From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country's battles on the land and on the sea. The first time I heard it sung, I was unaware of its tie to Marines. The war was over and the song made me feel pride. Marines were mythical to me. Like warriors who stayed in a battle, somewhere, never coming home. Living to die. I'd never seen one.
Now, sixty-six years later, I know the irony is killing Pentagonians. They've been financing a new beach lander that has sucked up money like a vacuum cleaner, for years, and can't pass any tests for a fast, firing, armored machine to bring troops out of the water and onto land with occupying power.
The very idea was from WWII. So no design could improve on a contraption few could foresee a use for.
Just as well. The shores of Tripoli are coming to the water. Evacuees headed into the Mediterranean. The United States should have some Marines offshore, assisting . Room and board on a cruiser, free, while they sort out the next move via high tech communications. Some probably would be willing to kick down on the costs. Others just don't want to live to die a violent death at home.
We could empty Gheddafi of his followers and haters to the point of no populace. Imagine an entire Diaspora returning to start their country over after spending time connected and discussing in a peaceful setting.
May 22, Sunday, '11
I remember back when we were afraid of the Russians. They had ICBM's that could reach and target us, the United States of America. But the joke was that our town was so backwoods it wasn't even on their maps to bomb. Even during WW11, I heard adults say Hitler had no reason to hit us; nothing here. Probably lots of small burgs felt the same sort of "safety."
However, speaking in terms of natural disasters and extreme climate, I consider this town to be one of the safest places on the planet. The worst weather is downpours of rain in lightning and thunder and lots of ephemeral blizzards. The seasons are all obvious, lasting about three months. The only foreign invasion is natives returning. When I first returned, kinda to stay, Bette said, "There's nothing here anymore, just people coming back to die." Now, that sounds very safe, to me.
Drugs are an evolutionary step. Today, anywhere, at every social level, drugs are available to cope with the speed of evolution. All drugs are means to temporarily escape the race.
In earliest times, the purveyor of the most expansive drugs was the shaman. No shaman ever had access to the drugs on todays's legal and illegal markets. It's just that in our earliest beginnings as ignorant cave dwellers, a bowlful of herbs could cause hallucinations of religious intensity. Plus he provided the only entertainment ritual.
Everybody is on some drug and probably suffering unhealthy side-effects. We evolve in a fog.
His dad was a fascist and he suckled at the steroid tit. Women as objects from the git-go.
Some things should come back
Just because they're such treats;
Vine-ripe tomatoes
And line-dried sheets.
Commercial red and plump
With no taste close,
And scent in a dryer
Overpowering our nose
Can't match the past
For a memory to beat
Like vine-ripe tomatoes
And line-dried sheets.
19May11 = Who...shall I say...is calling? Leonard Cohen, Below The Salt. Life is good.
Yesterday was my fifty-fifth high school grad party in Glenroy. I ten-speed to make it by 6:00. Never did the route before on a bike and thought I knew it well enough to ride with traffic. No bike space! Had to ride the white line for most of the 3-4 miles on a state highway. With a double-bowl buzz and two Blue Ribbons in me. And one twisted in my wallet in case I get the opportunity to kick the high at the party.
All I did was run around red-eyed touting my blog. No target audience in that group of olders. Of course, the black-on-tan Jimi Hendrix embossed commemorative t-shirt was just as foreign to them. Especially, Carol. A chick I traded class rings with and proposed to while in the Air Force, wasn't even friendly. Would five and a half decades make that much difference in memories? Next question.
There was a small huddle which offered comments about my doc. The question of my thick hair growth brought this from Jerry, "It's that marijuana that makes it grow." I wish weed grew like hair. Rodney told me his grandson had a bong for him to ease his pains. "Have you ever seen a bong?" Yeah, he brought it to my house. "I had a metal one that was two-feet long." I offered to do the joint with Terry but he looked way far off and softly said, "No."
Had a conversation with my only college roommate, Sturge. Four years after that, we were both in Tiffin. He'd graduated and I was returning to school with a family. He recalled the time he took Judy to Chicago to catch a train to visit her parents in Wisconsin, driving the '55 Olds he'd purchased after getting a coaching gig in Bucyrus. Didn't register with me. The story he told about bringing three people up to the second floor apartment bedroom after I'd given him the key but hadn't left town yet, I'd forgotten.
30May - A chick ugly as a gunfight comes charging me, screaming, "If you make the deal, make it real!" I'm stunned but backing up.
What can a man do in all this mayhem? I was trying to think and reason and rationalize. I felt like an oak leaf on lake ice, absorbing sun rays to keep a tiny area around it free from freezing.
Let me stay in your air, in a sweat-free free-breathing space. Let me stay here, don't send me back to my heavy-heated place.
She was city crazy and ignorant enough to believe chickens had to be milked to get chicken broth. My voice was cracking and jumping to high notes as I was speaking so fast my tongue was loose at both ends, trying to talk her down.
Then her gaze appeared as a multiple-mirror image on a face ready to crash.
Someone has written lyrics that will be for you, personally, and the song will always be your memory.
Nothing fills up a tense space like a good melody.
Last day of May '11 -
Gonna grow up and get into a saddle
And look the world over for the treat
Where I can ride my horse in the middle
Of that famous Pony Street
Wanna ride my horse down Pony Street
Where every house is a stall
And park wherever I see
A nice place to lie in the straw
Maybe the best stuff ever written is yet to come and all we've read and heard is just leading to words to be heard by all, all in the world, all on God's earth. That's what I want to put down, what I want to say. But each has to pray.
The day she gave me a crystal and taught me to whistle was the last best thing she did for me.
Been singing the best ever prayer
Alone, never bothered to share
Waiting for you to be there
We had serious issues in Mogadishu
But were mostly out of the plot
When a bomb meant for another
Blew our plans asunder
And you got the worst of the lot.
I'll always remember the way we
Were tethered to each other and to the ploy,
Pulling our way plus the weight of the mission,
I still wonder that we did it somehow.
1jun 11 - objet d'art. objet d'Perk. The Sunbeam toaster, circa 1955, is disassembled, probably for the last time. Of course, it didn't work when I got it, so I took it apart and sanded the contacts. Worked for years. A real unique way to show off toast. Put in the slices, they retract automatically and brown bread to infinite increments of done. Then it rises from the slots to be slathered with butter.
It is a beautiful machine with real chrome that still can be buffed to gleaming. But, alas, the contacts are too thin to allow for the automatic features and it sits in sections. The chrome panels are removed and I use a broken clothes pin to manually close the contacts. Waiting for toast, by hand, is like watching for a pot to boil. I do less toast than before.
2jun11 -
Did I mention the natural birth control going on at the lake? Last year, six pair of Canada geese had
six goslings. This year, three pair nested and two had 3 chicks and one had 4. The mallard I saw, today, had nine ducklings paddle-crowding behind her.
Last week I see a mother-daughter pair ahead of me doing exaggerated arm swings while walking in flip-flops. "I like the stride but the footwear leaves something to be desired." The older lady said her feet were killing her. About ten yards later, I hear this sound behind me and gaining. Ten yards later, the younger of the two is running in flip-flops and about to pass me. I had to speed up to stay even and she quit when I dropped down to the beach. Couldn't have been more than eight or nine. Shocked me to a kick. In flip-flops!
Another time, last week, I see a mom and three kids trying to fly kites on the first beach, while on my first turn. Boy, about eleven, two girls, younger. They were running in an attempt to get the toys in the air. On me second turn, all except the youngest was still trying to fly a kite while mom and the older kids were sitting on the dock. I stopped and explained that there was enough breeze coming across the lake to get the kite up without running.
The tail was tangled into the main string, so I re-hooked it and told her to let out some string. More. The Kite went airborne in a second. More string. Once it was up about twenty-feet, I handed her the handle and continued running.
6jun11 -
Star went by me at the lake, today, just as I'd changed into the bike lane for oncoming traffic. Athletic and attractive. Come to think of it, athletic is attractive. On my second turn, I stopped her and told her I'm here every other day all year long and want to know everyone I'm running with, or running away from ... you're way too fast for me. Lori.
I want to travel lightly
Like a feather on your street.
I want to travel lightly
You'll never hear my footstep's beat.
I'm carrying little baggage
Barely have enough to eat.
I'm carrying little baggage
Just flying by my seat.
No illusions of claims to fame.
Watched the stop of an oldest flame.
Still hiding never told acts of shame.
Way past being able to tame.
No thanks to the latest video game
Little doubt in my mind, they can drive one insane.
How long to remain is a question others ask?
How much more pain to continue the task?
Pretty much every new thing looks the same,
The place I'm in is like the one from which I just came.
I'm making do with an ancient brain and legs half lame.
16jun11 -
I want to be just good enough to be discovered, just long enough to rise like a star-show, just soon enough to make some money, just time enough to save for tomorrow.
I'm not averse to sex.
I'm not a verse to anything.
I'm not even a poem
Or a paean to home
Or a rhyme about time
Or lyrics to sing.
I want to wake up to a Maui morning, get into an ocean breeze for a run.
I want to wake up to a Maui morning, with a blue sky filling up with sun.
Dreaming is better if you've lived the dream
If you've experienced the reason you long
For places you've been to and seen
Where once you believed you belong.
Two rabbits came out of that greenhouse nest and have found hiding places around the yard. Then Dij brought two more his girlfriend had kept in a small cage. All four are loose, somewhere. I see bunnies every day but can't tell one from the four. Robin built a nest an arm's length from my kitchen window. Three nestlings. They're scattered about the area, peeping for the parents to deliver worms. Cardinal nest in the privet arch and doves in the pine next door. Pair of bluebirds flew through, last week. Starlings chased a pileated woodpecker from near their purloined nest cavities. Chipping sparrows feeding offspring on seeds from driveway weeds. Deer have decimated my sunflower plants, so the Castor bean plants will blanket the area where they both grow.
27Jun11-
There was a bar in Gary, Indiana where Bro' Braz and I got high in the ladies restroom. His wife had to wait in the car when she indicated she wanted to come in and take a whiz. "It's where we get high!"
After toasting one with another dude, we got a beer and took a booth. Braz talked to three grizzled acquaintances at the bar. One said he was from Missouri, so far back in the woods you could tell how tight a mule's collar was by the way it farted.
There was a lean licorice lady sitting a stool away from the Missourian. I suggested to Braz I'd like to dance with her. He didn't think it was a good idea, since she was Missouri's. The song was familiar rock (more than likely a band I'd seen live) and when I approached her, she declined because she "can't dance."
I gently got her off the stool and guided her to the floor. She could dance. At least well enough to allow me to bust the moves I wanted. I walked her to her stool with a "thank you."
"Man, we're leaving after this beer."
"Yeah, M A is still waiting in the 'chine."
"That's the second reason we're outta here."
GUT BUCKET BLUES
The blues slid up and hugged me.
Said I want to be your friend,
I'll be there for you always.
Even to the very end.
Been too long since anyone
Even tried to soothe my mood.
It's been so long darling,
Since I kissed someone new.
It's serious, sinewy chewing
On loneliness and being way down.
I believe I'm desperate enough
To stick my head in a full bucket and drown.
Damn, is it July already? -
One July day, I was walking into the plant with a co-worker lugging a huge cooler filled with iced Sprite, sugared juice and assorted colas. Instead of giving him a hand, I bantered about his efforts to provide drinks I avoid.
Much later, after six or so hours of shirt-soaking labor, I began hearing sounds which tickled my subconscious, from inside that deep, lidded, single-handled cooler. Subtle bumps and clinking and muffled sploshes, as ice and cold plastic bottles jockey for a floating position.
