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.