Drunkablog ll

I'm slipping into S.A.D. and this feels morbid, looking back.

I still don't understand A.A.'s promise/wish "We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it".

I'd forgotten this. Jane is my sister in Nashville, a mother of five, and she was deathly ill.

She needed Mom, and Mom needed me.

That summer, my brother got sick too. In the hospital for ten days, suffering so much he finally forbade us to visit.

What's with all these family emergencies, I wondered.

I was struggling to regain my sobriety while working a cubical job as an applications programmer. Prayed to God to give me the good nature to accompany my mother down there to help with the kids. I didn't want to go, not at all. What good is a dry drunk? No good without a lot of prayer.

So I didn't get the good nature but I went anyway. "I AM". You just learn you better fear god. No problem asking for a better nature but no surprise you don't get it.

During our week there I pilfered some pain pills. Enough to be friendly, enough not to need a drink. Last day there, I was free and spent the night in downtown Nashville with a cell phone, trying to get some old friends out to come see me on a work night. I think I hooked up with a drug dealer, I don't remember. Got back in time to set off for Iowa. Had Mom drive the first few hours. Across the Ohio.

I rented storage space for Resentment, like someone owed me for this. These were the vacation days I felt entitled to that summer. The resentment eventually willed its way out but not with too much destruction. Except I may have stopped praying altogether. Maybe there was a lot of destruction.

On the way home, Mom and I had a blast, just talking and reminiscing. There were scandals in Nashville, close to us, a little too close. It tickled us, escaping.

I just stopped going to work, or stopped in starts and stops. Checked into the third floor and got a dozen roses from my company. I was FMLA, getting rich doing nothing. I remember I found it hard to walk and I thought I was going to need a cane. Feinting spells, where I never fainted. And I lost the job eventually but collected unemployment, which was still more money than I'd ever had.

Then I inherited money, as punishment maybe.

But here I am now four years later and got myself two homes and a job and who knows what else, I don't notice.

I'm no longer rotten to the core.
Grafted to the olive tree but not the roots.
How it goes.

The Old Drunkablog

Sunday, November 23, 2003

I sent hate-ray-mail to an english-speaking Jihadist in Canada last night. Wow, the internet is amazing. I deleted the lines where I threatened to kill him because I thought that might be illegal.

This morning I woke up and kind of freaked. 'Launched a missle last night, damn.'

But guess what? Yahoo returned the email, for a bad address!

I was relieved!!
______
An hour later I had a beer and sent it again.

Invasion plans were cancelled

Symptoms of Bridge Phobia – Fear of bridges: a full blown anxiety attack.

Bridge Phobia is an intense fear of something that poses no actual danger.

Wrong. So wrong.

I googled "bridge phobia" expecting a name for it, dagnabit. "Pontophobia"?

Then I visited "The Phobia Page and found these three in a row:

Ponophobia: Fear of overworking. Fear of fatigue, esp. thru overworking.
Oh yeah! Got that too!

Potamophobia: Fear of rivers.
No, I love rivers and would like to live on one. I fear rivers like I fear cement looking down 500 feet.

Potophobia: Fear of alcohol or acoholic (sic) beverages.

Geez. It's like in "Harvey" when Sam looks up the word 'Pooka' and the dictionary talks back to him. (Pooka (n.) hello sam , nice hat.)

It was a humid August afternoon, 1992 and my wife and I were driving our old station wagon with a U-Haul hooked to this little steel ball on the back. Approaching the Ohio River, on our way from Tennessee to Iowa. This was near Cairo, Illinois, where, come to think of it, U.S. Grant had his hangovers and breakdowns too (when he was still U.S. "Gnat").

As always, I marveled at the bridge. I loved the bridge, and could contemplate it for ten minutes as we cruised along, at one with the road, rising and falling, leaning right, leaning left with the curves.

It went in and out of sight, reappearing exponentially larger each time, which made me a little giddy, I think.

No, I think I can go so far as to say it made me giddy. Not a little giddy.

Wait. Again. It made me not a little giddy.

So large. And the river. I thought of the satellite perspective. I thought again of the Civil War. Trade, commerce, flooding, dams, dam disasters. And the river is like the sun, the stars and the moon, because we all share it and can see it together while in different lands.

I just mean, it's something. It would be in the bible if this were the Holy Land.

Driving a little day-dreamy. Oh. The bridge. It's gone. Oh! It's there again. And much larger now. Yay!