I had been to the water fountain and lunch, where I quaffed two glasses of half lemonade and half Mountain Dew. I had replaced lots of perspiration, but those sounds I'd heard in the parking lot kept gnawing at my thirst glands.
The dude came to within earshot and I asked him what he'd charge for one of whatever he had left. He said if I wanted one, to walk down to the machine he was working on and help myself. I thanked him and continued unstacking. You have to realize how out of character it was for me to ask after a sugar fix to fight thirst. I mean people be chugging all manner of canned colas and bottled fizz syrup, while I hit the fountain like a camel, loading my stomach to last until the next drink.
Next thing I know, a 20-ounce Sprite is handed person-to-person from three presses away to press #3, into my hands, and the dude motions that I should shake it a little first. I turned it end-for-end a couple times and set it on the ledge at the end of my machine.
It had a cool, green glow and it was beginning to form beads of moisture on the sides. At the next lull, I snatched it up, twisted the cap off and tipped it up to swallow three big drafts. It was sheer heaven in the hubs of hell.
2Jul11 -
My health began failing a couple weeks back. Low energy. Drowsy during awake hours. Movements mushy. Eating as habit, no enjoyment. Bagged a run. Then bagged lifting. I wondered if it wasn't the beginning of something really serious.
Yesterday, while visiting a recuperating Paleo, I met a hippie dude and we were discussing beans and greens. When I mentioned polk greens, he cautioned me they could be toxic. Flash! Dude, you may have just saved my life. Check the net, bro'.
Whoa, I've been poisoning myself from backyard plants. Polk greens need to be boiled and drained to be edible. Only new shoots (under 8-inches) should be consumed. I have plants four-feet tall and have been stir frying leaves longer than shoots. I'd kept them out of my diet for the day before yesterday and now, after two days free, the difference is obvious.
3Jul11 -
HAPPY
Birthday's just another day
On the way to an age
Plus one more year,
Sans another peer
Turn the page
And give them
One more thing to hear.
I'm living with a cheer!
FROM BITTER SEARCHING OF THE HEART...
Tell them goodbye one last time, you know they will not answer.
Wish them well, as before, your daughters are forever gone, sir.
You need not remind them to remember before it turned sour.
They know as well as you, they lived there too, every hour.
But they see desertion where we see travel.
We look for some loyalty and get ire.
Growing apart can only gap so far,
Then the chasm is a wall of barbed wire.
Kids kinda turn out like early classmates
Who decades later we can't name
Until we are reminded of a bit
Of the past which brightens our brain.
8Jul11-
Last time I was here, I remember typing 4Jul11 but nothing else. Been Flip'n around. Google changed the look of the blog and I couldn't find my dashboard. Still haven't, but found a way to edit this post.
12Jul11 -
A wild rabbit doesn't sit around trying to avoid a fright flight for life. A feral hare must practice, with stretches, sprints and zig-zag cuts for a few seconds every day. Then, when th dash tof safety arises, brer bunny will be prepared to circle back to home base. If a predator is swift and cunning and closing for a meal, a 90-degree cut on a dime will leave jaws snapping in the breeze and a stomach empty still.
3Aug11 -
Take away the pops stars, celebrities and dignitaries, remove the politicians and patricians, you're left with patriots and the proletariat poor; the largest mob force or voting voice in America. I feel like America.
Feet on the ground and head in the clouds, I'm bad as I want to be and totally proud.
ONE HORSE HARNESSED
I'm going to pull my happy wagon
Up to your doorstep like a sleigh.
You'll know immediately, baby,
I've come to haul your blues away.
My wagon use is used to weed
As I toke into still free air,
But I always recognize the need
To pick you up and banish a care.
My wagon rides high, for sure,
Sometimes it's a glide over grass.
Other times it's all full-bore,
Hang on, you just ride, I got the gas.
20Aug-
OLD AS EVOLUTION
Evolution can happen in a lifetime and the longer the life, the more obvious it becomes.
Old people have evolved in their own right, by slowing to think prior to reacting to the ignorance of the young.
Patience is an evolving trait. The difficulty is the time spent mastering it. Then it becomes more clear, year after year, that some years were wasted.
...OR A WINDOW TO TOSS IT OUT OF!
That poor genius, do you suppose he doesn't know?
The things he could do with that brain, the places he could go?
I know if I had his mind, I'd spend time studying something to make money
Instead of sitting sans a pot...proud of what he hasn't got and thinking it's funny.
GOOD DUE BEE
I'm a sweet bee, only sting when I feel the need,
I'll haul your necter from all over, buzzing with my flying speed.
Ain't no hornet, darlin', ain't no bumblebee.
Won't bury my dagger in anger or accidentily.
I don' have a queen that I drone for and work to satisfy,
Just need me a pretty knees bee to trade bee sugar on the fly.
I can take it or leave it, I'm a bee that's free
To pick my own hive and back my own jive
And to do what is right for me.
13Sep11 -
Took a date to an arts theatre to hear a musician friend of mine. He's off the 'skey slope after a decade and I been knowing the cat since a decade prior to that and don't remember hearing much from a clean tongue. He sounded great and did a Hendrix (Manic Depression) for me. I invited him to my crib and we had a great visit. I explained to him that I've been anxious to get together and see about singing some of my verses. He tuned my guitar and I read Good Due Bee to him. He bent over my shoulder, hit some Muddy Waters type gut-bucket licks and sang it. He took a copy with him and said he was doing it at his next gig. He took a printout of this entire post.
Actually, my date drove me. I have an exhibition, an air show and a concert lined up for us to attend. She stopped by tonight for some wine and weed. Before she went home, I suggested marriage and with comments about how "fast" the idea seemed, she refused. Just like the ones that ended up saying yes.
22Sep11 -
Lotsa folks toked at the Mill's. On the way to work. At lunch break. On the ride home. Carman rode with me, so you know we were high. She was so hot, and knew all the lyrics to what was being played at the time...it was a joy to go to work. Come to think of it, the way her live nosedived into major sorrow and just as major degeneracy, she'd gladly take that drive back into time.
Anyway, our foreman, who was as hip as anyone I ever worked for, warned her about coming into work with "those Chinese eyes."
CHINA-IZE
The souls of those who sin to hasten extinction are as thin as the skin in the shark's fin soup they slurp.
Trying to get comfortable in one's own, may last until the end
When there is far less comfort and too much skin.
2Oct11 -
President Obama, color the gray, right now. It is old in everyone's eye. Respect for the elderly is measured by the amount of gray in their hair. It also is a guage of weakness and deference to ones near their end. The only lie everyone sanctions is THE BIG DYE LIE.
Dij brought a pinch of stuff from the same "Stupid" I have a clone from and spoke of returning after I had finished my run. I have fourteen sheets of 3/8 drywall to put upstairs. He returned with a big yellow handle and began checking the blades. He was ready to start putting it up, horizontally, and cutting out the three windows. Whoa!
I took him up to show the four sheets I have in place on each side of two windows. The 2x12x14ft boards spanning the room limit the 8ft height of the sheetrock by 1-inch, but on the ends of the room, I slid it behind the 2x12's. The two on each side of another window had to be trimmed. I'd tried to use a razor knife on one and cut the other with a battery reciprocating saw. The are standing sans any screws.
"Oh no, baby, ain't gonna be no cuttin' out windows. Except for the spaces at the top and bottom, of course. The seams will be in the corners of the room. As far as hanging crossways instead of up...it may be the way you do it but if I've seen it, I didn't recognize it."
Dij just smiled when I told him that everything that's up is freestanding. "OK, X, it's your gig." He left the Lutz 357 lying on my kitchen chair.
12Oct11 -
The only way to see the subtle changes natives may miss is to leave for a few decades and then return. "Nothing ever changes here," is a statement by those who stay near, year after year.
Reverend Bob recently returned for a revival, eighteen years after leaving. We first met when I was helping the Steel Breeze do some work in the Prebyterian church. We were replacing fluorescent tubes and I handed one down. When he grabbed it with one hand, I said, "May the force be with you, Rev."
At the time, I was jobless, homeless, penniless and had been a vagabond for a dozen years. We had conversations which lasted for hours or for a few minutes over a beer, but never about the practice of religion.
Since then, he's lived across the country and outside of it, got the top degree and has another son. I got a job, bought a house and have a monthly retirement check. If not for a brief reunion, neither of us could have covered nearly two decades in two minutes and filed the changes.
Nothing I've posted here seems to stick since the 12Oct11.
It's like I can't throw any scribbled notes away after posting them here. I've lost' a lot of shit already.
Perhaps it's a lesson, or a sign to stop the high ramblings of an old t'ic.
It's nov 10 and everything since the 12th is gone when I return next day.
Naw, take another toke to make sure it's the smoke and not another old stroke of temporarily losing it.
Your leaving feels like icy rain, the same cold pain on my neck, the same wet chills to drain.
What you did for him was boring, what you did for me was freeing.
Why is ignorance so persistant? That's the way it stays ignorant.
Can't justify the rush to capture her
With big talk and money spent on her
But bottom line is "She couldn't stand
In the plans I made for her."
11-11-11 -
I'm a vet, four years United States Air Force. Four years of peace in the entire world. No shooting war for US to go win. Seems they landed a planeload of Marines in Lebanon and that was it. My basic training lasted one month in Texas. Tech training lasted 16-weeks in Mississippi. First base, Youngstown Ohio. Next and last base, Madison Wisconsin. Four years of chasing, chugging and chowing down. Zero plans past the next hangover. But fate stopped the haste to self-waste at the end of my enlistment.
Today, I planned to run early enough to cross the island bridge. An assault in honor of real warriors. But the full moon on the western side was being faded by early cloud cover and the sun was about to floodlight everything. I was dressed to blend, dark from cap to shoes, and the north side of the island was still in shadow.
Jump the barrier, run the north side, then finish on south. The chances of being seen by any state worker was minimal. Do the donut, one turn around the lake, one around the island, home. No, just check out the steps to get around the fence, now, and maybe do it on the next turn. I stepped from the side fence post to the side of the bridge and looked over. Easy beans. I stepped back and began my run and the first vehicle I saw was a state pickup with safety lights and all, in the approaching lane, on a straight stretch which allowed full vision of the bridge and me.
On my second pass, the truck was sitting on the downside of the highway dam, with a view of the bridge up above. I waved.
12Nov11-
Joe Frazier broke two male hearts in Toledo. Mick and I adored Cassius Clay. We supported everything he did, all the way to Muhammed Ali. We took the white-side of The Greatest and enjoyed the insults to black Joe. SI wrote he was soaking his head in buckets of salt water to toughen his skin against cuts which might stop a fight. Mick thought it was "illegal!"
Mick drove the fifty-miles for us to watch the fight on a huge screen. It was quiet all the way home.
When Joe smoked that blow which toppled our tower, we never recovered from the shock. We knew the belt was lost to the one piece of arsenal that Joe Frazier unleashed until it hit the button: a short, sharp hook with a boom attached.
A decade earlier, I'd heard lighter skins sound on darker ones. It was while I was in the Air Force. I was stationed on a small installation that was close to fifty-percent black. Both my barracks roomies were black. Except, back then, no negro ever used the word. They would speak the word as "b-mother...." Like Speedy was telling me about a breakout at a negro party off base. "Everybody started calling each other b-mother...."
Anyway, Gene Washington approached me in the personnel office, while processing an airman onto the base. Smiling and whispering in my ear, he said, "Jones, this is the ugliest mother... in the Air Defense Command," as he opened a records cabinet.
The object of his derision was behind me and I turned to be looking at blue-tined shades on a human go-rilla. This negro was filling up the largest military uniform I'd ever seen. His weight was a guess because no floor scale could record it. And he was stareing at me from invisible eyes as if he'd heard Wash. I had to act like I hadn't turned to look, while my smile went to fear.
