LifeStory Magazine (print) has a new issue out.

Send $3 and an SASE for the current issue, no. 97.

Address The LifeStory Institute, 3591 Letter Rock Rd.,

Manhattan, KS 66502 USA.  And thank you for your interest!

       

                                         

                                                                                                              

 

Running errands (1997), story of my life!

 

I took saws and scissors to be sharpened out to the east side, a man named Ray Dieball.  I went grocery shopping at Food4Less.  I got milk, a can of yams, a head of lettuce, a bag of celery, two bunches of green onions, and some chips.  The bag of chips was huge but on sale.  I looked for some sour cream chips, June’s favorite and just incidentally mine too, but I didn’t see any on sale.  So I decided one big bag of chips was enough and let it go.  I bought a Wall Street Journal.  I took the LifeStory labels by Hawley’s and chatted with Rob.      

            Nice New Year’s?

            Not bad at all, Rob said.  Rob must be about 40, a thoroughly pleasant man to know and to work with.  We went down the street to a friend’s, he said.

            That’s the way to do it.

            Safer, and easier too.

            That’s right, I said, only then realizing what he meant.  I try to get to bed early on new year’s eve, I said, but this year we actually did go out and I actually did have a little bit too much to eat and drink.  I had five glasses of wine, I said.

            He nodded.  Maybe he was a Baptist teetotaler for all I knew.  The kind who looked levelly at you when you offered them a beer or a glass of wine and said, “I don’t drink,” as if the whole planet should stop orbiting at the news. 

            On the way home I stopped at the Shop Quick to get a Star.  I went in the store and picked up a Star from under the counter and laid it on the counter. 

            One of those lottery tickets, too, I said.  One of the ten thousands.

            He gave me one of the little tickets and I scratched off the numbers.

            Do you get a prize if they’re all different? I said.

            The clerk, a guy about 30 or so I’d seen there many times before--perhaps he was the manager--laughed shortly.  Nope, ‘fraid not.

            When are they going to have your highway done out here? I asked.

            They’re supposed to open the four lanes soon.  I heard they were going to open up to Third and Pierre next week.

            It won’t be any too soon.  Look at those guys out there on the corner.  I nodded toward a clump of workmen.  There were five of them talking and laughing.  Only one was working.  The others were watching and standing there.

            One man is an inspector, the clerk said.

            Oh, well, I know they don’t do anything but watch, I said.

            That’s right, the clerk said.

            I used to be in the papering business, I said.  My wife, June, comes in here a lot.  The clerk nodded as if he knew that.  We did a job at Fort Riley one time with a Federal inspector.  That guy came to the job every morning and just watched us all day long.  He stayed with us for the whole job. 

            The clerk nodded.

            Well, have a good day, I said.

            You too, the clerk said.  ###

At the grocery, five years ago today.

 

 

Posted this morning, 740 CT, Mon., Aug. 18, 2008

 

Aldi’s was crowded.  Dammit, I’d left my newspaper in the truck outside where June was waiting for me.   That’s where you pay at Aldi’s: with your time in the checkout line. 

 

I zoomed along, weaving with my cart in and out of the lanes of shoppers: sharp cheddar, two packages--no, just one is enough; milk, Romaine lettuce, high at $1.29; ice cream--no, not that temptation.  A couple of cans of green beans, whole can only 70 calories.  Maybe I’d just have a can of green beans for dinner, a little salt.  Water.  State Prison.  Cost, twenty cents a can. 

 

The line went all the way back to the fish steaks in the freezer.  I got in and when it advanced to the huge stack of catfood (canned?  dry?), got some of both kinds.  Another cashier opened up then and I slipped in.  I guess 22 something but my guess was way low at 29 something.  I need to use my ATM, I told the lady.  Fine, she said, slide it through. 

 

I slid it through and punched in my PIN.  It came up not approved.  Try it again, she said, a patient young lady, pretty blond, maybe my daughter’s age, maybe a lot younger.  I slid it again. 

 

Punch in your PIN, she said.

 

Oh, right.  And then I remembered I had transposed two numbers in my PIN.  So I did it right and, voila, it was approved.

 

Made it, I said, glancing up and smiling at the line of people waiting for me to get my ass out of there.

 

I wasn’t concerned at all, the nice young lady said.

 

Actually, I was, I said, and everybody laughed.  ###

 

Fr., Aug. 15, 2008

This is from the Ancient Journal...

Don't ask me how...or why.

Sat., July 8, 1989

I have a new word processor and this is what I'm using--for the first time--to write a page of the Journal. I am a little nervous. I have so many questions. One false move and all is lost. Or so I think. How do I know when I've come to the end of a page? Why do lines break where they do, and how do I change where the line breaks? One feature I love already is how easy it is to correct a mistake just made. I'll save millions on correcting tapes. I can make my mistakes here on the screen and just print "good" copy. I can do so much more than that but it'll take me awhile to figure out the language of this goddamned genius of a thing. In effect I'll be able to put the Journal through one or two drafts before I print it. It'll be better written, though perhaps not any faster written.

Now I am scared. The top line just disappeared: does this mean it is lost? I think I'm going to stop and do a little ~iirtiw     d alautriwkaxbur*_y1Aiocegjb&*]toTae it.ugust for ejerything we're going to do. 'That means I'd better spend sane time dour the hocks so I'll lore just 4e %;e really stand. And dammit to IxmV, I wish he'd inn ny call and let rre dare just 4t in the hell he its to do. I've just got to get hold of him this vadsMd.

