet our expectations by bursting into flames. The fire was an electrical one that merely smoked as it fried the wires and made the bug inoperable. There we were stuck in an unpopulated nowhere with no help in sight. We practically had the highway to ourselves. At the approach of the first headlights in twenty minutes the couple stuck out their thumbs. And just like that they were gone.

Ronny O suggested we try jump starting the bug. We spent the next twenty minutes pushing the car and popping the clutch to no avail. Worn out and flustered we sat on the guardrail. Morning light was dawning. A police cruiser came upon us and pulled over. The cop stepped out of his car to question the two of us. As we were explaining the situation to him a car sped by and before it got twenty feet away there was an explosion. The three of us turned that way in time to see the car strike the guardrail and come to a screeching halt. The passenger door flew open and a girl scrambled out and hopped over the guardrail and lit out for parts unknown. The cop excused himself. He drove down to the car and spoke to the occupants. Minutes later the car drove off. Then so did the cop. He did not return to offer us any assistance. As for the girl her whereabouts remained a mystery. We never saw her again.

Somewhat reluctantly we stuck out our thumbs. We didn't have to wait too long. A dark low riding sedan with a metallic gurgle pulled over for us. I sat in the back. The floorboards were littered with empty beer cans and assorted trash. The driver was disheveled and in need of a shave. He spoke ominously of the dangers of the night on the open road. He gave me the willies. At one point we hit a bump in the road and he laughed and said that it was the last hitchhiker he had picked up and killed. I searched around me for an improvised weapon. Just outside of Hartford, he dropped us off with the words, "Be careful of who you ride with."

At that point Ronny and I abandoned the highway and went looking for a pay-phone to call my brother and plead that he rescue us. After a weary interlude of searching side streets in vain we stumbled upon a phone booth. I placed the call. By then I was suppose to be at work in a half hour. But I was in no condition for an eight hour shift. By the time my brother arrived and drove us home I decided I was staying put. I called into work and spoke with the manager who had given me that final warning. She listened to my tale of woe without interjecting. She then surprised me by not telling me that I was fired. Instead she told me to make sure I was not late the following morning. And my job, though far from my liking, was safe for another day. After having something to eat I retired to my bedroom where I put a Fabulous Thunderbirds album on my turntable and got into bed. With the blues playing at soft volume I drifted off to sleep.

My Flubbing Sales Pitches

Tired of manual labor I got it into my head that I was going to be a traveling salesman. Me. The guy who was most comfortable sitting alone at home in a comfortable corner with a good book. But I reasoned. Had I not a history of gracing the stage with the band Cargo Of Despair? Couldn't I call upon that nocturnal spirit of rock and roll that allowed me to entertain audiences to also dispel my day time reluctance of speaking to strangers? Sure I could. I mean how hard could it be? I was soon to find out.

My phone call to the number listed in the newspaper ad that caught my eye led to a cup of coffee and a sales pitch in a booth at the Majestic restaurant. He was a smooth talker this business suited salesman who would, he let it be known, take me under his wing and teach me how to fly from sale to sale to sale. And what I was selling he assuredly laid out was individualized adverts that bordered a give away map of my sales territory, southeastern GA. Each business that advertised on the map would get one map to display prominently in their place of business and a couple hundred others to also hand out. And just think the clincher of the sales pitch went every other business that bought an advert on the map would also be advertising your business, too. It was win win, baby.

Truth be told I wasn't all that blown away by the pitch. The map struck me as cheesy and for the price of each advert it seemed a couple hundred copies of the map in return was far away from a bargain. In hindsight I should have begged off and opted for a product I at least believed in. But I didn't. Instead I ventured onward with what would later prove to be a succession of passionless sales pitches. But first there was my tutelage.

A couple of days later I was invited to lunch with several other would be salesmen and the CEO of the company. He was this leader of men a squat little guy with a receding hairline and a gruff and raspy voice. He had the looks of a retired drill sergeant who through his bearing instilled in his charges the willingness to die for the good of the cause. He talked up the maps with utter conviction. The product he assured us would all but sell itself. Now get out there he said and close some sales. After our lunch I noticed he left a lousy tip.