15Nov11 -
Did the donut run in the rain: climbed around the seven foot fence and went across the bridge. It was a rush after years of being banned from it. The beavers are happy, two major poplar trees felled across the path. They're stripping the bark and hauling material to extend the lodge. Lots of other trees and limbs to negotiate, plus the heartbeat of jogging on forbidden ground. I really missed it, even though I have been running the longer two-turns-around-the-lake route. I'll probably start running earlier and avoid the presence of staters.
On the south bank, I noticed a tree being chewed down. The top limbs were tangled, so when it was cut through, it simply slipped like a spear into the ground. The beaver re-cut and the same thing happened.
I'm aware that if man attempts to help a beaver with a tree, the beaver abandons the site. But I couldn't stand it and after a series of attempts, I'd quit and continued running. Finally, I got a digging stick and began the task of getting the tree loose enough to come down. With some major straining, I moved the pointed base about a foot down the bank slope. The top branches came free but I had to get under the path of the fall for the final pull, then get out of the way. It's been over a month and I see the bark is finally being stripped, or eaten.
I went to visit Bart and then he visited me. He's been reading this on a palm screen and I ask him about an entry and he wasn't familiar with it, so in defense he tells me I should be on facebook. To expose my blog? Yeah, man, you'll get tons of feedback. He set a page up for me. I don't think I get it, yet.
23Nov11 -
I have BOOGIE HALL in draft. As I point out, my rendition of those days is one of at least four others from the original five. The last one I had any contact with told me to forget Boogie Hall and accept Jesus Christ as your.... I can't help but think it was an important part of all our lives. Guess I'll find out.
28Nov -
Bart asks me the name of my house. I had no idea for an answer or where his queries come from.
She's Proteus. From the outside, a facade. Inside, she has taken many forms and continues to evolve. In the interest of getting her into a leaner state, after 125 years of layering, hundreds of buckets of plaster and bunches of bundles of lath have been eliminated. I tore it down and carried it out. I should do an entire post on THIS OLD CRIB.
Or DOOR TO DOOR, about my jogs. Saw a pair of bluebirds, yesterday. The black ducks have established a small flock. I asked Tina if she's ever seen any black ducks at the lake and she answered, "Daffy?"
Or FROM THE PERCH. Starlings must be the furthest evolved of all birds. Their flocks are close-knit communities with constant conversations.
In any case, The Colonel is dead, with a lot of bloodshed that suggestions in the beginning of this post may have averted.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
4/20
Had an oscar delivered this morning. Been bowled up all day. Bagged a run. Baked bread. Planted Kohllrabi and beets. Took the wind-torn door off my greenhouse and used boards for raised-bed borders. Walked to PO, mailed some letters and stopped by to buy a classic lotto on the way back. No, I guess I got the ticket first.
That's when I talked to the City Auditor about the political scene. Said I don't trust old people politicians, need new blood to do something before they get muddied up and on the take or senile and led around.
Found a carrot in my garden that had wintered over (kept growing.) Measured six-inches long and four-inches at widest girth. The flavor is delicate but the consistency is like soft ice which crumbles and melts as you chew it.
My greenhouse is a seven-foot cube of a variety of windows. Cookie said it's a work of art. Paleo said it is constructed on the perfect angle the ancients chose for a habitable cave, with the opening slightly to the east of south to catch maximum sunlight. Five days ago, maybe six, I notice a rabbit gathering clumps of dry grass to resemble big walrus whiskers and carrying them to the southwest corner of the greenhouse. The sense of urgency was necessary as it has rained every day since.
I've heard stories of females finding ways to return at night to feed nestlings even if something falls in the way. And about males eating young. And that a rabbit will abandoned the nest if human scent is detected.
I checked on the nest every day and I've seen an adult rabbit on the outside and I'm certain it stays under the platform porch of the glass house but never saw one go inside until two days ago.
After sunset, the rabbit circled around the structure, hesitating often, before going inside to the nest. The next morning the nest looked the same, still covered with the grass, but with lots of moisture around it.
Yesterday, there were rabbits in every direction. The first one I noticed was sitting up and it looked huge. It was outside the corner where the nest is. The temperature was in the low seventies with intermittent showers and the grass was removed to reveal a clump of newborns.
For the next few hours before dark, as wet as it was, rabbits were all around, across the street, next door, two doors down. They would run at one another and begin a high speed zig-zag chase. Then another would run towards the other two. A couple times I saw the second jump straight up to avoid the rush of the first. They were concentrated in a view from my stool perch window. More than one made the trip into the greenhouse and checked the view as they traveled around the edge towards the nest.
The bobtail cat was in the neighbor's high grass, watching the action. I let the dog out and a rabbit watched her go around the greenhouse, reluctant to move until Zimba was within a few feet before jumping.
I'm only guessing that they were turned on by the perfect nest location. It was definitely more celebration than happenstance meetings.
I have seen no rabbit or rabbits the entire day. The grass is back over the top of the nest.
7May - On Easter Saturday, part of the nest was pulled back and a bunny was exposed. The area was wet and water was dripping, and my first thought was it was attempting to leave the nest but it was still. I called my neighbor who was in the middle of "just out of bed" breakfast with kids and grandkids. She brought her son-in-law and two kids to see. The next day, the nest was recovered, so no Easter bunnies jumping around.
The mother was still going inside the greenhouse every evening and the nest was snug. I kept watching, expecting the litter to stay around, but exactly two weeks from April 20th, the nest was vacated and no rabbits around. That evening, the mother came inside the greenhouse and the little ones followed.
When young rabbits move, they scurry like other rodents. This year's offspring may get less action than all the others since Zimba arrived. Just say "rabbit" and she was headed for the door. She stalked them to jump and was right behind them. Then she learned to hot-track and forced them into the full circle escape route. She still chases but just to get one out of the yard. Still checks out all the past places they used to hide.
That's when I talked to the City Auditor about the political scene. Said I don't trust old people politicians, need new blood to do something before they get muddied up and on the take or senile and led around.
Found a carrot in my garden that had wintered over (kept growing.) Measured six-inches long and four-inches at widest girth. The flavor is delicate but the consistency is like soft ice which crumbles and melts as you chew it.
My greenhouse is a seven-foot cube of a variety of windows. Cookie said it's a work of art. Paleo said it is constructed on the perfect angle the ancients chose for a habitable cave, with the opening slightly to the east of south to catch maximum sunlight. Five days ago, maybe six, I notice a rabbit gathering clumps of dry grass to resemble big walrus whiskers and carrying them to the southwest corner of the greenhouse. The sense of urgency was necessary as it has rained every day since.
I've heard stories of females finding ways to return at night to feed nestlings even if something falls in the way. And about males eating young. And that a rabbit will abandoned the nest if human scent is detected.
I checked on the nest every day and I've seen an adult rabbit on the outside and I'm certain it stays under the platform porch of the glass house but never saw one go inside until two days ago.
After sunset, the rabbit circled around the structure, hesitating often, before going inside to the nest. The next morning the nest looked the same, still covered with the grass, but with lots of moisture around it.
Yesterday, there were rabbits in every direction. The first one I noticed was sitting up and it looked huge. It was outside the corner where the nest is. The temperature was in the low seventies with intermittent showers and the grass was removed to reveal a clump of newborns.
For the next few hours before dark, as wet as it was, rabbits were all around, across the street, next door, two doors down. They would run at one another and begin a high speed zig-zag chase. Then another would run towards the other two. A couple times I saw the second jump straight up to avoid the rush of the first. They were concentrated in a view from my stool perch window. More than one made the trip into the greenhouse and checked the view as they traveled around the edge towards the nest.
The bobtail cat was in the neighbor's high grass, watching the action. I let the dog out and a rabbit watched her go around the greenhouse, reluctant to move until Zimba was within a few feet before jumping.
I'm only guessing that they were turned on by the perfect nest location. It was definitely more celebration than happenstance meetings.
I have seen no rabbit or rabbits the entire day. The grass is back over the top of the nest.
7May - On Easter Saturday, part of the nest was pulled back and a bunny was exposed. The area was wet and water was dripping, and my first thought was it was attempting to leave the nest but it was still. I called my neighbor who was in the middle of "just out of bed" breakfast with kids and grandkids. She brought her son-in-law and two kids to see. The next day, the nest was recovered, so no Easter bunnies jumping around.
The mother was still going inside the greenhouse every evening and the nest was snug. I kept watching, expecting the litter to stay around, but exactly two weeks from April 20th, the nest was vacated and no rabbits around. That evening, the mother came inside the greenhouse and the little ones followed.
When young rabbits move, they scurry like other rodents. This year's offspring may get less action than all the others since Zimba arrived. Just say "rabbit" and she was headed for the door. She stalked them to jump and was right behind them. Then she learned to hot-track and forced them into the full circle escape route. She still chases but just to get one out of the yard. Still checks out all the past places they used to hide.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
LAST QUACK
Judith Anne held the duck in her lap and rolled down the window of the slowly moving automobile. Her plan was working.
Earlier, soon after her entry in the 4-H spring show had won a blue ribbon, the family discussed the impending move which would end their semi-country lifestyle.
She'd raised the duck from a yellow duckling. Ordinarily, she would take a winning animal home or it would have already been sold. The farm was alive with chickens, geese, ducks, lambs and larger livestock to go with a variety of dogs and cats.
That was all ending, fast and furiously as each of them dealt with this transfer to an urban setting. When her father suggested having "roast duck" in jest, Judy asked if they could drive "a turn" around the lake before going home.
Setting the duck on the edge of the open window, Judy whispered.
"Petey, it is time to flee, time to be free."
The name had always been derided, since the duck was a female.
"Petey, don't be afraid. You are a duck but we can't have a duck in Indianapolis. You'll be safe here...people feed ducks here...."
Judith nudged the duck and it fell , flapped to a beak-first landing, stood and quacked.
Petey had never seen a large body of water. The next morning, she wasn't far from where she'd landed, sitting near the edge of the lake. Her feathers were reflectively white and obviously trimmed to show.
A jogger attempted to chase the duck, figuring it would go into the water. Petey simply ran further along the bank.
For two days and nights, Petey wandered only a short distance. Two boys on bicycles stopped, dropped the bikes and chased after the duck. When they changed tactics and approached from opposite directions, Petey was forced to go into the lake. Within a second she was safely away. Except for the stuff the boys began throwing, but she was out of their no-throwing arms range.
Once she was paddling around on the lake, a flock of canada geese noticed. Nineteen formed a semi-circle around the newcomer, twenty-feet from shore. They watched from a few yards distance, doing goose-gurgle observations. They soon lost interest and swam away.
Petey still spent most time out of the water. For a few more days she stayed closeby. The jogger ran down towards her and she flew into the water. "Good you're going into the lake with the getter-punks that rampage this place at night," he thought.
When the smattering of mallards finally got hip to Petey, things changed fast. First, all the drakes approached, while the hens kept their distance. Eventually, Petey was a welcome member in the flock. She was soon imitating the bobbing action needed to feed from underwater vegetation.
The mallard flock inhabited all of the lake, the center island, under the connecting bridge, the steep banks on the south edge, the sand beaches on the north and everything in between. As the season progressed, the white duck kept regular company with seven mallards, four drakes and three hens. They roosted together, fed together and swam togther, often with Petey in the back which resembled a white tug pushing gray barges.
A migrating white egret saw Petey and perched on the limb of a large oak collapsed into the lake. For some time, he watched. From across the lake, she appeared as his reflection. Many hours passed before the bird realized there was no way this one was going to leave the lake and fly away.