YesterJay as we were leaving Man's I told her cre'd reseid a van. She seam quite a oarned about 4fither tYfire'll be                       * roan. %hell," I said, '\,a could go in a larger van or ore could go in a van aid a car. 'Ihe manse is rot that much greater." Slie locked

w arraed, standing there an her steps in the hot afternoon suz, framing at rre and ,Tune.      I an just realizing hoe inscrutable aryl byzatine my mother is. Ry is she going to Wisconsin, anyoay? Isn't the 4nle poirYt to get together with family? And the more the ner r iEr...no? Ne're going to strip arid pick up cur French guest, C                                                                                                        l, in Des httixfs," I add,

knowing this would rr)t please her ht          ding cheerily that it could. CAE aaurse her fro~n doeper-jed.                                                                  '         I'll just stay hare," she said.   '" there's just not                                                                        roan." I explained to her once again how ue'd make man with a larger van, etc. Bit she just framied

her giant. spectacles that make her eyes lock beetle-like, and slowly dxrek her heed. I knew tihat sbe was doing: she was manng into her 'Charley has betrayed rre' made. God, ubat a

fr st mttrig %ura1 she mast love been to live with. If ny father had mzdered her, kaxvrirrg chat I kaoa now, I would not have held it against him.

What does Nom want? I am sure she has no idea herself. June has _ti suggested several times that she is "failing." I think she is probably right: she seems confused sometimes, as if she's not quite sure where she is or what is happening. Her hearing isn't as good, though it is not nearly as bad as June's mother's: poor Lois is almost deaf, and she misses all conversation unless it is specifically addressed to her in a loud, distinct voice. But she is much easier to understand that my mother, who is perhaps also more childish than she normally has been.

As someone said the other day, when you've middle-aged you have children on all sides: your own, not yet old enough to run their own lives, and your parents, no longer capable of running their own lives.

I guess that's enough Journal for today.                            I'm worn out trying to understand this machine.                                                                              It's amazing (when I sit back and watch it all print I feel like Alexander Graham Bell sitting there wondering what hath God wrought) but it's confusing, and more than a little, one feels humbled by the relentless intelligence and cunning of the machine.

###

Posted 1345 CT 081408

 

From the Journal, November 30, 1995...

 

This is my life and welcome to it.

 

About fifty flies were crawling on my office window. I got the old mayonnaise jar I use and went after them, a piece of paper in my left hand. I trapped three in one spot on the window and slipped the paper between the mouth of the jar and the window glass. Then I caught two more. Then another, just a baby. The flies were all swarming now, running around like crazy. When I had about ten in the jar I figured I was losing as many as I caught with each pass, so with the paper over the top I walked downstairs and put the entire jar in Elizabeth the Lizard's cage.

Liz came out immediately. She must have been hungry. She zipped into the jar, which I had put on its side, and began popping the flies in like someone at the hors d'oeuvres tray at a cocktail party. "Oh, Elizabeth, you little sweetie!" I said out loud. She went right on snapping them up and munching. In no time she had caught all but one that, evidently extremely surprised, flew from the jar and into the larger cage. Elizabeth watched it idly, not so hungry now, reserving it for supper. ###

 

Posted 0715 CT 081208

 

 

Is journaling just talking to yourself?

 

Yes and no. Take these two short entries a few months apart from my own journal nearly forty years ago.

Mon., Apr. 28, 1969

This morning I got up late, & so got to work late (9:00). Why did I sleep till 7:30? Don't know. No dreams that I recall; a full 8 hours' sleep. Chalk it up to Resistance.
Wrote fairly well, but only for an hour. Quit at ten and prepared for Rhetoric class. Good class, but left with the feeling that it was not good¬ vague feeling of guilt, should have done better. Why? No ideas, only the feeling of Resistance.
Came home, babysat while P. went to the dentist. Played with Danny, had good time. Then, about 3:30, came down & wrote for another hour. Not much, but the 1st time I can recall fulfilling a promise to myself to write in the p.m. when I didn't do enough in the a.m. So, a first. Watch out!
Forgot to mention: at lunch I overate just enough to make me feel guilty. The food was not what I desired, nor was the accompanying reading. The guilt, that was what I desired. At supper, the same. It seems clear, not just from this but from previous experience too, that I indulge in my "bad habits."

Saturday, August 31, 1968
I am 30 years old. I have been in universities now almost continuously for 9 years. Nine years! How much have I learned? Quite a lot: on this score I'm satisfied. In 9 years I have developed new attitudes as well as mounted up an imposing stack of facts, ideas, etc. what passes for knowledge. I wouldn't say I'm really well read; I've met men younger than I who have read more; but I am fairly well read and I seem to become better so each year. (On the other side of this is the discouraging reality that some of the books, maybe most of them, I read five or more years ago I can barely remember now. That IS discouraging, but not totally, for even though I can't recall the "facts" of say All the King's Men _or Studs Lonigan, the books have done their work on me, have changed me, and that is important to me as a person if not as an intellectual.)

It's a quiet day,  one of many this summer. It is cool and rainy, the air is a bit too thick, but when I got up this morning I saw raindrops had beaded the branches of an evergreen in the front yard, and that sight made me happy. Like every day since my son Danny was born, most of the time spent was relegated to domestic chores washing dishes, preparing a bowl of soup, chopping up rhubarb for a pie, taking Patsy and Danny for a drive (he falls asleep and therefore ceases crying whenever we get into a car). I haven't done much. A quiet day, as I said.

 

What is my excuse for writing like this aside from being 30 and a pretentious young man?  Stuff like this sends me to my knees saying, Please God, forgive me for being a dork!  (Not that there were 'dorks' back then: I think they were just called 'asses.') 

 

The worst thing about the writing, however, isn't the pretentiousness, it's the incoherence of it.  I was trying to summarize my day, and in so doing, I took all the heart out of it.  Only the last paragraph--"It's a quiet day one of many this summer..." has any meaning for me today.  All the rest is just muttering under my breath. 

 

I am in recovery from being young.  The proof is that I post stuff like this for all the world to see.  ###

 

 

Posted 0900 CT 081108

 

I wrote this back in July of 2003.

 

What does being thrifty or being a spendthrift have to do with self-esteem?  Many poor, people of low self-esteem, spend their money in order to try to enhance their self-esteem: expensive clothing or cars, for example. 

 

If the wealthy really wanted to lower taxes, increase productivity, and the general welfare, they’d pay attention to these pervasive psychological problems.  Just as finally the Right is discovering that nation-building is really the only way we’re going to get the world we want--a free, open, peaceful, progressive society--maybe in a few years they’ll discover that the only way we’re going to get the kind of citizens we want is by character-building. 