The next morning I met up once again at the Majestic with the salesman who had promised to be my mentor. We hopped into his car. As we drove along rather than telling me how to sell he instead told me about how he'd once been into music and drugs. But he had found Jesus. Our CEO he assured me was also governed by the word of God. As he was telling me this and more all centered on the greatness of our lord he slowly began slouching against his door and his foot eased off the gas until he was slumped over and we were puttering along on a thoroughfare at ten miles per hour. A bleating horn snapped him out of his trance like state. He sat upright, jammed on the gas, and asked, Now where was I? A few minutes later we pulled up to a gas station and he told me to watch how it was done. He asked for the owner and when the man appeared he turned on his smile and made his pitch. His patter was friendly and inviting but he did not make a sale. From there we went to a succession of different businesses. At each stop my mentor turned up the wattage of his smile and slipped after pleasantries into his pitch. Not once did he make a sale. The following morning he had me meet him in the lobby of a hotel in down town Decatur, for one last day of training. As I was waiting for him a bloated middle-aged man had a heart attack and keeled over in the hallway leading to a restaurant on the other side of the lobby. I watched several kneeling waiters do their best to render first-aid. The following morning I was off to fend for myself, an able body salesman with my very own territory.

Donning polished shoes, crisp pressed pants, a buttoned up shirt and tie I consulted a map and set off for the outer reaches of my sales territory. I was truth be told putting off my first attempt at making a pitch. But eventually after much driving I pulled into a motel driveway, parked, and made my way inside to give it a shot. I was far from smooth, ingratiating and articulate. In short I muffed it. I got back in my car and turned up the AC. For I was for my efforts drenched in sweat. The rest of my calls that day and the several that followed were likewise unsettling affairs. None of my pitches garnered a sale.

One morning in East Atlanta, I stepped up to a building that had no sign indicating what type of business it was. After several knocks the door opened just wide enough to reveal the face of a glaring and evil looking man. I slipped into my pitch the whole time thinking there was something wrong with this picture. "I can't help you," said the man with a sinister look that seemed borrowed from the crazed antagonist in a slasher movie. I asked if him if his boss was around. By then I was thinking that behind that door was a woman dangling from a meat hook. "I told you," he said, his eyes seeming to look right through me. "I can't help you." He closed the door. The following few days I read the newspaper religiously on the look out for a story about a gruesome discovery in the bowels of a building in East Atlanta.

Some how ten days into it I managed to close a sale at a hotel owned by an Indian man named Patel. It turned out the business was outside my sales territory. So the salesman whose territory it was chalked up the sale. Not me.

After an exceedingly bad pitch the following day I stepped out of the business and raising my arms heavenward and spinning slowly around I yelled out, "I'm the worst salesman ever." Shortly thereafter my mentor had me meet him at a nearby Shake and Steak. "I want you to turn in your clipboard," he said. "And don't take it so hard. This kind of work isn't right for everyone."

One Fall Night

It was dinner time on a Friday evening in late Fall when I was fifteen. My siblings and I were gathered around the kitchen table. The mood was buoyant and the light through the kitchen window was golden with promise. The chatter between us kids was giddy with the prospects of the weekend before us. My father stood close by manning a blender. He was whipping up a second quart of mocha flavored milkshakes. I was drinking my fill because teenage logic had me convinced that a milk coated stomach enabled me to later on drink copious amounts of beer without throwing up. My mother was flipping burgers at the stove. She cooked them medium-rare and then piled them up on a serving dish. With milkshakes and burgers my parents joined us kids at the kitchen table. For some reason the usual familial stress engendered by my under age drinking and use of illegal drugs was missing that evening. There was an unspoken truce between one and all and we were in that moment in spite of our alienating differences a happy family. I ate two cheese burgers before hitting the road.