"That white duck" was observed by many walkers, joggers and the circle of drivers and riders. None knew where it came from but it was obviously having a good life at the lake. A few worried for it, thinking of the coming winter season and the pack of coyotes which had managed to catch and devour an aged beaver two winters back.
Soon after the first snowfall, the geese began to leave. The last to fly away were the three dozen yearlings from the six spring nests.
When the ice began to form, the mallards started their migration. Petey's group was the last to leave. As the space beneath the bridge became the last to freeze, she stayed there. More snow fell and covered the lake and island. Some farther north geese landed for awhile, on their way south. Petey walked over to see them but they soon flew on.
Tempratures dropped and ice closed the last area of open water. Petey, weakened and thin moved onto the island and bedded under a small pine tree.
A week later, the jogger noticed a single row of fox tracks crossing the lake, angling towards the bridge. "Later on, white duck," he mumbled as he passed, figuring the worst but hoping for better.
Earlier, soon after her entry in the 4-H spring show had won a blue ribbon, the family discussed the impending move which would end their semi-country lifestyle.
She'd raised the duck from a yellow duckling. Ordinarily, she would take a winning animal home or it would have already been sold. The farm was alive with chickens, geese, ducks, lambs and larger livestock to go with a variety of dogs and cats.
That was all ending, fast and furiously as each of them dealt with this transfer to an urban setting. When her father suggested having "roast duck" in jest, Judy asked if they could drive "a turn" around the lake before going home.
Setting the duck on the edge of the open window, Judy whispered.
"Petey, it is time to flee, time to be free."
The name had always been derided, since the duck was a female.
"Petey, don't be afraid. You are a duck but we can't have a duck in Indianapolis. You'll be safe here...people feed ducks here...."
Judith nudged the duck and it fell , flapped to a beak-first landing, stood and quacked.
Petey had never seen a large body of water. The next morning, she wasn't far from where she'd landed, sitting near the edge of the lake. Her feathers were reflectively white and obviously trimmed to show.
A jogger attempted to chase the duck, figuring it would go into the water. Petey simply ran further along the bank.
For two days and nights, Petey wandered only a short distance. Two boys on bicycles stopped, dropped the bikes and chased after the duck. When they changed tactics and approached from opposite directions, Petey was forced to go into the lake. Within a second she was safely away. Except for the stuff the boys began throwing, but she was out of their no-throwing arms range.
Once she was paddling around on the lake, a flock of canada geese noticed. Nineteen formed a semi-circle around the newcomer, twenty-feet from shore. They watched from a few yards distance, doing goose-gurgle observations. They soon lost interest and swam away.
Petey still spent most time out of the water. For a few more days she stayed closeby. The jogger ran down towards her and she flew into the water. "Good you're going into the lake with the getter-punks that rampage this place at night," he thought.
When the smattering of mallards finally got hip to Petey, things changed fast. First, all the drakes approached, while the hens kept their distance. Eventually, Petey was a welcome member in the flock. She was soon imitating the bobbing action needed to feed from underwater vegetation.
The mallard flock inhabited all of the lake, the center island, under the connecting bridge, the steep banks on the south edge, the sand beaches on the north and everything in between. As the season progressed, the white duck kept regular company with seven mallards, four drakes and three hens. They roosted together, fed together and swam togther, often with Petey in the back which resembled a white tug pushing gray barges.
A migrating white egret saw Petey and perched on the limb of a large oak collapsed into the lake. For some time, he watched. From across the lake, she appeared as his reflection. Many hours passed before the bird realized there was no way this one was going to leave the lake and fly away.
"That white duck" was observed by many walkers, joggers and the circle of drivers and riders. None knew where it came from but it was obviously having a good life at the lake. A few worried for it, thinking of the coming winter season and the pack of coyotes which had managed to catch and devour an aged beaver two winters back.
Soon after the first snowfall, the geese began to leave. The last to fly away were the three dozen yearlings from the six spring nests.
When the ice began to form, the mallards started their migration. Petey's group was the last to leave. As the space beneath the bridge became the last to freeze, she stayed there. More snow fell and covered the lake and island. Some farther north geese landed for awhile, on their way south. Petey walked over to see them but they soon flew on.
Tempratures dropped and ice closed the last area of open water. Petey, weakened and thin moved onto the island and bedded under a small pine tree.
A week later, the jogger noticed a single row of fox tracks crossing the lake, angling towards the bridge. "Later on, white duck," he mumbled as he passed, figuring the worst but hoping for better.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Bucket List Trip
Chronological age was the impetus to return to northern California one more time and check out former addresses. I'd talked Dr. Doug into driving me to Tiffin, Ohio, last year for a similar trip. Afterwards, I'd discussed the possibility of the professor, Paleo and I making the drive to California. But Freeble landed a position at the University of Missouri and Big Cat was called back to a gig in Georgia.
The job ended under pressure of the recession but he came back with a new F-150. I began planning the west coast journey, offering to pay all expenses, except the truck payments. It nearly happened in February, but the weather never approached a favorable outlook.
By March, he was behind in payments and repossession seemed likely, so I mentioned the trip every time he came around. The deal included taking my dog, if she had enough strength left to jump into the the back seat. On the 11th, Roger stopped by and I lined half the back seat of the F-150 with an old quilt and three old sheets used to cover the dog's favorite area of my water bed. Zimba had no trouble leaping into the seat. Back in the house, I indicated we were ready to go. Today? Of course. I thought you meant next week. Once convinced, Paleo left to load his stuff and returned just after noon. By 1:00, we were loaded, gassed to full and on the way.
Currently, I have no driver's license, but I offered to take the wheel whenever he got tired. Soon, it became apparent his freeway driving was not conducive to my ability to get any rest in the passenger seat. He was constantly on his phone, talking to a new girlfriend, hogging the fast lane and too often veering into rumble strips on both sides of the roadway. So with constant pots of coffee and bowls of pot, I kept us both awake all the way to a motel in Elko, Nevada, at 6:36 PM on the 12th.
In 1977, my wife and I drove I-80 from Ohio to Reno and turned north to Eureka. CA. This is the route I wanted to go and on the 13th, we got a motel in Eureka. Although the weather channel had indicated a couple of high pressure skies all the way, the rain started in Indianapolis and it was cloudy all the way to Colorado where we left I-70 to hit I-80. Snow covered the mountains and after a bit of sunshine, it began to fall, mixed with rain. High winds and snow continued through Wyoming and Utah. In the higher elevations of California, snow was two feet deep and by the time we reached Eureka, the rain was steady.
Tsunami warnings had been issued for the Humboldt Bay area. We drove to Glatt Street, C Street, Watson Street and the house behind Long's (which is now GNC). Next morning (14th) we drove to Dandy Bill's Avenue in Loleta, on Hookton Road. Talked to Jamie and the Buddhist dude who bought the 1/3 acre I used to own. He allowed me the opportunity to view the campsite and pond I'd dug out of a peat bog, but thirty-years of growth prevented me from getting any closer than 30-feet.
Bought a half-pound of Loleta cheese, but the bar I used to walk to for a beer was no longer open.
Stopped at Redway Liquors for beer and continued up Wilder Ridge Road to the eighty-acres on Horse Mountain Road. When I was camping there, I put up a mailbox on Wilder Ridge (Ettersburg Star Route) which I could walk or jog to on a former logging trail. I started walking down the trail while Paleo waited in the truck. Years melted over my heart and soul like coils of soft steel. Struggling to remember to breath, I saw a house and outbuildings on the slope to my right, belonging to the present owners. I kept walking and arrived at a sign which warned to go no further "No exceptions!" It angered me to mumble, "I am the exception, mutha!" A little further along, I came to the washout that I used to jump over, but it was now eight-feet across and over my head deep, so I turned back.
Once back to the truck, we continued up to Melvin Longmier's mailbox and I left him a note. I've written to him over the years but he's never forgiven me for calling him a nigger that time he refused to see me, Kasu and Mark.
I directed Paleo on to Horse Mountain Road. The back-up-to-turn-through switchbacks had him ready to quit. Had him park on the landing where I used to load firewood, and we walked down the narrow path to the site where I had a dirt floor log wall and roof shelter at the fork of two springs. Floods had swept everything away, including the six-feet diameter Douglas fir stump which anchored the structure.
Back on the road, we continued towards Shelter Cove. It took some urging to get Paleo to drive through the water-filled ruts gushing across. I couldn't admit there was more water than I'd ever seen. Shelter Cove was overcast, windy and the ocean seemed menacing.
In Laytonville, we stayed at the Budget Inn.
On the 15th, we drove into Cloverdale. I'd half-intended to look up an ex-wife but it was raining and after I queried a postman who had no knowledge of her name, it occurred to me that her attitude would likely match the somber day so we drove on.
In Hopland, I looked for the mini-brewery where I intended to purchase another Red Tail Ale shirt like the one the Sweet Baboo bought for me. The building was empty and The Keg was closed. I considered stopping at the Blue Bird Cafe for pie, but we continued on to the Russian River to find that house my wife and I were flooded from in Forestville.
It was still pouring down when we drove into Santa Rosa. Went to 54 Boyd and 225 Barnett. Spoke briefly with ex-neighbor Jeff Coors. I wanted to show Paleo my "vertical circle" running route and drove by addresses on Southridge and Raycrest.
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge at 4: 30, drove down Lombard Street and along the cable car tracks and continued on to the Oakland Bay Bridge to catch I-80 east. Once past Sacramento, the signs began warning about snow-chains requirement. I suggested a motel to wait out the storm but Paleo insisted he could drive through. Beware the ides of March!
At 10.45, on Donner Pass Road, in Soda Springs, California, all traffic was stopped for chains. $140 for about a half-hour of driving.
On the 16th, we stayed in Laramie, Wyoming and left the next morning. By 6:00 AM on the 18th, our relationship had deteriorated to the max (not to mention by, for, and with the maxx). While trying to hip him to fast lane driving, some important facts surfaced. He'd messed with the truck's computer and it's top speed was 80 mph, dangerously slow for any real attempt at high speed cross-country 'chinein'. His eyesight isn't good enough to anticipate traffic switches and turnoffs. He never drives with both hands on the wheel, preferring a one-hand forefinger and thumb pinch on the steering wheel, with the other hand holding a phone. He tries to peer down into every automobile and actually thinks if it is a female driver, she is attracted to him. He complained about dog hair in his $33,000 truck. At one point I asked if it was worth fighting over and he rushed me with threats, chest heaving and a flutter of hands until I thought he was going to levitate. Of course, I had to talk him down. It would have cost too much to return alone.
In Indianapolis, while I was napping, he missed I-70 to 35 (Chillicothe) and we ended up on the west side of Cincinnati and had to go all the way around to 32.
Years ago, his wife, Geneva, told me the only thing Roger and I have in common is marijuana. With that in mind, I stopped getting high on the 19th. Another item on my "bucket list?" Could be.
Man, I can't do it. It isn't healthy for an old dude to give up his drug of choice. I've lost ten pounds. Eating isn't any fun. The runs and lifts are bland. And the dreams which are obviously retarded by toke come in violent scenes of blood and smoke. Plus I've got the bucks to have it delivered to my door, if I choose, so puffhugginlees, get over it, who the fuck ever of y'all still keeping your distance. Make it longer. Hell's fire, I can barely handle the intensity myself.