 

Of course, many already know that, but they go about character-building in counterproductive ways.  Punitively, lecturing, moralizing, shaming…they are doing a bad job of teaching, and many are also doing a bad job of setting an example because, well, it’s really a very complicated issue.  

 

While wealth is sometimes an indicator of a fairly high self-esteem, it is not always so, and sometimes is quite the opposite.  I don’t know that any general theory is going to help.  Maybe all the solutions are out there, working here, working there, but sometimes the wrong solutions are applied to the wrong situations. 

 

We should start with what we agree on, generally.  Could we make a list?  Certain Federal programs have done well: Social Security seems to work, doesn’t it, assuming the funds that go into it aren’t used for something else?  The National Park Service seems to be a good deal.  The Military, though it needs to be depoliticized--as it used to be.   And the Peace Corps.  And Americorps? 

 

Bush is right to want to fix the schools at the lowest level first, and then work up.  But he is applying the wrong solutions.  Instead of making the schools freer, friendlier, more empowering and happier places, his mad testing program will make them more competitive, less happy, more desperate places where teachers teach “for the tests” and ignore the children. ###

 

 

Paradise

Posted 820  CT Sun., 081008

 

When I was a boy visiting my cousin Gary in Rewey, Wisconsin, we’d get up early in the morning and Gary’s Dad, Pete, would give us a ride a quarter or half mile out of town as he drove to Dubuque to work at the John Deere factory.  It would be dark when we got up.  It would be growing daylight when he dropped us off. 

 

Then Gary and I would follow the railroad tracks into town and pick the wild asparagus spearing up here and there.  (I always thought the stuff got there planted accidentally by dining car chefs throwing out the garbage and with it some viable asparagus seed that would root, but probably not.)  We’d trim the asparagus and band it in bunches that we’d sell for five cents a bunch, going door to door to the houses of the people (mostly old ladies it seemed) in Rewey. 

 

Then we’d take that money, maybe 50 cents between us at the most, and we’d hitch-hike to Platteville, twelve miles away.  Sometimes we'd get a ride all the way but sometimes we'd get a ride just four miles to the main highway and the tiny town of Arthur--not much more than a creamery and a house or two--and we'd wait at the small bridge over a trout stream and watch the fish until we heard the hum of a coming vehicle.  Then we'd jump up and put our thumbs out.  It didn't take long.  In Platteville we'd go downtown to Mike’s Pool Room (in a basement), and spend the morning there.  After that  we’d walk or catch a ride out to the swimming pool in the Platteville park and spend the afternoon swimming.  And then late in the afternoon we’d walk a couple of blocks over to the highway and hitch-hike back to Rewey.  Sometimes I think we’d catch Uncle Pete coming home and he’d give us a ride. 

 

What a beautiful life that was.  ###

Born to Journal?

 

     I started my Journal more than forty-four years ago.  I wish I had started it the day I was born.  I did write from an early age but to my great regret all those things are lost.   I was a weird little kid and I actually remember being in my room on a hot summer afternoon like this one is going to be and writing all kinds of stuff.  Letters to utter strangers asking for their autograph, just to take one example.  I actually wrote a penny postcard to the King of England, saying Dear King, Please put your autograph here.  And I left him a space at the bottom of the card but I never heard from the man. 

     Yes, man.  This would be about 1948 or so before Elizabeth became Queen.  This would be King George VI, I think. 

Anyway, I never heard from the guy. 

 

     Another example of writing from those days.  I got linked up with some kind of a pen pal thing probably from an ad in  a comic book—I loved comics and had a huge stack of them that if I had them now I could sell and retire with the money from them—and had a pen pal, Ken somebody, in England for awhile.  I think I may have had one in Germany too, or maybe even France.  In those days it wasn’t all that great to be terribly friendly with the Germans.  Of course I didn't make copies of those letters nor did I keep their replies.

 

     Of course Memory is the great journal.  Memory doesn’t always serve well but if you chip away at it you do get more material and possibly it’s as reliable as it needs to get.  I don’t like being mechanistic but next time you recycle a computer and think about all the stuff on the hard drive that you might want to save, think of your own mind and its memory as a hard drive…that you might want to save. 

 

     What’s worth saving and what isn’t?  We can’t save everything but we can save a surprising amount what with CDs and all that.  With a stack of CDs no higher than the stack of pancakes you and I used to eat for breakfast before we thought of diet in any other context than What’s for supper, Mom? we could probably record a good many of the memories we have somewhere lurking in our mind for the first twenty years or so of our life.  Don’t you think?  I agree with myself on this one. 

 

    “If you remember it, it must be important.”  Remember that one?  And it’s more famous corollary, “If it was important, you’d remember it.”  I don’t believe either of those.  I remember tons of stuff that is insignificant even to a significance-hungry guy like me.  When I was in the first grade down in Indiana I was asked to read aloud from a Dick and Jane Take a Picnic story.  (They could have taken a hike for all I cared, but that’s what we read in school in those days.)  In the reading of the list of things Dick and Jane were taking along on their picnic, cake, pie, cookies—I looked up at the class and said, “Boy, they sure eat a lot of sweets, don’t they?” and then I went on reading.

 

     Now that’s not significant.  But I remember it. 

 

     As to things that were important that I forgot, I’m sure there were some but…well, I forgot.  And if I’d have written them down, I wouldn’t have, would I now? ###

 

 

 

From the Ancient Journal,

 

Mon., July 19, 1999                     

            The guy coming at me at the border headquarters was one of those guys with reddish blond hair and tanned skin that made him look like he’d been nuked; everything about him kind of glowed.  He wasn’t smiling.  Oh-oh, I thought.

            Where you from? he asked, peering in.

            Manhattan, Kansas, I said.

            Are you US citizens?

            Yes, sir. 

            What you been doing in Canada?

            Visiting friends, looking at the Rockies.