When I was a kid my folks used to wake me up in the back seat if we were going to cross a big truss bridge.

If Laura was asleep I'm sure I woke her to see.



So, we began our way across.



And it was 'round about here...


my brain twitched with something like a low grade LSD lightening flash.

Then, much more frightening, a sort of myclonic jerk, which made me think I was going to faint. And in half a second I thought fainting while driving over the Ohio River would not only mean the both of us would die, but jaysus, the obituaries {shudder!}. The poor young newlyweds! What a way to go! Oh my god!!

I slowed down from about 70 mph to 40, fast.

I turned up the radio full blast and yelled to poor Laura , "TALK TO ME".

"Huh?"

I explained and she kept her head, somehow. You know how people do when they suddenly realize they're married to a dangerous lunatic and he's behind the wheel.

"Just go a little faster and it won't take so long to get across."

"But ...no...I think I want to go slower. There's a semi coming up though. Talk to me!"

She shut off the radio. "Hmm. Did you know I was editor of my college year book when I was a freshman? I spent all my spare time trying to take candid pictures of our teachers, like in strange poses."

"To humiliate them?" I yelled, though the radio was off. I was speeding up to about 50 now. Thank god.

"No! Well, ...NO,... no. Just, you know , funny pictures like catching them yawning or rolling their eyes while talking to a student. Or eating spaghetti."

"Good ....girl..."

"John, you just have to relax. And you're tired, that's what this is."

"It's a long way!"


"Keep talking! Tell me your first memory again! Something! Your first day at kindergarten!"

"Oh, I didn't go to kindergarten, remember?"

"Jesus Christ, Laura! All right, the grocery list game. I start. Apples bananas carrots danish eggs furniture polish"

"Wait. G? Groceries. Ha,ha. Sorry. Ok, Green Beans."

She opened and read her magazine aloud:

"Anders Skaar, an executive headhunter with negligible musical talent, set up a bare-bones organization called Anthem! America and put out a call for composers and lyricists to submit new songs that could replace "The Star-Spangled Banner," which he found both hard to sing and hard to swallow..."

We got across. I pulled over and without a word crawled back into the back seat.

Laura was just truly amazing-grace about all this.

I was more than upset though. This was it, neurotic psychological problems were now a mental illness that had a physical symptom. I was 30 years old, and I knew for one thing, I'd never drive across a bridge again (I have though).

In the previous year, I'd been robbed at gun point (and shot at, or anyway the mugger fired the gun, maybe in the air when I didn't run like he told me to, after taking my wallet). In the last year, I'd had a warrant for my arrest for not following through on some DUI punishment (my one and only DUI had to be in Nashville, TN. They were properly stern.)

A little more than a year before, my dad had dad-gone. So, I was a mess.

This is many years ago. I don't want to slip into full-yawlp autobiography.

In 2004, I moved to Our Town with inherited money, to escape the anti-saloon league that was my family. I didn't want anything, since I was a full blown drunk. The menu of life, I'd closed...I'll have a beer instead, thanks.

One of Our Town's adv adva advt attributes is its tolerance of not only gamboling but gambling.

There's a casino nearby, where you can smoke, drink, and-- cleeeavage cleeeavage!-- probably even meet the henry chinanski love of your life, to die with drunk.

But it's across a river! A large river with a truss bridge that is awesomely gigantic and has a view of a rusted out old railroad bridge as well. Awesome, to me, means narcolepsy or something, I swear. I will not cross that bridge. Not for vice, not for agape love, will I cross that bridge.

You tell me, I don't know. But there is the Skinner approach:



This mortifying recollection is brought to you by:.
Remember, it snickers!

that something

We drew our cameras...


and it was a draw.

Visit R.M. here and marvel at her archives, imaginatively catergorized, like so:
*Abandoned (15)
* Chairs (4)
* Diptych (3)
* Downtown (43)
* Holga (45)
* Landscape (7)
* Leaves (1)
* Life & Death (4)
* Campus (5)
* My Favorites (24)
* My Neighborhood (9)
* Olympus XA (42)
* People (25)
* Polaroids (4)
* Travels ()
* Trees (8)
* Vehicles (9)
* Walking to Work (32)

"Walking to work" is my favorite.

It's our town.

"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. " --Thornton Wilder

As of this posting there is a mildly jarring picture of "The library at the old Military Academy .."

I note today that my old college chum
Exclamation Mark's b-movie review site is shutting down in September.