Turned down a finder's fee to finger Paleo's pickup. Turned him away at the door, last week, when he offered the piece of madrone he got from the Shoaitie. I first met him on a job for the Steel Breeze, two-stories up on a metal scaffold, painting a brick building white. I remember putting a free hand on the surface and he pinted over it. The dude could flat slap it on. We were next to a parking lot. He was lifting a section to take the scaffold down and the force pulled him over the edge. The way he got his feet, and 270 lbs. on 6'4" of height under the iron framework and landed, still holding it, is still hard to fathom. His physical prowess is pretty much a small town legend. I've only seen the last thirty-years of it. He and I were as close as cut buddies and with this last steering wheel week we end up distant friends.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Bachelor Batches
I doubt you are as fit and free as me. I'm certain you are not as free. Bake some bread. Whole wheat. Yeast, sugar in water, some salt, some oil. Mix. Knead and allow to rise. Punch it down, knead, section into loaves, allow a second rise. Bake. If you can take the time to bake your own bread, you are on the way to freedom.
If you eat no bread you don't bake, you are on the way to fitness. Jesus said man can not live by bread alone, said nothing about living without bread. Man needs bread in his diet. Once you've eaten your own fresh from the oven still steaming,with the pats of butter still melting, nothing else comes close to being real bread.
In California, I once had a crock pot on for months. I was houseman to two chicks. Here's a lesson I had to learn even though I had an example before my early eyes. No matter the combination, i.e. sister/sister, sister/mother, mother/wife, wife/sister-in-law, sister/daughter, wife/daughter...no man has any chance when his viewpoint is challenged by any two women. It is useless, say it once, shut up, listen.
Buy a crock pot. Cover the bottom with pound of dry beans and fill it up with water. Put the lid on and turn it up to high. Leave it until you notice the smell. Next day, dip out a bean and see if you can masticate it. Turn the dial to low.
With a pot of beans on heat, you have something to eat. All the time. Anytime. In a bowl with salt and pepper. Plus your bread. You could live on it. But the bean base is only a beginning. A crock pot will not boil over or burn. As long as there is liquid, anything which makes soup in your mind may be added to the pot. Tomatoes are necessary in our diet. Pizza is not the best way to get your daily requirement of tomatoes. Put tomato in your pot. Sauce is easy and inexpensive. Any vegetable you can name can go into the pot. Give it time and it will cook to the consistency you prefer.
There are numerous types of dry beans. I once bought a half-bushel of soy beans from a grain elevator in Ohio to use in California. For years, those beans were the base for my crock pot ingredients. Nobody would have tried soy bean soup, so I always said it was vegetable/bean. Soy are the best beans for crock pot because they never cook to mushy. Try many: red, black, pink, speckled, gray or white. Split peas and lentils cook faster than beans so they may be added to thicken the mix. In the past, my crock pot was always hot. One time a downstairs neighbor brought frozen fillet mignon to my wife as a peace offering after she'd gone down to threaten his ass after he'd disturbed our sleep the night before. I sliced it into cubes and put it into the pot. The neighbor hood came by and asked what kind of soup I had. Steak. He spooned a chunk and began to chew. His eyes widened and he said, "It's really tender, man, like...?" "Crackers?" "Yeah, man, that meat is as soft as wet crackers."
Actually, over the years most of my carrots,onions, garlic, potatoes, etc. were fixed in the pot. Today, I am free enough to use it just for beans.
Beans can be prepared for anybody's taste. Homemade whole wheat toast is tasty to everybody. For the past couple of decades, my intake of food is mainly beans and greens. I eat all day long but have a morning meal after my run or lift (every other day.) Peanut butter and chicken or fish on whole wheat toast with hot tea. Later, I chop an apple, shred a carrot, crack an egg white into it, add pepper and cinnamon and nuke for four minutes.
99% of the bread I consume is my own. No commercial bread approaches the taste and feel of mine. I could take my loaves door-to-door for $5 per and be baking full-time. For decades, double-kneading has been my method. Just yesterday, I had to change, due to the fact I'd used more water than I had whole wheat flour. Tried some powdered milk and oat flour (oats in coffee grinder), but it was too wet to knead.
My recipe is so automatic, I just run an amount of hot tap water into a white plastic bowl. add some sugar and stir in two packets of dry yeast until it's dissolved and wait for the explosions. Depending on the humidity, each grain of yeast will expand in a burst until the water is covered with tan foam. Add flour, salt, oil, knead, allow to rise, knead and put into pans. My recipe is for four loaves, but I never replaced a broken glass one and now bake in two glass and one metal pan. My mixing bowl is from a $-store set of four lidded ones which are long gone, except for the largest. Imagine what you can do with a steel mixing bowl and matched set of loaf pans?
I have a friend who makes biscuits with wet dough. She takes self-rising white flour and works it into a watery ball between her fingers while flipping and adding more flour until she has a huge flat biscuit shape not sticking to her fingers. Baked on a greased sheet, they become large fluffy biscuits to keel over forever for. You have to see the procedure to appreciate it and when I tried it, the value became more evident. The only lesson from it, which I applied last night, was the "wet" factor. I ladled the mixture into well-greased pans, to half full. They doubled but were still runny when I put them into the 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. Turned oven off and let them coast for another 15 minutes. Nice flat-topped loaves with dynamite texture. Only hitch is the over-browned bottoms. Need pressure on the slice knife. Point is, I completely eliminated the kneading process and ended up with good loaves. Can't imagine doing it on purpose, though.
Most dudes don't get to savor bachelorhood early enough in life to appreciate the style. In the first place, getting a place one can handle alone grows ever more difficult. Looking for a mate who cooks like you're used to, i.e. modeled after your mother's, is probably useless. As well as less nutritious.
A bachelor crib should be the place you eat food you fix. Anything else is paying someone to prepare food which makes a profit. You pay for the food and the profit. Free food will put money in your account immediately. Homemade food is the next best way save big bucks. You try my diet, exclusively, and you will increase your muscle mass and monetary worth.
Anybody can sing The Anthem, Jimi made The Anthem sing.
Soon, my greens will be from the yard. Free food. Dock, polk and dandelion. Broccoli is the green I use most. Cabbage is a less expensive route. My skillet base is garlic (halved) and onions slightly fried in soy (nearly all "vegetable") oil. Sometimes I use olive. I add some sprinkles of soy sauce, put on the lid and turn down the heat.
I take the flowers first, slice them into a shred, put them into the skillet and stir. Ladle in the beans from crock pot. Add cooked chicken, salmon or tuna. Stir again. Cover with Parmesan cheese and put the lid on. After it is thoroughly heated, it is ready to eat. Many times, I've eaten the whole thing. The broccoli shreds have the consistency of creamed hamburger. Any herb or spice you like may be added anytime. The ones you like most should probably go in late during the process.
Beans and greens every day. Whole wheat home-bread every day.
Turnip, spinach, chard, collard, kale, mustard; all greens.
Apples and carrots are daily necessities. Each one every day.
The only way I can avoid sweets is to not have them in my food budget. I don't bring them home. The only sugar in my house is granulated. The only chocolate in my house is cocoa powder. I use butter. No fat powdered milk. I use eggs (whites only). To allay a total sweet need, I eat a teaspoon of sugar. Not enough? Add some powdered milk and cocoa. Half-cup mixed and eaten dry will slowly satisfy any sweet root.
Not long ago, I ordered thirty-five lbs. of peanut butter from Groeb Farms in Orsted MI because there were no "peanuts only" jars within walking distance. I kept it in the space above the veggie drawer. Today, I have a choice of Kroger, Krema and Smuckers. Anything other than 100% peanuts is imitation peanut butter. If you require the sugar and fat in this stuff, you must not be getting it from other food, which is highly unlikely. If it is commercially prepared, it is sugar and salt and fat filled. These are the flavors we enjoy.
"I really like fried eggs and bacon." Of course, you do. In fact, it should be a meal savored once or twice a year, instead of a steady diet just because you "love the taste."
Meat has to be killed to be consumed. The act of being killed releases all manner of toxins into the carcass. The next link in the chain is us, so these virulent microbes enter the meat eater. The more meat, the more poison. It will shorten a lifespan. Meat eaters are warriors, chance-takers, quick tempered, fearless, designed to live more intense lives and die early. Archie Moore said one of his secrets for weight control was to not swallow the meat. If one chews out the flavor and spits out the rest, it eliminates the end result which is the difficulty of digesting and defecating meat.
How you move your bowels is for more important than how you fill you stomach. Here's a lesson, watch the nearest animal mammal you can observe. No matter if nocturnal or night sleeper, the first thing it does upon awakening is take a dump. It doesn't look for something to drink or eat to awaken fully. It takes a short walk to a space to mark a claim..
This could set a mood
Which could start a feud
But I present these facts
About dogs and cats.
My feline buries her waste
With diligent care, no haste.
Your dog, on the other hand,
And it's obvious throughout the land,
Leaves his above ground in bad taste.
Before you get much older, it is necessary to train your intake and elimination of food. It should become as natural as breathing and heart beats. For me, the most natural intake of nourishment for natural movements is vegetable matter. A diet of meat may be alright for certain mammals designed as carnivores because they have to work so hard to obtain food. It has to come in gulps and stay in the system for the time between kills. When the kills stop, lifespan ends. If you are living to die, anxious to fly crash and burn, just for the memories, then your bag is meat. Plus chokes, liquor and lack of sleep. The strain of just pinching a loaf could very well kill you.
Take half a can of tuna and stir it into a couple egg whites. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and pepper. 'wave for 2-3 minutes and sandwich between slices of toasted bread. Cup of green tea. Total time can be cut to 3:33 if the cup of tea water is nuked at the same time.
I seldom drink tea without a spoon or two of powdered milk and teaspoon tip of cocoa powder. Anything made with water can serve as our daily requirement of water. Sugar water (all of the soft drinks) may keep us from dehydrating but it won't keep us from amplification. The most water I consume at one time is during a shower. Warm water is best for the sluice to our insides.
Have to admit the "batter" loaves seemed worth attempting again. Still whole wheat flour, still yeast rise. The time savings is substantial. Have three pans rising right now. This recipe is too simple to ignore. Going through the "double rise" method may be something I used to do.
My beans are black with split peas and brown rice. Stir-fried with garlic, onions and broccoli florets, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese; too good.
Baked a double-rise recipe and can't believe I was enamored by that batter bread. No comparison. That little side-step induces me to finish this up. The male prostate continues to grow, just like your nose. In time, it will intrude on elimination. Piss stream begins to flow more slowly and turd gets a curb to climb over. The longer you last the more pronounced, no matter what else happens. As long as you can get it up and get it off, prostate is happy but still growing and waiting for you to get old and slow down. Most of us slow down long before the old part. Whatever "old" is to you. No matter, beans and greens.
You have to do something every day. As Easy Beans expounded enthusiastically:
Something that you do every day.
Something.
Just something that you do.
Having a dog that jumps
Into the ocean.
You gotta do something cool!
All year long, I jog for ninety-minutes or lift weights for at least one set, every other day.
Most any larger lidded skillet will hold a chicken in an inch or so of water. Cook it out of its skin, fat and bones. Separate the lean and give all the rest to the dog. Use the clear broth in the crock pot. The white and dark meat is ready for sandwiches or beans and greens. For variety, I use canned tuna or salmon.
I always remember a guy telling me about not having enough iron in his blood to donate. The nurse told him to go home and eat a handful of raisins. He did, came back and was able to give a pint. I eat a handful every day. Plus almonds, pecans or walnuts.
The only known aphrodisiac is oats. Water, salt, dry milk, quick oats, two-minutes in 'wave. There is nothing special about one rolled oat from another. Generic is the same as Quaker. I use oat-soaked water as a pre-lift drink.
If you run (jog) for any number of years, it is likely you will have some knee problems. In Eureka , California, in 1979, my right knee pained so badly, I walked home. I thought, at the time, my jogging days were finished. But the knee healed and I began jogging. The only trouble was a bony protrusion on the inside of my knee if I did any fast dancing.