            All the time he was checking us out.  His blue eyes were busy.  He stood up.  He made a little gesture with his hand.  Okay, he said.  Bye.  He was already walking away.  Come on in.

            I rolled up the window and drove on.  Man, they could be a little politer, I said.  They could smile and say hello. 

            They have hundreds of people a day, June said.

            I don’t care.  It doesn’t hurt to smile  a hundred times a day, does it? ###

 

Posted 0830 CST Sat.., 0802088

 

The only reason I applied for  a job teaching at Stevens Point  (now the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point) in 1966 was because I remembered that my therapist Bob Menninger had once told me he was CO of a German POW camp in Marshfield, Wisconsin, during the War.  Somewhere in there in those four years I was his patient he happened to mention there was a college in the nearby town of Stevens Point. 

 

Later, we were living in Mexico and the writing I had gone down there to do was going badly.  So here we were marooned in the remote town of Tlaxcala where  I had no access to a library to get addresses to colleges to write to for a job.  And of course there was back then no Internet.  But I needed a teaching job.  So I wrote to Stevens Point; and I wrote to a college in Saint Louis, or just outside, that Patsy had attended for a year or so, Lindenwood College.  (Which she always called Lindenwood College for Proper Females.)  Both of these colleges were, I figured, substandard enough that they might hire a bare MA like me. 

 

I wrote to them.  I heard back immediately from Stevens Point.  We bussed to Mexico City, got on a plane, and went there for an interview.   It was August and school wasn’t in session.  A couple of professors in the English Department started showing me around, this is the faculty lounge, there’s the paymaster’s office, and here’s the men’s room.  I took one of them aside and asked him if he thought I had a crack at the job.  “Oh, sure,” he said.  “Will you take it?” 

 

I took it.  That’s the way it was in 1966.  It was that easy to get a job.  They started the semester with jobs still open.  But four years later—and four more years of the war in Vietnam and consequently many men going to graduate school to avoid the draft—four years later, the situation had reversed: they had few job openings and numerous applicants. 

 

Incidentally, Dr. Menninger told me once the hardest thing about being the CO of a POW camp was that so many of the neighbors around the camp were of German ancestry.  It wasn’t uncommon to find them on Sunday slipping a pie or a cake under the fence to the German boys, some of whom were kin from the old country.###

 

Me Speakee French, Much Bien.

 

Glenna told me the other day that French Table had started up again at KSU.  So I went up there yesterday after I saw Dr. Wall.  I got a tray with a little food on it, found the room just off the cafeteria, and went in.  One guy was sitting there studying.

            Is this French Table? I asked him.

            It's supposed to be.  He was a kid, maybe 23 or so, a little plump, blond. 

            I sat down and removed the lid from my styrofoam cup of coffee.

            Parlez-vous francais? he said.

            Surprised, I mumbled something like, Eh bien, un peu.  J'essaye. 

            And we were off, parlant francais.    He has lived in Besancon and in Belgium, a year in each place, and he spoke volubly and, so far as I knew, well.  I jabbered away too, and I think some of what I said made sense, even if it was your basic Me-Tarzan, you-Jane kind of stuff.  I even understood some of what he said.  And I learned the word for chain saw, though now I've forgotten it and I've misplaced my notes.  (All my dictionaries are so old the word isn't in them: the chainsaw wasn't invented then.)

            We talked for about an hour.  His name is Brian.  No one else came.  I'm going back next week.  I was exhilarated at speaking French well enough to be understood.  When he departed at one for a class  I ate my food and left quickly, delighted with myself and the hour I'd spent "speaking French."  I had overcome an obstacle, the one of being afraid that I'd be thought a boob.  Maybe I was thought a boob by Brian, but it didn't matter, or as we say in French, ca n’est fait rien, or something like that. 

 

Cats for sale!

The sky hangs low on us like a heavy gray blanket.  I feel suffocated.  Everything is sticky.  The wooden arms of the Morris chair are so sticky I didn’t want to put my hands on them.  Same thing with the steering wheel of the Pearl. 

The cats are all giving birth.  Boston Blackie has emitted four tiny babies, one gray, one black and two white.  Or is it two black and one white?  And then Alice—Alice that we thought had lost her babies—has four too, various mottled colors.  So suddenly the cat population is once again approaching 20.  Several of the new babies have the six-toed defect like Hemingway’s cats down in Key West do that isn’t really a defect, it just makes them that much cuter.  “Maybe we could sell them on E-Bay,” June said, and I told her she ought to try it.  What are we going to do with twenty cats? ###

 

 

CLOSED, or the fate of the old.  

(from my Journal in July, 2005.)

I stood in line like the half dozen others to wait my turn at the postal counter.  The young woman—well, 40ish, hair graying at the temples—who waited on me said they didn’t have any Marian Andersons left.  “Oh,” I said, disappointed.  She showed me some of the others.  She pushed Walt Disney characters at me.  “No,” I said. “I’m not a cartoon person.  Writers and artists.”  She brought out some Robert Penn Warren, which I took five sheets of.  I don’t think she knew who he was.  “He wrote a famous novel.  ‘All the King’s Men.’  It was made into a movie.”  She looked utterly blank but slightly interested.  She went away somewhere and came back with some Marian Andersons.  “I thought we had sold them out, but some new ones must’ve come in.”  She counted out five sheets.  I examined them.  “It’s a good likeness,” I said.   “I heard her sing here in Manhattan when I was a boy.” “Really,” the clerk said, her voice sounding fairly genuinely impressed.  There were a few people still waiting behind me.  But I pushed on.  “The DAR—Daughters of the American Revolution—wouldn’t let her sing in Constitution Hall, so..." here I choked a little, and then went on "...Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which she did, to the thousands who came.” 