I stuck out my thumb and hitched a ride. Hitchhiking then was common place and rarely did I have to wait long before someone stopped and gave me a lift. And never once did I have a bad experience. Although a couple times I had an irksome moment or two. For instance late one night as I hitched along a lonesome stretch of road a car stopped for me and as I stepped into it the driver asked me if I was clean. Indignantly I told him I'd had a shower the previous night. "No," he said as if I were a dunce. "I mean are you armed?" He reached over and frisked me saying, "Have you got a knife or a gun?" The subsequent ride was an unnerving one. Another time also late at night as I was walking along the road and thumbing every passing car I saw a motorcycle exit a barroom parking lot. It seemed to be wobbly and just after it passed me on the opposite side of the road I heard the bike spill. I turned to see the bike bouncing down the street and the driver sprawled on the side of the road. The accident seemed like it happened in slow motion and I was laughing and I expected the driver to rise and stagger about drunkenly. But the rider did not move. It turned out that when he fell although he wore a helmet his head hit a metal post sticking out of the ground several inches. It killed him. Not right away. He died several days later. It turned out I knew the motorcyclist's cousin. And he would later tell me in an accusatory manner that his mother had had a dream in which I killed the the motorcyclist. The withering look on his face when he told me this was that of a righteous prosecutor saying to the clearly guilty party, Confess. But getting back to that Friday evening in the fall of my fifteenth year the ride was uneventful.

The driver dropped me off where I indicated at the mouth of a dirt road leading into the woods. Several hundred yards up that tree lined road friends of mine were gathered around a bonfire. I joined them there. Soon someone announced he was making a liquor run and those of us under age handed over our money and requests for six packs of tall beer cans otherwise known as kingers.

After a few beers I had a warm glow on and when Pat W. challenged me to a game in which we sat facing one another, almost touching, and punched each other in the kneecaps until one of us called it quits I obliged him. Several punches later Pat had a crazed look in his eyes and I knew that I would be the first to capitulate. But not wanting to be called a wimp however I soldiered on for several more punches until my hand was smarting along with my right kneecap. When I gave up and said you win Pat let go with a laugh that I can only describe as maniacal.

Our bonfire that night had flames six or seven feet high and after swilling a six pack I joined several guys in taking running jumps through the blaze. Somehow, perhaps beer addled, I did not jump far enough. Instead of clearing the bonfire I landed in its center. Flames and sparks shot up around me. (The next morning I woke stinking of campfire and something else burnt. I discovered upon looking in the bathroom mirror that my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and the peach fuzz about my chin and cheeks were all singed.)

When it neared my curfew hour that night I headed off for home. Jay C. who had less than a year to live before he was murdered was likewise going in my direction. Together we tottered and stumbled the length of the dirt road. When we cleared the woods we stuck out our thumbs. But there were hardly any cars on the road. We wound up staggering along for several challenging miles. At one point we ventured off the road and into nearby tobacco fields. Soon a car was nearing our way. As the car was about to pass by we hurled solid clumps of soil and crabgrass at it. We hit the car and the driver jammed on the brakes. We took off into the safety of the fields. The driver shouted something our way that I couldn't make out. No doubt a curse or two. Several minutes later Jay and I climbed up and got atop the tobacco netting some eight feet off the ground. We were whooping and hollering and feeling invincible. But when we attempted to run across the netting we tore right through it and plummeted to the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of me.

A short time later Jay and I were back on our way home. At a fork in the road where our paths diverged we went our separate ways. Minutes later I was at my house and swaying. I tried to rouse myself into being sober before entering. It didn't work worth a damn and I fumbled getting the key in the lock. When I finally got the door open and I stepped into the glare of the kitchen light I realized just how drunk I was. But the gods were with me. My father was not waiting up for me with a lecture and a look of disdain. He was instead in the bathroom he shared with my mother getting ready for work as a third shift corrections officer. I made my way to the other bathroom to take an urgent piss. When I stepped out of the bathroom I heard my father in the kitchen readying to step out the door. I called out good night and my father replied the same. His voice I thought was flat with disapproval. He stepped out the kitchen door locking it behind him. And I staggered into my bedroom where, if my luck held out, my bed would not spin me into nausea the moment I laid my head down.