I've added his new site,
Exclamation Mark's Site for Sore Eyes, in the sidebar.

He writes, "It's not quite an art blog, but certainly akin to one. Fine arts will be a facet of the page, but I'll also focus on pop culture and vintage ephemera. Actually, anything visual that catches my eye will be a candidate for publishing. I'll also include personal artifacts from time to time."

It's already up, and you can tell it will be a treat. I'll miss the movie review site and am going to be sure to get into the archives there before it disappears.


Also, Mrs. Applebones has some site changes. Like, you can back-talk now if you wish, though she has the option of deleting anything untoward. (You wouldn't want to back-talk, though, you'd want to be friends, of course! Click here.)

I only have friends who are great, somehow, but it's true.

I friend-UP, you know, ---I'm smart that way.

Busy week for me, but I'm not overlooking the present pleasentness of waning summer days. My pooka has let me visit her burrow in the woods with the faeries ...

(it's never in the same place,--except, there's always a scary kind of bridge, which I don't have to cross but still---, so she comes out to greet me.)

My job is fine(see previous post), though they might still put me back to work someday.

Lately, instead of driving straight back home afterwards I've been detouring and walking downtown, visiting odd shops and here and everywhere a coffee house. Another change in my habits recently is that I read the New York Times daily. The real thing, I mean, the paper. Not only is the (pre-war?) news fascinating and frightening, but the Times itself gives me the Eee.Beee.s...Like one's own dark shadow, or reverse image or something. It's neurotic. It doesn't want to see certain things that seem obvious to me, Mr. Clear Eyed Conservative. It's almost like...the enemy pretending to be your teacher. Perhaps you think I am mad, no? Mwah.

I wake up one minute before the alarm, when I get a second chance to see a movie I always catch the part I've already seen, and whenever I think of my pooka she coincidentally rings my phone, within an hour!!!

It's all so uncanny, life. Which sounds like I'm saying it's unnatural, but "uncanny" is better. "Suggesting supernatural influences" or, of course, faulty logic, which I love. *sudden mad laughter*

Ah, me. Aw, you.

We'll do.

How to protect my phony baloney job?

Like a punch clown that rights itself two days after you delivered your last blow, Doof, my good friend at work, stood up outta nowhere today, all happy as usual.

"Hiya Jackson! Still a Republican today?" (That's his standing greeting. Meh. He's a good man! I call him "friend"!)

I must have looked at him like I thought he'd been long dead or something. Not dead like I missed him, but dead like I'd forgotten he'd ever been born (such a good friend I can be, when I remember you exist).

Then, "Hey, partner," he said. "You look a little down!"

I shook myself out of staring.

"Oh. Yeah. Boxx told me yesterday I can't read on the job."

"Hmm!" He nodded at the New York Times, I had folded in quarter rather than half, propped up against some eye-level machinery. "But you're not letting that stop you now are you?"

I think I was sounding like Eeyore, except he doesn't say stuff like, "Can't smoke, can't read. Can't stand here three hours like a cigar store indian either."

Doof says let's go outside and smoke and talk business then.

He's got skinny, he says.

So we went out on the concourse where the carriers and haulers were already lined up, waiting for the afternoon edition of the Crib.

It's been awhile so I'll catch you up. It all started here, in my bloggo "Marry and Me". Or, "Look, Mary, I'm a Killer". One of those.

Doof and I pointed out to management that my position was something of a hoax on the public, so far as the job is meant to track circulation numbers (important to advertisers, you know) and to keep carriers and haulers honest about their sales.

He'd been trying for years to return practices/procedures as they were intended.

We'd got half way, but there were meetings we weren't invited to and the end result was a memo of non sequiturs.

The one reform that got through cut my work load in half (not good); the other reforms were like a revocation or denunciation of the mission.

In short, management declared that one very large independent contractor had to prove his sales numbers to me.

All the carriers could phone in their sales numbers without even sending in mastheads as proof, and are no longer scofflaws but scott-free. (Scot Free? Is that the expression? Where's that come from? Look it up , will you? Report back.)

SO, except for two days, my work is done after 15 minutes, and I'm on my own for the next three hours.

I have six customers, who work for this contractor, and they are becoming very, very dear to me, like I want to have sex with 'em or something. It's not good.

So, we sit down on the bench amidst the carnival like hoopla. Every other day, we do, to swap stories and histories.