 

“Oh,” the clerk said, looking past me.  Maybe with her hidden hand she was pressing a button.  I knew I hadn’t much time.  “Eleanor Roosevelt was FDR’s—the President’s—wife.  The DAR was lily-white.  No people of color allowed.”  The clerk nodded,  her hands folded now on the counter in front of her.  “When she sang here in Manhattan in 1948, they wouldn’t let her stay at the Wareham Hotel.”  The clerk nodded.  I was pulling away.  She was reaching for something.  “She was the greatest contralto of her time,” I said, a parting shot.  “She was a singer,” the clerk said.  “That’s all I know.”  She slipped a little brass sign in front of her.  CLOSED.  

###

 

Who's on first base?  I forget. 

 

People as old as me don't go around talking about how it seems like just yesterday, we think it really was just yesterday.  My latest is I can't remember whether I've brushed my teeth or not. I actually--no joke--I actually have to check the brush to see if it's wet. My whole life is like that. I know I've eaten because the dishes are dirty. I know I've read the morning paper because it's in pieces on the living room floor. I know I'm cold because the fire in the fireplace is out. I know my wife and I have made love because--well, never mind.

 

     Actually my wife and I have redefined making love in a rather sweet way. We call it holding hands, and it's especially passionate when we're doing it just for fun rather than when we're helping each other across the street.

 

What's the world coming to? Well, I can't remember. What world? But I met a guy the other day whose memory is actually worse than mine.

 

"What's your name?" I asked him.

He stared at me for a long time. "Boy, you sure ask the hard questions," he said. "Start me off with something easier."

"Okay," I said. "What's my name?"

"Don't you know?" he asked.

     He may have forgotten his own name, but he hadn't forgotten how to be a wise guy.

 

     There are so many famous people in California that no one bothers to introduce themselves. If you have to introduce yourself, you belong in Nevada or Arizona. Everybody just goes around shaking hands and kissing, or both, and saying how nice it is to meet.

    

     But California freeways are easier to negotiate than those of Wichita or any other big city, and the reason is, someone told me, everybody in California is from somewhere else and they have compassion on you with your foreign, out-of-state license plates: they remember what it was like.

 

     So if you have to change lanes, they let you in.###

 

 

 

Cat Therapy

 

We have two new white kittens that the coal black mom paraded out just last week.  We had noticed the mom’s pregnancy of course but when she lightened up and we saw no litter of kittens we assumed that they were either stillborn or that they were born but the neighboring tomcat had killed them. 

 

We had no idea they were alive but there they were, eyes open, walking along on their own like they knew everything there was to know about the world.

 

This was written ten years ago but it applies today. 

 

Sat., June 20, 1998

          Is oo all wost? June said.  Is oo looking for your milky momma?  She held the little white kitty up and nuzzled its furry face with her lips.  Is oo?  Is oo?  She put the kitty down and it darted away.  Another took its place.  And how about you, you little nuzzlie nuzzlie? June said with mock sternness, kissing its bewildered face.

          I watched through the kitchen window.  June was sitting on an upturned five gallon bucket in front of the garden shed where the cats have been moved to from the shop, where they were underfoot and also, where they could accidentally run out under a car and get flattened.  June sat there for a good fifteen minutes and played with the kitties nearly every morning and evening too. ###

 

 

 

Summering twenty-three years ago…

 

 

Fri., July 26, 1985 -

            I guess I hate writing for the old, old reason: the moment of truth.  When I'm writing, I'm constantly reminded of my limitations. 

            But then why did I write a fair amount in the sixties and early seventies? 

            Well, no matter right now.  The important thing right now is to write, to act, and not to ratiocinate.  I've done enough ratiocinating for now. 

            But do I have anything to say?

            The cat is on the mat.

            The gray cat was on the mat when I arrived at the front door, but when it saw me, it quickly rose and darted away.  I saw my chance.  I grabbed the mat and ran with it.

-

            Rip is a cute kid.  Today when I picked him up at Tin Man, his head was encircled with a purple bandanna.  Somehow--is it his stance, or his scrawniness?  I don't know--but somehow, he reminds me of Pinocchio.  He has an unusually deep voice, also very cute, and an adult earnestness.  Then he has a gallery of facial expressions, a wry grin, a smoldering rage--quite a saucy lad.

            Now Ben is getting quite handsome--tanned and freckled and always stylish.  He seems to grow an inch a day.

            And how I miss Danny and Leslie!

-

            I wrote, but I didn't get going.  Getting the juice flowing is not going to be easy.  Nothing ever is. 

 

Tues., July 30, 1985 -

            This morning on the way to Tin Man Rip said, "It would be sort of nice if we just went on living," or something very close to that.  I can't recall the exact words.  I told him, "We do in a way.  Look:  I'll die and you'll live on, yet you're very much like me in a number of ways."  He appeared to soak it up.  I'm nearly 50, and still not used to the idea of dying. 

-

            Ben has "bent" a bone in his arm.  It's not broken, the doctor says, but he still will have a cast on it for 3 weeks.  Poor Ben!  The prospect of not going swimming for 3 weeks appalls him.  "Why couldn't it have happened after school started?" he asked.  The only structured activity he's had since summer school has been out has been swimming every afternoon at the City Pool.  If he can't do that...?  Of course, for 10 of those days--August 9th to 18th--he'll be with us on vacation, traveling, so really he's just going to miss 14 swimming days...not much easier to take.  He's been so abrasive lately, anyway.  "Fuck you!" is his answer to everything.

            -

            A quick thunderstorm came through in the middle of the night.  That's what woke me.  A rumble of thunder, a flash of lightning, alot of wind and a few fat drops of rain--now silence, the crickets and frogs, and me scratching on this paper, louder than you might think.

-

            I talked to Dan on Sunday.  He sounds so grown up.  I'm beginning to think that's what is illusory about teenagers: they look and sound adult.  But they are far from it.  Dan apparently has given no thought to what he's going to do this fall--return to school or what.

 

 

 

posted 0720 CST 072208

 

 

This must have happened about 1981 or 1982; here I am remembering it for my Journal in 1999.

We were standing on the steps of Mom and Dad's new living quarters that I made by remodeling his old medical office.

I was getting ready to leave. One of the kids was pulling on my hand. He wanted to get to the ice cream place we said we’d go. It was probably Benny, I can still see him, pulling insistently, saying, Daddy, Daddy! Let’s go.