A couple years later, living in Santa Rosa, the knee got so bad that when I walked, it felt as if there was no more than a tendon holding my calf to my thigh. So I began lifting free weights as a primary athletic activity. Years previously, while lifting with Willie Wagner, I read a magazine article by Sergio Oliva which pointed out that if a person was restricted to one exercise, parallel thigh squats with heavy weight was best. I concentrated on this exercise as a lung expander (breath in on the way down and push it out on the way up). Soon, my knees seemed to strengthen and I resumed running.
Decades later, while in Maui, eating large and lifting little, I blew out my left knee. It took three years to recoup, mostly by long walks and a new lifting method. The bar I use is a vertical grip type. With 40 lbs. of iron, I do twelve exercises times ten reps, without putting the bar down: front grip squats, straight leg rowing (lowering the weight each rep until the iron touches the floor, seated triceps extensions, standing curls, seated presses, wide grip (bar behind neck) squats, behind neck seated presses, wide grip curls, wide grip front press. Then I put down the bar, lie flat and do 100 elbow to knee crunches, followed by vertical grip triceps extensions behind my head and ten reps to forehead level. I finish with ten full sit-ups and ten push-ups. That's one set. I always do one. Two is better and three is a real workout. I lift every other day, after a cup of green tea and prior to anything else. On the other days, I do a ninety minute run. I've been running pain-free for about ten years. There is little doubt in my mind, that the front grip and behind the neck squats is necessary for keeping the knees in shape.
If I'd had the wherewithal or or medical insurance, I would have had my knees 'scoped years ago. But I didn't and I'm glad. Unless one is a professional athlete, the rehab from arthroscopic surgery seldom restores full knee recovery. Pros are pushed to push past the discomfort which most citizens can't suffer through.
If you eat no bread you don't bake, you are on the way to fitness. Jesus said man can not live by bread alone, said nothing about living without bread. Man needs bread in his diet. Once you've eaten your own fresh from the oven still steaming,with the pats of butter still melting, nothing else comes close to being real bread.
In California, I once had a crock pot on for months. I was houseman to two chicks. Here's a lesson I had to learn even though I had an example before my early eyes. No matter the combination, i.e. sister/sister, sister/mother, mother/wife, wife/sister-in-law, sister/daughter, wife/daughter...no man has any chance when his viewpoint is challenged by any two women. It is useless, say it once, shut up, listen.
Buy a crock pot. Cover the bottom with pound of dry beans and fill it up with water. Put the lid on and turn it up to high. Leave it until you notice the smell. Next day, dip out a bean and see if you can masticate it. Turn the dial to low.
With a pot of beans on heat, you have something to eat. All the time. Anytime. In a bowl with salt and pepper. Plus your bread. You could live on it. But the bean base is only a beginning. A crock pot will not boil over or burn. As long as there is liquid, anything which makes soup in your mind may be added to the pot. Tomatoes are necessary in our diet. Pizza is not the best way to get your daily requirement of tomatoes. Put tomato in your pot. Sauce is easy and inexpensive. Any vegetable you can name can go into the pot. Give it time and it will cook to the consistency you prefer.
There are numerous types of dry beans. I once bought a half-bushel of soy beans from a grain elevator in Ohio to use in California. For years, those beans were the base for my crock pot ingredients. Nobody would have tried soy bean soup, so I always said it was vegetable/bean. Soy are the best beans for crock pot because they never cook to mushy. Try many: red, black, pink, speckled, gray or white. Split peas and lentils cook faster than beans so they may be added to thicken the mix. In the past, my crock pot was always hot. One time a downstairs neighbor brought frozen fillet mignon to my wife as a peace offering after she'd gone down to threaten his ass after he'd disturbed our sleep the night before. I sliced it into cubes and put it into the pot. The neighbor hood came by and asked what kind of soup I had. Steak. He spooned a chunk and began to chew. His eyes widened and he said, "It's really tender, man, like...?" "Crackers?" "Yeah, man, that meat is as soft as wet crackers."
Actually, over the years most of my carrots,onions, garlic, potatoes, etc. were fixed in the pot. Today, I am free enough to use it just for beans.
Beans can be prepared for anybody's taste. Homemade whole wheat toast is tasty to everybody. For the past couple of decades, my intake of food is mainly beans and greens. I eat all day long but have a morning meal after my run or lift (every other day.) Peanut butter and chicken or fish on whole wheat toast with hot tea. Later, I chop an apple, shred a carrot, crack an egg white into it, add pepper and cinnamon and nuke for four minutes.
99% of the bread I consume is my own. No commercial bread approaches the taste and feel of mine. I could take my loaves door-to-door for $5 per and be baking full-time. For decades, double-kneading has been my method. Just yesterday, I had to change, due to the fact I'd used more water than I had whole wheat flour. Tried some powdered milk and oat flour (oats in coffee grinder), but it was too wet to knead.
My recipe is so automatic, I just run an amount of hot tap water into a white plastic bowl. add some sugar and stir in two packets of dry yeast until it's dissolved and wait for the explosions. Depending on the humidity, each grain of yeast will expand in a burst until the water is covered with tan foam. Add flour, salt, oil, knead, allow to rise, knead and put into pans. My recipe is for four loaves, but I never replaced a broken glass one and now bake in two glass and one metal pan. My mixing bowl is from a $-store set of four lidded ones which are long gone, except for the largest. Imagine what you can do with a steel mixing bowl and matched set of loaf pans?
I have a friend who makes biscuits with wet dough. She takes self-rising white flour and works it into a watery ball between her fingers while flipping and adding more flour until she has a huge flat biscuit shape not sticking to her fingers. Baked on a greased sheet, they become large fluffy biscuits to keel over forever for. You have to see the procedure to appreciate it and when I tried it, the value became more evident. The only lesson from it, which I applied last night, was the "wet" factor. I ladled the mixture into well-greased pans, to half full. They doubled but were still runny when I put them into the 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. Turned oven off and let them coast for another 15 minutes. Nice flat-topped loaves with dynamite texture. Only hitch is the over-browned bottoms. Need pressure on the slice knife. Point is, I completely eliminated the kneading process and ended up with good loaves. Can't imagine doing it on purpose, though.
Most dudes don't get to savor bachelorhood early enough in life to appreciate the style. In the first place, getting a place one can handle alone grows ever more difficult. Looking for a mate who cooks like you're used to, i.e. modeled after your mother's, is probably useless. As well as less nutritious.
A bachelor crib should be the place you eat food you fix. Anything else is paying someone to prepare food which makes a profit. You pay for the food and the profit. Free food will put money in your account immediately. Homemade food is the next best way save big bucks. You try my diet, exclusively, and you will increase your muscle mass and monetary worth.
Anybody can sing The Anthem, Jimi made The Anthem sing.
Soon, my greens will be from the yard. Free food. Dock, polk and dandelion. Broccoli is the green I use most. Cabbage is a less expensive route. My skillet base is garlic (halved) and onions slightly fried in soy (nearly all "vegetable") oil. Sometimes I use olive. I add some sprinkles of soy sauce, put on the lid and turn down the heat.
I take the flowers first, slice them into a shred, put them into the skillet and stir. Ladle in the beans from crock pot. Add cooked chicken, salmon or tuna. Stir again. Cover with Parmesan cheese and put the lid on. After it is thoroughly heated, it is ready to eat. Many times, I've eaten the whole thing. The broccoli shreds have the consistency of creamed hamburger. Any herb or spice you like may be added anytime. The ones you like most should probably go in late during the process.
Beans and greens every day. Whole wheat home-bread every day.
Turnip, spinach, chard, collard, kale, mustard; all greens.
Apples and carrots are daily necessities. Each one every day.
The only way I can avoid sweets is to not have them in my food budget. I don't bring them home. The only sugar in my house is granulated. The only chocolate in my house is cocoa powder. I use butter. No fat powdered milk. I use eggs (whites only). To allay a total sweet need, I eat a teaspoon of sugar. Not enough? Add some powdered milk and cocoa. Half-cup mixed and eaten dry will slowly satisfy any sweet root.
Not long ago, I ordered thirty-five lbs. of peanut butter from Groeb Farms in Orsted MI because there were no "peanuts only" jars within walking distance. I kept it in the space above the veggie drawer. Today, I have a choice of Kroger, Krema and Smuckers. Anything other than 100% peanuts is imitation peanut butter. If you require the sugar and fat in this stuff, you must not be getting it from other food, which is highly unlikely. If it is commercially prepared, it is sugar and salt and fat filled. These are the flavors we enjoy.
"I really like fried eggs and bacon." Of course, you do. In fact, it should be a meal savored once or twice a year, instead of a steady diet just because you "love the taste."
Meat has to be killed to be consumed. The act of being killed releases all manner of toxins into the carcass. The next link in the chain is us, so these virulent microbes enter the meat eater. The more meat, the more poison. It will shorten a lifespan. Meat eaters are warriors, chance-takers, quick tempered, fearless, designed to live more intense lives and die early. Archie Moore said one of his secrets for weight control was to not swallow the meat. If one chews out the flavor and spits out the rest, it eliminates the end result which is the difficulty of digesting and defecating meat.
How you move your bowels is for more important than how you fill you stomach. Here's a lesson, watch the nearest animal mammal you can observe. No matter if nocturnal or night sleeper, the first thing it does upon awakening is take a dump. It doesn't look for something to drink or eat to awaken fully. It takes a short walk to a space to mark a claim..
This could set a mood
Which could start a feud
But I present these facts
About dogs and cats.
My feline buries her waste
With diligent care, no haste.
Your dog, on the other hand,
And it's obvious throughout the land,
Leaves his above ground in bad taste.
Before you get much older, it is necessary to train your intake and elimination of food. It should become as natural as breathing and heart beats. For me, the most natural intake of nourishment for natural movements is vegetable matter. A diet of meat may be alright for certain mammals designed as carnivores because they have to work so hard to obtain food. It has to come in gulps and stay in the system for the time between kills. When the kills stop, lifespan ends. If you are living to die, anxious to fly crash and burn, just for the memories, then your bag is meat. Plus chokes, liquor and lack of sleep. The strain of just pinching a loaf could very well kill you.
Take half a can of tuna and stir it into a couple egg whites. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and pepper. 'wave for 2-3 minutes and sandwich between slices of toasted bread. Cup of green tea. Total time can be cut to 3:33 if the cup of tea water is nuked at the same time.
I seldom drink tea without a spoon or two of powdered milk and teaspoon tip of cocoa powder. Anything made with water can serve as our daily requirement of water. Sugar water (all of the soft drinks) may keep us from dehydrating but it won't keep us from amplification. The most water I consume at one time is during a shower. Warm water is best for the sluice to our insides.
Have to admit the "batter" loaves seemed worth attempting again. Still whole wheat flour, still yeast rise. The time savings is substantial. Have three pans rising right now. This recipe is too simple to ignore. Going through the "double rise" method may be something I used to do.
My beans are black with split peas and brown rice. Stir-fried with garlic, onions and broccoli florets, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese; too good.
Baked a double-rise recipe and can't believe I was enamored by that batter bread. No comparison. That little side-step induces me to finish this up. The male prostate continues to grow, just like your nose. In time, it will intrude on elimination. Piss stream begins to flow more slowly and turd gets a curb to climb over. The longer you last the more pronounced, no matter what else happens. As long as you can get it up and get it off, prostate is happy but still growing and waiting for you to get old and slow down. Most of us slow down long before the old part. Whatever "old" is to you. No matter, beans and greens.
You have to do something every day. As Easy Beans expounded enthusiastically:
Something that you do every day.
Something.
Just something that you do.
Having a dog that jumps
Into the ocean.
You gotta do something cool!
All year long, I jog for ninety-minutes or lift weights for at least one set, every other day.