In The Clutches Of A Company Man

I'll admit I'm a day dreamer and perhaps on occasion even delusional. Take for instance the morning I saw an ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution for a traveling portrait photographer. Right away I drifted off and saw myself as the next Annie Leibovitz with lavish photo spreads in the pages of Vanity Fair. The fact that I was lacking in any photographic skills did not damping my revelry. For the ad even said No Experience Necessary. Perhaps that part should have tipped me off and brought me back down to earth. I was not about to embark on a future directly leading to hobnobbing with the stars. Still. You never know. Even Annie had to get a start somewhere. So I answered the ad with a dash of boldness. Three days later on a Saturday I was on the road with a pro who would show me the ropes.

He had a face that reminded me of the scarecrow's in The Wizard of Oz. His hair was thin and straw-like too and he had a vocal tic in which he was constantly vocalizing eh, eh, eh as if he were clearing his throat in order to impart something important. As we traveled to our first assignment he made it abundantly clear with uncensored babbled that he was proud southerner and everything that was wrong in the country was the direct fault of the "darkies." Ever the coward and not wanting to jeopardize my job on the very first day I said nothing in return. Instead I bided my time with the thoughts I'd soon be out of his clutches.

Our first shoot was at a Florida Big Lots a couple of miles off of highway 85. We set up our camera and strobe lights and baby blue backdrop along with a stool in a space cleared out in the children's underwear and shoe isles. There was soon a milling throng eager for their moment in front of the camera. They had been lured in by the promise of a free picture. Our job as photographers was to take six different shots of each sitter. A Salesman from the company would later do his best to convince folks that each of the six photos was so wonderful that they should buy additional pictures to go along with their free one.

My tutor was professional I'll grant him that. He treated each and all regardless of race or color with courtesy and efficiency. He kept that long line moving with a calm and welcoming demeanor. I marveled at how, racist as he was, he did not let his prejudice interfere with the business at hand. He got his six shots of every sitter.

Later that night after a soggy meal at a Picadilly we retired to our shared room. My tutor pulled down the bedspread and sprayed the entire bed with disinfectant. Then he lay down under the comforter without undressing. He went to sleep still dressed head to toe in shoes and suit and tie.

The following weekend I manned the camera and marshaled the murmuring line. It was stressful and I found myself soon feeling miserable and wanting the day to end. But I soldiered on, and try as I might to keep things moving that line was soon bellyaching, What's taking so long? As each sitter or couple or family sat for me I fumbled with the camera and also the inserts that when developed placed the sitter seemingly inside a brandy snifter, or in a celestial body of stars. The line was unrelenting. And I couldn't keep up like my tutor with a bing bang boom. Both the line and I moved haltingly and I was nearly gritting my teeth every time I said Smile.

A couple of days later I was called into the office to see the results of my shots. Hardly a one was of someone honestly smiling. In frame after frame the sitter looked grim. I was told the salesman was going to have a hell of a time selling any of my work. With a verbal pat on the back however I was told that now that I'd seen the error of my ways I would no doubt do better the coming weekend.

That Saturday we were once again in a Big Lots and I was manning the camera. But my heart was not in it. I was never one to be all that gregarious to begin with and under pressure to keep things moving I sulked and became reticent. The task at hand called for a showman with zip and a smile. In other words not me. A couple of hours into it I gave up. I turned the camera over to my tutor. The next day I left the bulk of the shooting to him. I'd decided it would be my last day as a traveling portrait photographer. I spent the next few hours wandering around Big Lots and chomping down candy-bars. At the end of the day there was one the last sitting, two teenagers in cowboy hats and western wear and their mother in a floor length dress. The first shot went off without a hitch. But on the second shot when the strobe light flashed the mother went into twitching seizure and collapsed to the floor. One of the cowboys cried out, Ma. And I yelled to a salesgirl at a nearby register to call for an ambulance.

By the time it arrived the woman had regained most of her wits but she was still obviously a bit dazed. The paramedics insisted she be transported by gurney to a nearby hospital. As they were wheeling her away my tutor stepped over to her and said, "We still have four shots left to go." I bursted out laughing. In between guffaws I told him I couldn't believe what he said. He denied he said it. When I told him I'd heard him he reluctantly shook his head and confessed, "I guess in the end I'm just a company man."