Dad laughed and shook his head in the funny way he had when he laughed about some idiosyncracy or inconsistency or just plain goofy thing about life--and he found a lot of life like that. Go on, get him an ice cream, Dad laughed. And then he turned to Benny, Pull Benny, pull your Daddy! And he laughed again.

And Benny grinned, pulling even harder.

As I was led away, Dad said suddenly, as an aside, perhaps only to himself at first, It’s the happiest time of your life.

What? I said.

It was mine, he said.

What was?

When you kids were little. He said it and then he was gone, back inside, and Ben was pulling still, still playing out the joke, tugging on my arm like a dog pulling on a rag. Come on, Daddy! Come on! You said!

I got in the car with Benny. June and Rip were coming now, June carrying a sack, Rip holding his frisbee at his side like a soldier. I was still thinking about what Dad had said. The happiest time of life: "when you kids were little."

And we had always thought he was so caught up in his work. But it was us. Us kids.

Dad died a year after this. He hung himself. He had Parkinson's and was becoming incapacitated. He hated being dependent on others.###

 

Family Happiness twenty-one years ago. 

 

Wed., Jan. 7, 1987

 

We went down to KCI to get Lara today. We drove the green van. It runs just fine, but the gas gauge is a bit off, unluckily for us, so that when it says almost E it really means E. And so it was that about 5 miles from the airport in heavy traffic we ran out of gasoline. There was a shoulder to pull off the road onto. We did that and set the hazard lights to blinking. We locked up the truck and started walking down the highway. June wanted to hitch-hike but I was leery of it. I guess I'm getting old and unadventurous. Some guy stopped anyway and for a few minutes I wondered if he was some sort of kinky murderer, but he turned out to be a nice guy in no hurry to get to the airport. So he picked us up and took us right to our terminal and then went on to his own. Needless to say, we were very grateful.

 

When Lara arrived we called a service station and arranged to have a truck pick us up to take us to our van and gas us up. While we waited for the guy with his truck we complained about how hungry we were. I asked Lara, who of course had just gotten off the plane,  if she had anything to eat, half facetiously, but then thinking perhaps she might have some crackers or apple. She reached in her bags and pulled out some of her mother's Mandarin chicken, a lemon pie, and god knows what. I think she even had a coke in there. The chicken was cold, and I didn't want any lemon pie, but she and June devoured it. June found a Tootsie Pop in her purse and I sucked on that. Perhaps women's purses are a good thing after all. You can't carry a lemon pie, much less Mandarin chicken, in your wallet.

 

After we got the truck gassed up, and I had tipped the nice kid who drove us to the truck and poured the gas in, we went on down the highway. We decided to go home the back way, so we took 92 and went to Platte City, Leavenworth--where we stopped and ate in earnest, barbecued pork sandwiches and I had a nice helping of slaw, too. But the food was bland, the barbecue canned, and we were sorry we stopped there. But it was fun driving along the road looking at real things instead of turnpike billboards, at details of architecture on farmhouses, at goofy signs, beautiful valleys, and the strange and wonderful things you see when you get off the beaten track.

 

June and I gurgled and gurgled about putting together a book on Kansas curiosa, or any Kansas thing--Kansas fences, Kansas abandoned farm buildings, Kansas junkyards...you name it. We could write and illustrate, with photos and drawings, articles, perhaps sell them to a newspaper, then collect them into a book. It's possible, certainly.

 

We got home just before dark. Fine. I am getting old and I like to get home before dark.

 

I just tried to break up a fight between Rip and Ben. Rip punched Ben in the nose and it started bleeding. Ben cried and came running downstairs. Rip ran into his room and hid under a blanket. Now Rip is sitting at the kitchen table writing "I will not hit my brother" five times, and Ben has retired to his bedroom upstairs. I should have had him, Ben,  write “I will not smother my brother" a few times, for that was what he was doing when Rip punched him in the nose--twice.

 

Brotherly love--I remember it well. ###

 

A moment, I'm sorry to say,

from my life seventeen years ago.

 

(July, 1991) The other day about 8 in the morning I was coming out of the MiniMart across from Grandma's and some guy was standing by his car puking again and again. In the morning silence you could hear the unmistakable sound of splattering puke on pavement from a hundred feet away. The guy puked three or four volleys and didn't look up. Maybe he had been drinking all night, I didn't know. Maybe he was ill and needed help. But I didn't want to go over to him, I might get whatever he had. I felt a little guilty about that, but also a little concerned, so I walked away slowly but  looked over my shoulder to see if he was okay. Finally he took a drink of something and got in his car, which he had been puking by, and drove away.

How gross. No one would clean it up, it would just cook away in the heat of the sun. You can't tell me this is a civilized country. ###

 

Posted 0730 CST USA 071708

 

Just in case I miss my old day job.

 

From my Journal some twenty-two years ago,

when I was a housepainter by day.

 

Thu., Oct. 23, 1986

     The painter was still getting his tools together to start work when she came into the room. She was a chunky, meaty woman in a sweatsuit, somewhere around 60 or 65, with an odd expression on her face. Along with her odd stare and her fat little body, she had the air of someone propelled around by her fat, independent of her mind. "Are you going to paint the other side of that door?" she said to the painter, and pointed to the closet door in the room in which they were standing. The door was standing open. The room side had been primed, but the closet side was still the gold color of the room before he had started work.

    

     The painter shook his head. "I wasn't going to," he said tentatively.
"I could."

 

     "Why don't you," she said, walking over to it. "And the jamb inside, too. Then that will be taken care of."

 

     The painter nodded agreeably. "I'll add that to the project, then. Fine."

 

     She went away and he started to work sanding the area on the back of the door. When he had finished sanding it and it was ready for primer, he heard her footsteps on the hardwood floor again.

     "Hi," he said.

     "Did you mean to charge me for painting the other side of that door?"