Most any larger lidded skillet will hold a chicken in an inch or so of water. Cook it out of its skin, fat and bones. Separate the lean and give all the rest to the dog. Use the clear broth in the crock pot. The white and dark meat is ready for sandwiches or beans and greens. For variety, I use canned tuna or salmon.
I always remember a guy telling me about not having enough iron in his blood to donate. The nurse told him to go home and eat a handful of raisins. He did, came back and was able to give a pint. I eat a handful every day. Plus almonds, pecans or walnuts.
The only known aphrodisiac is oats. Water, salt, dry milk, quick oats, two-minutes in 'wave. There is nothing special about one rolled oat from another. Generic is the same as Quaker. I use oat-soaked water as a pre-lift drink.
If you run (jog) for any number of years, it is likely you will have some knee problems. In Eureka , California, in 1979, my right knee pained so badly, I walked home. I thought, at the time, my jogging days were finished. But the knee healed and I began jogging. The only trouble was a bony protrusion on the inside of my knee if I did any fast dancing.
A couple years later, living in Santa Rosa, the knee got so bad that when I walked, it felt as if there was no more than a tendon holding my calf to my thigh. So I began lifting free weights as a primary athletic activity. Years previously, while lifting with Willie Wagner, I read a magazine article by Sergio Oliva which pointed out that if a person was restricted to one exercise, parallel thigh squats with heavy weight was best. I concentrated on this exercise as a lung expander (breath in on the way down and push it out on the way up). Soon, my knees seemed to strengthen and I resumed running.
Decades later, while in Maui, eating large and lifting little, I blew out my left knee. It took three years to recoup, mostly by long walks and a new lifting method. The bar I use is a vertical grip type. With 40 lbs. of iron, I do twelve exercises times ten reps, without putting the bar down: front grip squats, straight leg rowing (lowering the weight each rep until the iron touches the floor, seated triceps extensions, standing curls, seated presses, wide grip (bar behind neck) squats, behind neck seated presses, wide grip curls, wide grip front press. Then I put down the bar, lie flat and do 100 elbow to knee crunches, followed by vertical grip triceps extensions behind my head and ten reps to forehead level. I finish with ten full sit-ups and ten push-ups. That's one set. I always do one. Two is better and three is a real workout. I lift every other day, after a cup of green tea and prior to anything else. On the other days, I do a ninety minute run. I've been running pain-free for about ten years. There is little doubt in my mind, that the front grip and behind the neck squats is necessary for keeping the knees in shape.
If I'd had the wherewithal or or medical insurance, I would have had my knees 'scoped years ago. But I didn't and I'm glad. Unless one is a professional athlete, the rehab from arthroscopic surgery seldom restores full knee recovery. Pros are pushed to push past the discomfort which most citizens can't suffer through.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Hooks and lines, fishing for rhymes
God doesn't strike people down for bad stuff they've done or may do. God doesn't have the time to squash your chintzy ass; there's a universe out there to get good lambs through.
I suppose it looked like I was a tad wild in that '78 "Hummingbird" with the tumbleweed buckled in on the passenger side.
Feel that drumming in your head?
Proves you don't know when to stop.
Downed all that suds instead;
Now you curse the brew of barley and hops.
The way you primp and preen
From a distance rarely seen
(By whomever it is for)
In the inches from your mirror.
Ignorance drives evolution. With no evolution, humankind would have remained as ignorant as the oldest generation. The ignorance of our forebears proves evolution.
You poured more hurt into my heart than it can hold, then you broke it open.
I'll tear your picture into such tiny pieces the worms will get some good from it by eating it into compost.
Lay my pall with a long song I never heard, I want to finish all the ones I know.
An exquisitively beautiful butterfly will extract nourishing sugars from sun-drenched flowers, urine-soaked sand or a damp dog turd.
I cried like this, one time, and you caved.
Said, "OK, I'll marry you to prove my love."
You can't cave, this time.
I cry because you've died.
Early grieving is most intense.
Long-time grieving makes no sense.
You can bury every female except your widow.
Alcohol stirred into testosterone is a vicious fizz.
It's raining on Christmas
The white is washing away
Colored lights are blinking drips
The kids are in to stay!
Miracles are neither nonchalant nor easy, except for human fertilization.
Parent trying to spoil their kid into submission.."Here's the money, don't forget where it came from."
Here's what I betcha, take it to the banker, don't let 'em ketcha getting old.
You can't come close to preventing aging. It will creep and crawl all over you and before you know it, you're old.
The sounds of the war chords keep drumming. It is human, we can't stop the tune. In the past, present and future, we never leave well enough alone.
You had a way, and I'm sure you still do, of stealing a heart before it could start anew.
...creeping and peeking around in the garage as if something's about to jump out.
It's not all free time, no matter the work or fun, you gotta run.
You can go home, again. But you may have a battle if you intend to stay.
A pain a day
Is the pay
For age.
Hooray!
My direction never seemed for certain and I never travelled at the same pace...
I only remember the sun coming up over my backside and setting on my face.
When the Tallyman comes to tally, you can face up straight or jump into an alley.
Doesn't matter, no right or wrong, lyrics all end in the Tallyman Song.
Got on my knees for the Mine Mistress.
That's what she required.
Wore my 'caps away while praying
And prying loose her diamonds
To be hauled away and fired.
Went to work before full light
In the deep ever-darkness.
Came home to near sunset
With face blackened starkness.
I should give that old red suitcase away. Won't be packing anytime soon. Or today.
Wish I had a Bobby McGee to hitchhike with me
To thumb down diesels and play and sing.
Instead, I'm alone on a soul-bustin' walk
Feeling the sadness of a screaming hawk.
I've had some that was good but never as good as you could.
Guess I need a shove to love you again.
If she wanted me, she'd have me, her love, alone, would have kept me around.
I lied alot when I told you I love you.
It wasn't from the bottom of my heart.
I told you what you wanted to hear,
Now that telling you is tearing me apart.
I'd rather have one chick fighting for me than ten chicks fighting over me.
You folded my heart into an envelope and posted it to nowhere.
You can push me to the edge of emotion but you can't make me fall into love.
Missed alot of studio time, this morning, singing in the shower.
Missed signing my name for all the fans, hour after hour.
Been trying to think how long its been since I quit thinking of you;
How long since I counted weeks and months and cried away each day through?
Before you are cold, people will forget, their lives will go on before you are stiff.
When you know the sound of the freighters on the Panama and the scurry of rats on the muddy creek bank
7Oct87 - still in limbo and on hold for steep stoop east
9Oct87 - sit around day, reading LENNON and watching Giants lose game #3
10Oct87 - Rog calls - Florida job uncertain - going to work on 12th, same day I leave CA
14Oct87 - Giants lose in seven games - St Louis/Minnesota in series
15Oct87 - Unrelenting, unrepentant bitch - a long waist to go before we sleep - making love makes it difficult to recall the uneasy times
18Oct87 -- headed east to NJ from CA
19Oct87 - side by side with a red Prelude at 80 mph ("How fast you going?") the couple looks up and freaks, I back off
As expensive as Nevada
20Oct87 - On I-80, just prior to 220 mile marker, the 1962 Olds Cutlass F-85 turns 100,000 miles
21Oct87 - Stayed at John and Marker's. Moe and Sandy asked about Pieffs (not since my wife). Saw Joe and Marie. Peanut butter, gov't cheese, home-baked whole wheat bread
22Oct87 HaWK and Elsee land in Roosevelt about 3 am.
I look for the bad in you while hoping there's some good in me,
Eliminating the vile bile that plasters over a pleasant smile.
Love can't last that comes too fast,
Hold me, let me slowly fall in love.
Are my eyes betraying what I'm saying?
I can't finance this romance anymore.
11-1-11
My favorite mother-in-law was Emma
She was understanding and tried to know me.
To the end she was friendly,
Writing notes on cards
Lamenting the energy required.
In answers, I covered old ground sans guard.
The rock era is over, I heard it on the BBC.
I heard it first on WLAC.
We'd sit on Gobbler's Knob
Hearing our first rhythm and blues grooves,
Then digging a country crooner who made it all move.
You'll get over it or it will put you under.
Forget the lightening strike, enjoy the thunder rumble.
You are not going to die, stop hoping for something bad to end the burn.
Thousands, millions of lovers before you, have survived to return.
You think you are the only one in the entire world who feels as badly as you?
Well, multiply it by ten and begin to pretend how real pain sufferers get through.
I've been in love lots of ways, that is to say with many girls and dames.
Some not long enough to have to fall out,
A few so deeply that I still think about.
One best thing about old age is you get more time to complete projects and time to begin a new one.
When we review scenes in our minds which picture times of our parents, and times as a parent, it becomes apparent, we sound like them.
No family has to go too far back to find a crazy. - Pat Conroy
Intensity is a strain to maintain
When it wains the gains switch to another.
It determines success
Or momentum shifts
Intensity is a mother.
Patriotic Rhetoric
Thank you for your service, for joining the force to fight.
Thank you for the sacrifice of limbs, minds or sight.
We really do appreciate it, but dying is never right.
Half a century ago a marriage ceremony took place on a bright sun, mild, Valentine's Day. The groom wore Air Force blues with black bow tie, white gloves and a white carnation. The bride wore a white gown with tiara and veil. She carried a spray of red roses.
People propose on Valentine's Day. People plead with sweets on Valentine's Day. An Anniversary on Valentine's Day is similar to the feeling of having a birthday on a major holiday. But fifty years later, I remember only the Valentine's Day kind of stuff.
I'm a thousand watts dimmer than sad.
I know it sounds pretty rad,
She turned out the lights in my head.
I suppose it looked like I was a tad wild in that '78 "Hummingbird" with the tumbleweed buckled in on the passenger side.
Feel that drumming in your head?
Proves you don't know when to stop.
Downed all that suds instead;
Now you curse the brew of barley and hops.
The way you primp and preen
From a distance rarely seen
(By whomever it is for)
In the inches from your mirror.
Ignorance drives evolution. With no evolution, humankind would have remained as ignorant as the oldest generation. The ignorance of our forebears proves evolution.
You poured more hurt into my heart than it can hold, then you broke it open.
I'll tear your picture into such tiny pieces the worms will get some good from it by eating it into compost.
Lay my pall with a long song I never heard, I want to finish all the ones I know.
An exquisitively beautiful butterfly will extract nourishing sugars from sun-drenched flowers, urine-soaked sand or a damp dog turd.
I cried like this, one time, and you caved.
Said, "OK, I'll marry you to prove my love."
You can't cave, this time.
I cry because you've died.
Early grieving is most intense.
Long-time grieving makes no sense.
You can bury every female except your widow.
Alcohol stirred into testosterone is a vicious fizz.
It's raining on Christmas
The white is washing away
Colored lights are blinking drips
The kids are in to stay!
Miracles are neither nonchalant nor easy, except for human fertilization.
Parent trying to spoil their kid into submission.."Here's the money, don't forget where it came from."
Here's what I betcha, take it to the banker, don't let 'em ketcha getting old.
You can't come close to preventing aging. It will creep and crawl all over you and before you know it, you're old.
The sounds of the war chords keep drumming. It is human, we can't stop the tune. In the past, present and future, we never leave well enough alone.
You had a way, and I'm sure you still do, of stealing a heart before it could start anew.
...creeping and peeking around in the garage as if something's about to jump out.
It's not all free time, no matter the work or fun, you gotta run.
You can go home, again. But you may have a battle if you intend to stay.
A pain a day
Is the pay
For age.
Hooray!
My direction never seemed for certain and I never travelled at the same pace...
I only remember the sun coming up over my backside and setting on my face.
When the Tallyman comes to tally, you can face up straight or jump into an alley.