Some of the old gang

Peter S had a surname easily altered into the nickname Scribbles. Like me he was at age sixteen a high school drop out. He was also likewise bereft of any ambition beyond getting stoned each morning and watching I Love Lucy and playing air guitar along with the likes of Led Zeppelin Two and Johnny Winter And. Months into our slothful revelries however we were spurred on by parental demands to go in search of jobs. We managed in doing so to get hired together at Rail Road Salvage a retailer of carpets and goods that were in deed salvaged from fires and close outs and all manner of minor catastrophes. It was the perfect job for a couple of stoners. Management was lax. For instance one employee managed each day to take a nap in a space he'd burrowed in the stacks of carpet. Somehow he was never missed. Our duties too amounted to little more than pushing brooms, tidying shelves and going out to the parking lot to retrieve shopping carts. The latter we undertook any time we felt like smoking a joint. As little demanding as the job was we lasted only a couple of weeks. Peter was fired when he caught a football that someone tossed at him after calling out his name. The manager who canned him could not be persuaded by Peter's argument that his dismissal was a gross injustice. I got canned shortly thereafter for lollygagging too long in the parking lot.

Freddy K was swarthy with a chipped front tooth and a ready grin. He had the hairstyle of a television depicted Apache. One day while he was working on a tobacco farm two older boys stripped him bare for one reason or another. Utterly naked he covered his genitalia and butt with two of the largest tobacco leaves he could pluck and took refuge on the bus that had transported him to work. Naked but for the leaves he rode the bus back to where he'd been picked up that morning. Then doing his best to keep the leaves in place he scurried through the streets to his family's apartment. Some years later Scribbles and I dropped by to pay Freddy K a visit. He was seated at the kitchen table with his stepfather who was shucking oysters and slurping them down. Egged on by Freddy his stepfather downed an entire quart bottle of Black Label beer in something like three seconds flat. A minute or so later without warning the stepfather inexplicably hurled the shucking knife with intentions it seemed to hit Freddy in the face. The knife stuck in the kitchen door with a thwack no more than two inches to the right of Freddy K's head.

Debbie D from very early on was called Debbie Depresso and she seemed forever in a sulk. One night when she was seventeen she came to after passing out from too much to drink. When she did so she found herself naked with Paul D. atop of her. And it was in this manner that she lost her virginity.

Tom C loved drugs. He imbibed whatever was available twenty four seven. When he ran afoul of the law in his early twenties he opted to join the navy to avoid imprisonment. A couple of years into his tour of duty he came home on leave. He had with him dozens upon dozens of photos taken around the world. Every photo shared a common theme: in some he was standing among marijuana plants some eight feet high, others showed him beaming while holding ounces of hash, there were photos too of mounds of cocaine and piles of variously colored pills, also included were snapshots of Tom completely wasted. After he was out of the navy he had us read his official discharge papers. They attested to his being an enthusiastic and able bodied seaman, but, it was duly noted, due to his frequent trouble with drugs he was not recommended for reenlistment. Tom really got a charge out of that.

Steve L we called Screwy Louie. One night while exceedingly drunk he managed somehow to drive himself home where he immediately passed out in his driveway. A short time later he came to and had no idea where he was. In a panic he pulled out of his driveway and sped off. He did not get far as he promptly smashed into a car parked on the street some four or five houses away. The accident shattered his jaw. In turn he had it wired shut. A couple of days later there was a gathering of friends at my parent's house where Steve tried drinking wine through a straw. When the alcohol hit the lacerations inflicted by his accident you should have heard his clamped mouth scream.

Mark D was running full bore and looking over his left shoulder when he caught the spiraling football pass. The very next second as he turned to look in the direction he was running he smacked head first into a solid tree some some eight feet in circumference. The impact sounded like the mighty crack of a bat when a slugger puts one out of the ball park. For the next several minutes Mark lay sprawled on the ground frothing at the mouth and biting his tongue.

John W who was tall and passive and good natured to boot had a terrible car accident that altered his personality ever after. Post collision he took to carrying an eight inch long serrated steak knife that he called Little Johnny. Over the ensuing years he brandished the weapon ad nauseam without provocation. The look on his face when he did so was a fright mask of seething dementia.