     "Well, yes, it would be an addition. I mean, the room has to stop somewhere, and normally, it stops right here," and he touched the doorstop dividing the jamb. "This side is closet, this side is bedroom. Normally, "he added lamely, as if special circumstances might exist here. But she didn't hear him.

 

     "Well stop," she said abruptly.

      "I've already sanded it. I won't charge you for that."

 

     "Just stop," she said, and walked out. ###

 

 

Posted 0845 CST USA 071608

 

This earth is mine!

 

At six exactly (the digital clock’s red numbers said) I slipped on shorts and drew my coffee from the brewer and went out on the northeast deck to look into the morning.  Immediately I saw two—no, three—large deer in the orchard.  A big doe and two yearlings.  “Hey, you guys,” I yelled.  “Get!”  They all looked up.  One loped off a few feet but the other two lowered their heads and went back to grazing.

 

“Ten thousand acres of grass and you come to my yard, why, why?”  I yelled.  I stomped my foot.  I clapped my hand on the rail of the deck, trying to sound like a rifle shot.  These deer were insolent and fearless.  Seemingly they did not realize that I held sole title to this land.  I went back into the house to get my shoes on and I came outside again and started for the orchard only to see the last of the three lazily leap my four foot high fence, their white tails flagging at full mast.  ###

 

 

Posted this very morning, 0830 CST USA 071508

 

Exploding a moment 

 

One of the frequent complaints of writers, new and old, is the feeling that they have nothing to say.  Many who have been writing  for years get up in the morning and go through a brief ritual before starting in writing that gets them going.  I make coffee and pour a steaming hot cup and on beautiful mornings like this I’ll stand on my deck and stare into the woods for a few minutes.  Then I pad upstairs and sit down here at the computer.   I urge writers to develop a little routine.  It’s simply 1-2-3 psychology.  You do one, that’s easy, then you do two, and that’s easy, and so won’t three come automatically and just as easily?  Usually, yes. 

 

But there are times when it won’t.  You may be depressed at your efforts, you may be anxious and blocking…any number of things. 

 

So sit down and cast your mind backward to a point twenty, thirty, or even fifty years earlier.  Today is July 13, 2006.  I choose to go back in time at this moment to July 13, 1956.  I come down to 6:15 am, and I’m aboard the USNS GENERAL LEROY ELTINGE, probably steaming east to Korea in the Indian Ocean.  I take that moment and explode it like a diagram on a page. 

 

I am a Yeoman Second Class, the guy in charge of the Military Department office.  I had a couple of helpers, another Second Class yeoman and a striker for yeoman.  We had a Turkish lad of uncertain rank assisting us in other ways.  Among other things, young Yusuf, who seemed to want to stand at attention in the corner of the compartment when we had no specific orders for him, washed our clothes for us.  Often when we took off a sweat t-shirt, he’d be standing there helping us and he would run immediately to a bucket of water and begin scrubbing it. 

 

You see how this works.  You move away from writing to remembering.  You’re not trying to say anything.  You’re just trying to remember, the first job of the personal historian. 

 

Now memories from that time are coming so fast and furious I can hardly keep up, even when I type at my top speed, sometimes 100 words a minute or more. 

 

How we’d give Yusuf a few cigarets a day and he’d be so doglike and grateful, how he had a tag tied to his shirt that identified him as working for us, how he wore it as proudly as if it were a general’s stars…how meaningless the various reports I caused to be made were, how I lost the 3,000 page passenger manifest labeled GIZLI, Turkish for SECRET, and never found them, and everyone miraculously forgot about them, my CO, when I told him, looking stunned for just a brief moment until he shrugged and said, “Oh, hell, it’s only the Turkish Army,” and never mentioned it again. 

 

How easily these things come when we don’t try hard to write “well,” whatever that may mean!  I stop and make a list of half a dozen or a dozen more ancillary memories of the voyage to and from Korea, the Turks, the crew, the other members of the Military Department, the nightly movies that sometimes we were so bored we’d run backwards after running it straight.  ###

 

 

Posted 0930 071408

 

Giants in the Earth, sort of

 

This was 34 years ago, 1974.

I got out in the field with the old John Deere 55, set the header and began combining. The wheat was swept into the header by the paddle wheel and disappeared into the bowels of the great machine. Inside me the cameras began to roll on every movie I’d ever seen about The Land. Had I not been so busy watching all the belts and pulleys and paddles and spools and blades I might have been overcome with emotion. I was a direct participant in the great American breadbasket’s harvest. My heart beat with the beat of the huge motor going behind me.

Behind me. I was ten or fifteen feet into the field now and I looked around to see the wheat come out the spout.

But there was no wheat coming out. I drove on another ten or so feet, steady she goes, and still no wheat. Another ten feet, nothing. I threw the machine into neutral, set the brake, and got down onto the ground. Nothing untoward that I could see. June was standing at the edge of the field, June smiling brightly, her arms clasped in her best “My hero” gesture. But seeing my dismay, her smile disappeared. “There’s no wheat coming out of the spout,” I shouted over the roar of the motor. June looked up, nodded. “I’m going to try it again.”

I clambered back up, released the brake, slipped it into second gear and once again began combining. June walked along beside. She was pointing to something. “What?” I yelled. But I couldn’t hear her reply. I stopped, and got down again.

“There’s lots of wheat coming out down there,” she said, pointing to the very bottom of the machine.

“What the hell,” I said. “It’s not supposed to do that!” I crawled up again and shut the machine down. I didn’t know what to do. I looked through the pages of the ancient greasy manual in the tool box, printed in 1950. I climbed all over the giant thing--it’s called a combine because it’s really a combining of a bunch of different machines that were used in harvesting. Nothing seemed loose or flopping. I had been working on the machine reconditioning it for six weeks. Now the wheat was ready. The sun stood high in the sky, and the wheat was a beautiful bright gold. “That’s good looking wheat,” Henry Daniels, my neighbor, had said a few days before, emitting a wolf whistle.