(Doof doesn't smoke, which is one reason I don't take him very seriously, but he's cool by my other standards. Like, he's my age and he wears glasses and was probably picked on as a kid and probably took a lot of drugs and got some irony in his soul.)

All the family vans with their doors open and kids spilling out, running around and playing ball and hide and go seek under foot and cars and trucks.

"Here's the deal, " he says. "You know that little box on the wall in CIRC you discovered, marked "returns"?"

"Ah. How could I forget!" I said, cheering up. That was like a day you discover your car doesn't work because this BIG WIRE HERE isn't plugged in (just never ever happens but it did, and it was a MOMENT.)

(which led to a sort of phht admission and latter a retreat from cherished company ideals, but still.)

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, that's where I'm picking up the carrier returns, of course. And for about two weeks now, I'm coming up short. There are at least five people every day claiming they've turned in their paper work, but they're not. You know what I think? I think they're lying!" he smiled brightly.

"Oh no." I smiled.

"So. CIRC knows too, because of course it's my job to report that. Boss told me to fudge the numbers. Go by their average. Which I did but now I'm salving my conscience by telling you, Mr. Returns Guy."

"Doof! Store your treasures in heaven, don't tell about your good deeds!"

Thinking a second. "Wait, no, forget that. That's a bad deed. And if it was a good deed...how would I know now, and..." I had something to say but ended up mumbling 'til I was , ah, finished...

A queer look, from Doof. Priceless.

"OH. Don't call me the Returns Guy, aw-right? I prefer 'Returns Magistrate'."

He continued, anyway:

"But you're going to have to finesse this very carefully because for one thing, who are you going to tell? You can't tell your boss, can you? He told you not to bring any of these issues to him. The Catch 22. Also, keep me out of trouble. Keep everyone out of trouble. Just...maybe wander around the plant, wondering out loud, abstractly, mumbling something like ...you're looking for an honest man. Like in the fable."

I figure, it's a start!

Returns guy.

No one's serious about it. Sales aren't tracked this way. I have a phony baloney job, is what this is. Like, handed down to me as a part of some ancient patronage/reward system. The shadow institution has forgotten the position's purpose, both for real and for show. Someone is going to come along someday and ask, what's with the cigar store indian in the old press room?

But there are shenanigans.

It's all I may need...

The Pooka Left Me...

But she left in style.

Rare picture! You don't see many pookas without Seroquil, 'gate.

Distant ambivilence

"Daybreak": which i've been referring to as 'the eclipse', rather stupidly.

Apparently the Summerhill style residential rehab I lived in has continued in its new, half-way house philosophy. (Darn those two crazy addicts --out of several thousand-- who brought down the boom one summer night a year ago!!)

My anger is spent, and I'm not even sure if I have an opinion on the matter anymore. A house with dual diagnosis addicts would seem to need a lot of extra structure, though Daybreak had apparently operated for years with Summerhill freedom.

I did expect to miss the place. But no, not in the least.

I owe amends there for being dismissive and treating some staff with angry contempt as each new rule was posted.

Something tells me I wouldn't have stayed long enough to survive, if Daybreak was like it is today, though.

Only those of us who moved into bonafide Sober Houses are still in recovery after a year. These homes allow complete freedom; you're simply sharing a house with other recovering alcoholics/junkies and the only rule is to stay sober and use the common sense you would living in any other group situation.

Last Summer on the rocks

The Eclipse, a long term residential treatment center for 'dual diagnosis' addicts and alcoholics with psychiatric problems.

"I can start to think there's nothing to tell anyone anymore, and then I'll start to wonder what had meaning before, in the first place, ever."

deadly swirl of gin
clear liquid
odd, beautiful, petroleum-like
pollution on water;
Hold the glass to the light
know yourself

If I had kids, I bet they'd be the boss of me.

Let's see, by the end of September, and my three month chip, they've scratched the surface and my insides went like book pages on a picnic table.

I thought, 'wow, nervous breakdown, what was my back-up plan this time. I must have had a back up plan when I moved into this precariousness, it would be almost haha funny if I didn't, ---and say! I'm not hearing from any of my friends or family much, what the devil, hahaha, jesus christ really wouldn't this be funny if it was serious, haha, it better not be! Pray without ceasing this better not be for real, they're not serious are they? But surely I have an escape hatch, someplace to withdraw, some compromise to make'...