Steve S was another guy who really loved drugs. One bright and sunny day I happened to see him on the opposite side of the road as I drove by. He had the look of the utterly lost with his mouth agape and his eyes bulging out. Later that night I saw him at our usual partying spot in the woods. He still looked disturbed. As best as he could in his addled state he told us how he'd gone to court that morning after swallowing enough animal tranquilizer to dope a dozen people. All he could remember of that morning's proceedings was the judge's mouth moving. He had no idea what the judge said. Some years later Steve died of exposure after passing out on downers one frigid night in those very same woods.

Working Tobacco

My adolescent peers and I rose before dawn and stepped from our homes with our brown paper bagged lunches and rallied in the parking lot of a nearby gas station. A short wait later a dull green bus arrived and the more rambunctious of us boarded while jeering one another to hurry up. The driver was a weather ruined old codger wearing a blue sweat lined baseball cap. He told everyone to settle down and we were soon on our way to the tobacco fields of a nearby town where we would with Hollywood derived antebellum visions of slavery labor away at what we called "Working Toblacko."

This was in 1969, when I was twelve and shade grown tobacco was still a viable product of New England. At that time you would see acre upon acre of tobacco plants protected from the sun by off white netting some eight feet high. (Four years later under a luminous moon while drunk and stoned two friends and I attempted to run atop the netting. Every three or four feet we fell through and smashed to the ground. Bruised and delirious we laughed it off and climbed back up to try it again.)

On the ride to the field that morning I barely spoke. I was at that time in my life not given to carousing. Instead I stared out the window as the sun rose and gave shape to the world.

The bus pulled off the paved road and ambled down a dirt one between two different fields protected by nets. We came to a halt. The driver told us to leave our lunches on our seats. As we stepped off the bus a field hand asked our names and wrote them down on a sheet of paper affixed to a clipboard. Once we were all off the bus the field hand explained that we were to remove the small leaves called suckers from the tobacco plants and put them in the baskets that each one of us was going to be outfitted with. The baskets were canvas and metal affairs three feet long by two feet wide and two feet deep. We were to pull them behind us with a four feet long wire a quarter of an inch thick. It had a hoop handle at one end and a hook at the other.

We were then led by the field hand to the rows of plants. There was a gully between each row. I was instructed by the field hand to get down on my butt in the gully I'd been led to and scoot backwards while dragging my basket behind me. I was to fill it with the suckers I pulled off of the plants on either side of me. He told me to pick all the way down to the white pole. Then he walked off. I looked at the plants at either side of me and I realized at once that I was in trouble. Every leaf looked relatively the same size to me.

All around me my cohorts went at it, hooting and hollering at one another as they advanced dutifully backwards down the rows. I did not know what to do. I sat there stymied.

After a spell I reasoned I'd pull off the the lowest two leaves on each plant. I went at it slow and deliberate while fearing at any moment the field hand would return and berate me for screwing up. As I went at it the voices of my cohorts loss their volume and seemed further and further away. I'd been at it a good half hour when I turned around to see how much further I had to go. Some fifty yards away was a pole with a white stripe around it. A hundred yards beyond that was a pole painted entirely white. I hoped the white striped pole was where I was suppose to stop. I picked on.

By the time I reached the white striped pole I couldn't hear my fellow pickers at all. There was no one near to ask if this was as far as I should go. I sat there and poked at the earth. I just couldn't figure out what to do. I don't know how much time passed but suddenly the field hand barked, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Before I could say anything he said, "Sitting on your ass is what I see. And we ain't paying you to sit on your ass. Now get out of there and get back on the bus. You're fired."

I got on the bus and the old codger got behind the wheel and drove me back to the gas station. On the ride there I hung my head and wondered how I was going to explain to my father that on my first job outside of being a paperboy I'd gotten fired in under an hour.

When I got home my father reacted in a way that he would do so for some years to come by giving voice to an oft repeated lament. What are we going to do with you? My mother ever the comforter told me not to worry. There would be other jobs. History would prove that to be an understatement. For over the proceeding years I would quit or be fired from a seemingly unending succession of jobs. But none would end so quickly as my stint in the fields of tobacco.