Doesn't matter, no right or wrong, lyrics all end in the Tallyman Song.
Got on my knees for the Mine Mistress.
That's what she required.
Wore my 'caps away while praying
And prying loose her diamonds
To be hauled away and fired.
Went to work before full light
In the deep ever-darkness.
Came home to near sunset
With face blackened starkness.
I should give that old red suitcase away. Won't be packing anytime soon. Or today.
Wish I had a Bobby McGee to hitchhike with me
To thumb down diesels and play and sing.
Instead, I'm alone on a soul-bustin' walk
Feeling the sadness of a screaming hawk.
I've had some that was good but never as good as you could.
Guess I need a shove to love you again.
If she wanted me, she'd have me, her love, alone, would have kept me around.
I lied alot when I told you I love you.
It wasn't from the bottom of my heart.
I told you what you wanted to hear,
Now that telling you is tearing me apart.
I'd rather have one chick fighting for me than ten chicks fighting over me.
You folded my heart into an envelope and posted it to nowhere.
You can push me to the edge of emotion but you can't make me fall into love.
Missed alot of studio time, this morning, singing in the shower.
Missed signing my name for all the fans, hour after hour.
Been trying to think how long its been since I quit thinking of you;
How long since I counted weeks and months and cried away each day through?
Before you are cold, people will forget, their lives will go on before you are stiff.
When you know the sound of the freighters on the Panama and the scurry of rats on the muddy creek bank
7Oct87 - still in limbo and on hold for steep stoop east
9Oct87 - sit around day, reading LENNON and watching Giants lose game #3
10Oct87 - Rog calls - Florida job uncertain - going to work on 12th, same day I leave CA
14Oct87 - Giants lose in seven games - St Louis/Minnesota in series
15Oct87 - Unrelenting, unrepentant bitch - a long waist to go before we sleep - making love makes it difficult to recall the uneasy times
18Oct87 -- headed east to NJ from CA
19Oct87 - side by side with a red Prelude at 80 mph ("How fast you going?") the couple looks up and freaks, I back off
As expensive as Nevada
20Oct87 - On I-80, just prior to 220 mile marker, the 1962 Olds Cutlass F-85 turns 100,000 miles
21Oct87 - Stayed at John and Marker's. Moe and Sandy asked about Pieffs (not since my wife). Saw Joe and Marie. Peanut butter, gov't cheese, home-baked whole wheat bread
22Oct87 HaWK and Elsee land in Roosevelt about 3 am.
I look for the bad in you while hoping there's some good in me,
Eliminating the vile bile that plasters over a pleasant smile.
Love can't last that comes too fast,
Hold me, let me slowly fall in love.
Are my eyes betraying what I'm saying?
I can't finance this romance anymore.
11-1-11
My favorite mother-in-law was Emma
She was understanding and tried to know me.
To the end she was friendly,
Writing notes on cards
Lamenting the energy required.
In answers, I covered old ground sans guard.
The rock era is over, I heard it on the BBC.
I heard it first on WLAC.
We'd sit on Gobbler's Knob
Hearing our first rhythm and blues grooves,
Then digging a country crooner who made it all move.
You'll get over it or it will put you under.
Forget the lightening strike, enjoy the thunder rumble.
You are not going to die, stop hoping for something bad to end the burn.
Thousands, millions of lovers before you, have survived to return.
You think you are the only one in the entire world who feels as badly as you?
Well, multiply it by ten and begin to pretend how real pain sufferers get through.
I've been in love lots of ways, that is to say with many girls and dames.
Some not long enough to have to fall out,
A few so deeply that I still think about.
One best thing about old age is you get more time to complete projects and time to begin a new one.
When we review scenes in our minds which picture times of our parents, and times as a parent, it becomes apparent, we sound like them.
No family has to go too far back to find a crazy. - Pat Conroy
Intensity is a strain to maintain
When it wains the gains switch to another.
It determines success
Or momentum shifts
Intensity is a mother.
Patriotic Rhetoric
Thank you for your service, for joining the force to fight.
Thank you for the sacrifice of limbs, minds or sight.
We really do appreciate it, but dying is never right.
Half a century ago a marriage ceremony took place on a bright sun, mild, Valentine's Day. The groom wore Air Force blues with black bow tie, white gloves and a white carnation. The bride wore a white gown with tiara and veil. She carried a spray of red roses.
People propose on Valentine's Day. People plead with sweets on Valentine's Day. An Anniversary on Valentine's Day is similar to the feeling of having a birthday on a major holiday. But fifty years later, I remember only the Valentine's Day kind of stuff.
I'm a thousand watts dimmer than sad.
I know it sounds pretty rad,
She turned out the lights in my head.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Sweet Baboo
Sally called Charlie Brown her Sweet Baboo, but Charlie was enamored of the Pretty Little Redhead. I composited the strip and called my little redhead The Sweet Baboo. She was a tall redhead and did not like the Sweet Baboo moniker. Her name was Babette and everybody called her Bobette. Her mother called her Bobbie. F.L. called her Bob. Kerry called her Bu-bette. But Bobette was most common for her. I called her Bette from the get-go. I was never so infatuated with a female. Ever, and I'd been through two marriages. And no woman ever infuriated me more. For ten years I forced the direction our lives took.
For me, it totally alienated me from all my blood family. For her it was recovering from a total rejection by a lover who put her on a plane back to the states after she'd spent three years of a blissful life on a military base on Oahu. Back to the husband and son she'd abandoned as the boy was about to graduate high school. Back to Ohio hills from Hawaii night clubs. Back to the mother she'd left in a nursing home. She was bummed to thoughts of suicide. I was jobless, homeless and penniless. And nine years older. She was forty-three and had been working with a thigh master for months while passing as thirty-five. Five-feet ten carrying 115 lbs. Our ages always add up to the same sum. I was fifty-two. We were jealous and accusitory, but she had tons of acquaintances and I was no prodigal son, living with my mother. She was living with a girlfriend who had two teenage sons, walking distance from mom's.
For the past ten years we battled less, and began a more supportive relationship. We traded thoughts about our children, which we knew they'd never hear and she called me more than anybody else and I was glad to listen and add a little. I tried to make her laugh. She stopped by alot and hired me for every handyman job, even though her ex-husband was her landlord. I cleaned her house and changed all the venetian blinds for new ones on the 27th of Oct. The last time I saw her, she was leaving after her live-in boyfriend had dropped off me and my Sears Powermate. She died of a heart attack on Nov 1, three months after my first ex-wife died. I had a longer personal relationship with her than I had with either of my official ex-wives. So I very much consider that I've lost another x. I'm back to Max (with one x).
During the first eight years I knew her, Bette sent more drugs through her system than any other one person still living. For the three years before I met her, she was mostly drug-free, except for pot and the occasional parcel of coke she had sent to her from the mainland. When I met her, her drug of choice was "pills." She'd free-based cocaine and knew how to cook it down. I was a strict t'ic, no chemicals. No lab candy. Just marijuana. She was into weed but more as a "best stuff" dealer. I'd carried that title in the past.
After we moved in together, my knowledge of her intake was limited, since I never cared to share any. She was getting 'scripts for her mental disability which was also providing a monthly check. Then cocaine came already cooked to a solid, smokable form. Bette got hooked quickly. Latched on to a nickle-dime dealer who collected in advance from as many people as he could and drove to the black hood, thirty-five miles away to score. Bette had been married to a brother from that area, so she was always welcomed. She was soon tethered to crack. All acquaintances were doing it, old and new. I was doing it with her but I refused to kick down for the shit. She would beg up on fifty, or so, when it was being done in our apartment. It jacked up my testosterone and dampened her libido. I hated the shit. Plus, to come down way late in the early morning, she'd smoke into our stash of ganja. She would hide in the kitchen closet when really geekin' out. It was every five days, then every three, and finally all the time.
I had to leave, moved back in with mom, got a job, bought a house and got a new girlfriend.
At one point, we were planning marriage. But Bette was always in the background.
For about five years, or so, Bette has been my only female visitor. She confided she has been doing more drugs than ever before because her live-in has retirement and Vietnam checks totalling $6000 per month and it all goes for crack, powder cocaine, oxycodone, percocet, etc.
It was a killing recipe for a woman of sixty-three who had ballooned to near 200 lbs. and had no mind to do much of anything else but hit the stem or crush and snort. She was truly miserable and had no life. The holidays were coming and she hated them, especially after her mother died. The Sweet Baboo's death was no disguise, it was a blessing.
I mourn alone, again.
For me, it totally alienated me from all my blood family. For her it was recovering from a total rejection by a lover who put her on a plane back to the states after she'd spent three years of a blissful life on a military base on Oahu. Back to the husband and son she'd abandoned as the boy was about to graduate high school. Back to Ohio hills from Hawaii night clubs. Back to the mother she'd left in a nursing home. She was bummed to thoughts of suicide. I was jobless, homeless and penniless. And nine years older. She was forty-three and had been working with a thigh master for months while passing as thirty-five. Five-feet ten carrying 115 lbs. Our ages always add up to the same sum. I was fifty-two. We were jealous and accusitory, but she had tons of acquaintances and I was no prodigal son, living with my mother. She was living with a girlfriend who had two teenage sons, walking distance from mom's.
For the past ten years we battled less, and began a more supportive relationship. We traded thoughts about our children, which we knew they'd never hear and she called me more than anybody else and I was glad to listen and add a little. I tried to make her laugh. She stopped by alot and hired me for every handyman job, even though her ex-husband was her landlord. I cleaned her house and changed all the venetian blinds for new ones on the 27th of Oct. The last time I saw her, she was leaving after her live-in boyfriend had dropped off me and my Sears Powermate. She died of a heart attack on Nov 1, three months after my first ex-wife died. I had a longer personal relationship with her than I had with either of my official ex-wives. So I very much consider that I've lost another x. I'm back to Max (with one x).
During the first eight years I knew her, Bette sent more drugs through her system than any other one person still living. For the three years before I met her, she was mostly drug-free, except for pot and the occasional parcel of coke she had sent to her from the mainland. When I met her, her drug of choice was "pills." She'd free-based cocaine and knew how to cook it down. I was a strict t'ic, no chemicals. No lab candy. Just marijuana. She was into weed but more as a "best stuff" dealer. I'd carried that title in the past.
After we moved in together, my knowledge of her intake was limited, since I never cared to share any. She was getting 'scripts for her mental disability which was also providing a monthly check. Then cocaine came already cooked to a solid, smokable form. Bette got hooked quickly. Latched on to a nickle-dime dealer who collected in advance from as many people as he could and drove to the black hood, thirty-five miles away to score. Bette had been married to a brother from that area, so she was always welcomed. She was soon tethered to crack. All acquaintances were doing it, old and new. I was doing it with her but I refused to kick down for the shit. She would beg up on fifty, or so, when it was being done in our apartment. It jacked up my testosterone and dampened her libido. I hated the shit. Plus, to come down way late in the early morning, she'd smoke into our stash of ganja. She would hide in the kitchen closet when really geekin' out. It was every five days, then every three, and finally all the time.
I had to leave, moved back in with mom, got a job, bought a house and got a new girlfriend.
At one point, we were planning marriage. But Bette was always in the background.
For about five years, or so, Bette has been my only female visitor. She confided she has been doing more drugs than ever before because her live-in has retirement and Vietnam checks totalling $6000 per month and it all goes for crack, powder cocaine, oxycodone, percocet, etc.
It was a killing recipe for a woman of sixty-three who had ballooned to near 200 lbs. and had no mind to do much of anything else but hit the stem or crush and snort. She was truly miserable and had no life. The holidays were coming and she hated them, especially after her mother died. The Sweet Baboo's death was no disguise, it was a blessing.
I mourn alone, again.
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