It took four or five months, and my eviction from the Eclipse, for the desire to drink and die to leave me. Thanks goes to my sponsor Corvus, that he had me use the Alcoholics Anonymous basic text, with a fundementalist approach to the 12 steps of recovery.

I love the "promises" of 12 step recovery. My favorite is "We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."

Best Friend, Fred Lee. Middle August, an afternoon.

"I'm gonna take me a nap."

"I'm gonna sit here in gloom."

Nodding toward Skizzits. Fred Lee notes, "He talks."

"You understand him?" I finally ask. Always wondered.

"No. Do you?" Fred Lee stands and pats his naked buddah.

"Not much."

"I don wan be rude but he talk the same shit aw the time."

Book Shop

I've passed by here many times.



But never got to visit, you see, until yesterday. A Wednesday! Go figure.

And it is without a doubt the best used bookstore in town. Oh, the others are musty and overflowing and there are dusty books stacked in leaning towers from the old wood floors. But those (downtown and near campus) are where the students sell their texts and assigned novels. The most impressive one is really full of crap, and by that I mean "what are they shoveling these days!"

They say the owner is smart because he can find any title in those heaps, but that's because nothing sells. He IS smart, and prices his treasures accordingly. So, they sit, either unrecognized or just too expensive.

I like history books that were written nearer the time of the event. Contemporaneous History, I guess you'd call it. Like, say, a history of the Civil War written in 1869. Or, say, a book in Sacco and Vanzetti's defense, written while they were still sitting in jail.

But there's none of that at the used bookstores near campus. In the history section what you get is what you get is today's sophomore diet:
Polemical books categorized as "Colonial Studies"; supposed auto-biographies of slaves, newly discovered and waiting to be exposed as fraudulent; revisionist "peoples'" histories; fantastic literary art of the third world (Nobel Prize stuff, you can't help but suspect is sub-par); fraudulents titles already exposed but "meh!", such as "The Education Of Little Tree" or "I, Rigoberta Menchu", by the Nobel Peace Prize winning, LIAR, still being taught . And then hey, anything by Doris Kearns Goodwin unless it's about baseball.

But not so at little Adams', which is owned by the Adams family and across town from campus.

Yesterday I didn't get passed the cluttered entry-way before I'd already spent my money. My pooka girlfriend too, (who by the way will read anything, so I dropped a ten cent copy of Tom Jones in her basket. And a fan-novel "Girls Of The Radio" from the 1920's.)

I bought a couple facsimilies of Sears Robuck catalogs (forward by Cleveland Amory...remember him? Used to be the TV Guides tv critic, I think.) (yes. And cat lover.) Also a nifty 1962 paperback about the 1950's. It had a cover I recognized from childhood, and yet I'm certain my parents didn't have it (a part of a series).

Also, for literary popcorn, "Gangs of New York", a social history of the pre-civil war days I gather. (Haven't seen the movie, except for a few clips.)

This is all ridiculous though, I don't read books anymore unless I'm in the hospital or rehab. For eight years on the web, I've been completely engrossed with current events and history unfolding. It's all too amazing (and gripping and frightening) to turn away.

And there is "comtemporaneous" history on the web. Galore, and I'm not just talking Lileks' Pop Ephemera site. For instance there is
this wonderful collection of old Popular Mechanics covers and articles, going back to its earliest editions. ("Projector Makes Living Movies (Aug, 1939)!" )

Escape from contemporary events is on the web also.

So when will I ever read another book??

Sitting in my car waiting for someone to come out from a dr.'s (or more likely , probation officer's) appointment.

During a power outage.

On a bus trip. (As-If, again.)

If somehow I wake one morning and remember myself.

Not myself while on vacation

I've picked vacation days this week like peaches. I'll go in on certain days, like when I don't have to labor. Overlook those, you know. But today, they'd have me eight hours on the assembly line. So,Vacation Time! I pick this day.

Friday through Sunday too. I know when to stay home from the paper. Tomorrow I'll go in and read The Times and accept store returns for two hours. (Returns is a simple clerical job but I left some impossibly complicated instructions for my temporary replacement, who is the boxx's secretary. This should leave me in good stead. I can hear him remarking of me: "he's very thorough-going, that what's-his-name".)

So, I've been going in but I've felt like it's been a holiday since Sunday. Could seem like ten days but all in all, but I'm taking only 24 hours (paid) vacation. Have I mentioned, I think they are very generous since I'm still a part-timer and have only been at the paper about 10 months.