Only one neighbor farmed with John Deere equipment, Ted Anderson. I drove over to Ted's place. He was offloading wheat from his much newer combine into a huge truck. He listened to my description and agreed to come have a look. He followed me over in his truck. Together we walked out to the machine standing in the field. “I never heard of anything like this,” he said. I got on, started it up and drove slowly along while Ted looked underneath.

I stopped and got off. “Shut it down,” he said. Back I went and turned off the motor. Everything slowed to a halt. In the silence of the noon day Ted walked slowly around and around the great machine. Then he stopped and went over to a huge drive belt. “That’s on the wrong side,” he said. “Wrong side of the pulley.” I looked. “Well, I wouldn’t know,” I said. “That’s the way it fit. I just figured…” By then Ted had adroitly grasped the belt and maneuvered it to the other side of the pulley. “Now try that,” he said.

I got back on, started up the brute, and began moving slowly through the field. Within seconds wheat started spewing in a thick stream out of the tall green spout. I turned around and caught Ted’s eye. He was smiling and so was June, who had come back outside to watch. I waved and shouted my thanks. I didn’t want to stop now. The wheat was pouring out. I was getting into my Giants in the Earth mode again, chugging down the field, harvesting wheat for the nation’s bread.

Later June told me that Ted said something dryly about how the idea was to harvest the wheat, not plant it.

And so it was. ###

 

 

 

Posted this beautiful Sunday morning, 0630 071308

from my Journal ten years ago...

 

The Man who knew too much?

 

At Dillon’s at the postal counter I bought some stamps to mail the stuff I had with me.  The young girl pushed across the counter a couple of 20 cent stamps that I glued onto the two postcards I had to mail.  Virginia Apgar, I said.  Her picture was on the stamps.  Do you know who she was?  Ever heard of her?

 

            The girl smiled faintly and went on processing my packages.  I suppose she was used to the elderly talking to her like this.

            When you were born, I went on, not when I was born because Virginia Apgar was after my time--when you were born you were evaluated by the pediatrician as to how well you were doing compared to other children, and that was done a certain way and you were given an Apgar score.

 

            The girl smiled and nodded.  No doubt it made her day to receive that information.  I waved and went off. 

            Old people hold conversations with strangers like that.  They are gentle, one-sided reminders that we know something, that we’ve been here a while and that our experience must surely count for something, and so we say so, even as the youth go on processing the mail or sacking the groceries or downloading Netscape. ###

 

 

 

Posted this very morning, 0845 071108

 

This is from my Journal, seven years ago…

           

I am busted!

 

I should have stayed in bed.  Right after writing this I got in the pickup to drive over to the Unitarian Church to help with weeding and pruning.  I figured I'd take a couple of pictures of people working to put in the UU history, and I'd use my pickup--I seem to be the only member of the Fellowship who has one--and I'd load in some of the prunings to bring them back after the service here to the farm for disposal. 

 

            Fine.  On the way there was some wonderful choral music of Bach, I think Bach, on the radio.  I was running a little late.  I zoomed down Pleasant Valley Road and turned onto K-18, observed what a  beautiful early morning it was, pushed down on the accelerator--and then immediately wished I hadn't. 

 

            Coming towards me, lights flashing, was a police car. 

 

            And so I was nailed.  At that moment I remembered that they now have a technology that allows them to clock you even when you're not in their direction. 

 

            “I'm Officer Anderson with the Riley County Police Department,” the young lady said.  She had blonde hair, not bad looking at all, maybe 30 or 35.  Could anyone that pretty really be a cop?  “You were clocked driving 76 in a 55 mile per hour zone.”

 

            “Oh my,” was all I could say. 

            “Why were you driving so fast?”

            “I don't know,” I said.  “Heavy foot.  Good music on the radio.”

            She nodded but didn't smile.  “May I see your driver's license?”

            She took my license and went back to the cruiser, which of course was parked right behind me, lights still flashing.

            I sat there feeling like an idiot.  Hell, I was an idiot. 

 

            Suddenly there was some traffic.  A bicyclist rolled past, leering contemptuously at me, and pedaled on down the road.  A brown sedan--was that somebody from the Fellowship?--slowed and drove past us.  I pretended to be reading the Sunday paper, which was on the seat beside me.  But I didn't want to pretend to be blase just in case the officer was going to let me off with a warning; no, I wanted to look suitably contrite.

 

            She came back, and as she tore off the ticket and explained where and when I could pay it, I glanced at the numbers and saw the addition:  for speeding, $99, court costs, $54, a nice tidy total for the community's coffers of $153. 

 

            “I don't suppose it would help any if I told you I was hurrying to church, would it?  I was going to help with some work on the grounds.” 

            “No,” she said with a crisp smile, “it wouldn't help a bit.”   ###

 

 

 

 

Posted 1045 071008

 

I have another oldie for you this morning--my journal nineteen years ago today. 

 

Tu., July 11, 1989

Funny how associations go: just a minute ago I was sitting here looking blankly at the date and then of being in the navy 34 years ago this summer, stationed in Chicago, undergoing boot training, and going on liberty (I think we had maybe one or two 12-hour liberties while in boot training) to Chicago one weekend with Chuck Burke and Al Deines, riding in on the Elevated Railway with the dusty green seats that would turn our whites green when we sat on them, and walking around in the Loop such obvious greenhorns and some guy in a suit came up to us and asked if he could take our picture. Maybe he said something about how great we sailors looked, or how great we looked in uniform. And we were so naive we said yes, and then he said we could get more pictures taken if we went to his studio, or some such come on,and we actually did go over there and sit for more photos, thinking somehow it would all be free, it was because we were soo navy-looking, or whatever--and then they tried to charge each of us twenty bucks and we refused and they insisted and even tried to collect from our parents (we had given out our names and hometown addresses), and my father and mother both stood up for me on that one, they refused to pay, they threw the agent out of the house or something, but the company persisted for years and years, it seemed, and maybe it was.

Now I can remember Chicago that summer of 1955, the heat, the crowds, my sweaty fear engendered by the navy, my sense that I had made a terrible mistake by joining, the cruelty and crudity of the people who ran the navy, the