The weather is splendid, squinty-August with a daily temperature range of twenty degrees between the 70's and 90's. No rain. I like the grass scrunching under foot, not asking for anything but silently, "water! water!" She doesn't need mowing, isn't making herself a spectacle to shame or distinguish us from the neighboring crack-houses and bordellos.


Something about the evenings, I'll be driving and make an impulsive, sudden, LEFT! RIGHT! LEFT! Into strange neighborhoods. BACK UP! PARK.


ooooh, this doesn't look safe. is this where the tough kids go to school?

I don't linger.

Today I drove my Imaginary Girl-Friend/affectionate Pooka all around town, shopping the way we do, where everything is free and often curbside. Still furnishing her apartment, which she knows I plan to make my Autumn retreat eventually. (Like, when she gets cable. And a bed and a table, chairs, microwave...Boy it's going to be great, I hope she doesn't go 'poof!' before then. Or turn into some other type of animal. Humans are the scariest of all, but still...)

Stuck in traffic (no A.C. in my car so we were both a little teched by now) I spotted this Kiddie-Mobile. It looks just right for a show business family, you ask me. And I happen to know a few!




Salesman came out while I was jumping around taking pictures and made the odd remark, "This isn't a library, you know."

Maybe I looked like a bum who hangs in the library.

I asked all sorts of questions, like, "how many carberators?" and "is it front wheel drive?"

"What kind of engine? I mean horse power."

"How old is she? Any leons on it?" (Mans eyes definitly crossed, that last one.)

It was rude of me, taking his time and not even listening to the answers. I think he said I could have it for "a kajillian dollars", before he turned away and headed back to his air conditioned booth.

I think I got you a buyer, I called, "he's only seven but..."

Summer blasted off, some time back...

and I still feel confident it's forever. What's even better is that I could be wrong, and it may not bother me if... No, let's not even think of it. It's August 4th.

This time corresponds to the days when a kid gets so dumb from the heat and the summer fun, he's about to fall for the fleeting appeal of new school supplies. Such happy fools...If kids ruled the world, I bet you could take it back without them realizing.

want to go back to school? ok, you're the boss! New teacher, new classroom...
*mmmph*

For me, reborn into a sober world, this is the part of summer where the Watergate flows so powerful even a 12 year old can dig it. Wow, could the president resign in disgrace? Will he have a nervous breakdown on live TV? Or scold us for hounding him so much?

The V.P. has already resigned and we've had the novel experience of seeing a new vice president sworn in.

Going to catch the next parental shuttle to the old country club, play some tennis with Jimmy Powers or Bobby Crookham, then take a swim. Eat a Chuckwagon...how can they taste so good here but not so good at home??

New Spiderman coming out this week. Now, how on earth could Gwen be alive, what has she been cloned? What will M.J. say? And there's the business about the roommate going stark raving green goblin.

Today...Today is my allowance! Dad will try to win it back at cards of course but lately I'm more careful. I pay attention to his discards. I know what he's looking for.
_____
Long wait for the news carriers today.



Blazing bright. The paper doesn't come out on the belt until 1:30. (Our Town has both a morning and evening paper. The morning paper is a student paper, one of our major exports here being Journalism...)


Lots of cars, you see.




Someone spotted a SNAKE dropping from the bottom of an SUV. Needing to find an escape while in wholly-sheet mode, the creature swiftly sinuated into the wheel well of an economy junk heap. The woman owner danced and flapped her arms and finally let out a squeal.

Naturally, "hoopla ensued" (always credit J-Jm for that phrase). A tall Korean War vet stepped from the crowd and crawled underneath the car with a stick.

Don't let me mislead you that this story is going anywhere.

But I saw my opportunity to finally take pictures of people when they probably wouldn't be querulous. It was no matter to me to catch sight of the snake or take its picture.

Occured to me during one close up shot that I might get a shock if it suddenly emerged and say, went up my pant leg. That would be so wrong, when it could go up someone else's pant leg and I could get a blurry picture of the News That Became An Urban Legend.





That fellow is ornery to people, sometimes. I think he's the patriarch to most of the fatties, including one poor young fellow who appears to be his own grandpa...

So here are a few windows on my world while I'm off the assembly line and doing my store/rack returns job. Hanging out on the dock.

Memorable summer, maybe the best ever. Thanks for stopping by!

p.s. This Summer photo by Renee is so awesome I've set it as my wall paper. One of her's where you comprehend for a moment that photography is truly an art.