Wichita Falls, Texas. Fall, 1970: At 26 I returned to school. The philosophy professor, a thin-veneered communist, resembled Robert Redford’s half-brother sired by John Denver, with round spectacles and curly blond hair.

The reading list covered the Chinese Revolution, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. One day while blondie professor waxed poetic about the “beautiful street language” of Malcolm X, I pointed out that Malcolm hadn’t written the book. Prof was stupified.

I explained. Right on the cover, it said ‘As told to Alex Haley’. That meant Alex Haley was hired to write the book because Malcolm X either wouldn’t or couldn’t write the book. So, beautiful street language? More likely, contrived gutter talk.

Prof was stumped by that. From then on, we weren’t pals. He regarded me with deep suspicion. He knew something was wrong, but not what.

On the other hand, he couldn’t fault me. I did the work, I took the tests, I even showed up at his house when he was showing an italian film called “The Bicycle Thief.”

Now this is great cinema, about a little boy whose factory-worker father’s bicycle was stolen one day. The father couldn’t get to work so he was fired. He fell on hard times and things went from bad to worse. One day, maddened, the father stole a bicycle and peddled away, but was caught and hauled off the bicycle by an indignant mob who dragged him off to the police and jail, as the boy watched.

Of course, it was just more grist for our Communist education. I didn’t much care, because I’d written a paper in high school called ‘Altruism and the Communist Manifesto’.

That sounds very grand, but my step-father had bought Brittanica books with many old and famous writers, and my papers had taken a turn for the learned. Since I knew everything in the world about Altrusim, I wasn’t buying it. I was a big flop as a Communist.

However, I got my grade, as needed. I graduated, and moved on to graduate study at San Francisco State.

A few years later, in North Beach, one Sunday I walked to the park on Columbus, to hear the free music and soak in the sun. I was sprawled on the grass, when, looking to my right, there was blondie professor.

“Well, hello,” I said.

He seemed very surprised to see me. He was visiting, and wasn’t San Francisco wonderful. Asked me how I happened to be visiting. I said I lived around the corner.

Blondie was clearly disappointed. Somehow, I had stolen something from him, just by being there. Some magic or enchantment evaporated. It showed in his face, or in a pause of speech. The conversation languished. Soon he stood up and said he had to go.

I never saw him again.

That’s what wrong with these Communists. They fade in the home stretch.

Henrietta, Texas. Summer, 1956. My cousin Dan and I were helping my grandfather, Frank Hurn, on his farm near Hurnville, named after his father. He’d just had the hay baled.

I don’t know how it’s done; some machine cuts the grasses, and packs them into large rectangles. Somehow two wires are fastened around. Now you’ve got these large rectangles of bound hay. Heavy rectangles of bound hay.

Stern-faced, my grandfather had the tractor pulling a flat-bed wagon. Our job was to pick up the bales and heave them onto the wagon. Once loaded, some went to the animal’s shed for storage. The rest we stacked in one corner of the west field, because every farm must have a haystack.

In the hot, Texas summer, the straw hat helps, but not much. The fine splinters of hay work up your sleeves and down your collar, stinging like needles.

I thought we were doing a great job. My grandfather, usually taciturn, said little. My cousin and I worked and chattered, sweated, chattered and worked.

A cloud floated lazily across the sky. The patch of shade gliding across the field toward us, and then- Heaven! Oh, that felt good.

But now it’s gone, and the sun like a hammer. Even through the tough leather gloves, the wires dig into the fingers, and even teen muscles ache. A slow, hot afternoon.

Finally it was done.

We boys rode back on the empty wagon, bone-jarring on its metal-bound wooden wheels. Oh, it felt good!

At the feedlot, using the metal dipper that hung from the fence, we took deep drinks from the horse trough. My grandfather went last. I pushed my hat back, an old ranch hand.

“So how did we do?” I asked him.

He finished his drink of water, and thought a while. He said, “One boy is half a man. Two boys is half a boy.” He paused. “And three boys is no boy at all.”

In consternation, we looked at each other.

He went on. “You did pretty good.”

He looked off into the distance, far away. There may have been a faint trace of a smile there.

Adrienne and I are sometimes just not on the same wavelength. We had a disagreement, regarding funds and moving costs, and it left us both in the dumps. While I feel clear about what needs to be done, it’s also clear that the talk was damaging. I hate that, and don’t know any better way of proceeding.

I’m quite concerned about our financing of our move, and maybe this is making me too edgy. I’m not sure. I wish I could be more loving. I’m just not quite sure how.

My vision is impaired. Just recently, dark specks appeared before my eyes. Actually, only before one eye. Not the little odd things you sometimes see, dust motes floating, because when I blink they don’t move. Inside the eye, then.

Good old Kaiser slid me into a 4:30 appointment with eyedrops and tests. Come to find out …

My body is not what it was. Smaller parts don’t work as well. It requires more resting. It is natural, they say. Well, so would pain be natural should I pound their toes with a hammer, but natural doesn’t make it good.

Some deterioration makes the specks. Most likely the specks will settle, due to gravity, in some weeks. Most likely the problems will not progress. Most likely.

But when you think about it, we’re floating adrift in the Body of God, luminous points in the sea of space. Adrift. Our entire existance is against the odds. No wonder then, that the odds catch up, now and then.

Such a little threat, a small inconvenience, these specks. They’re right in the way of where I’m looking, they are. They obscure a tiny part of the world. I am having the time of my life, and the time is passing relentlessly. Perhaps in the end, the entire world has become obscured, and there is nothing left to see.

It makes me suddenly grateful, for vision granted. Just another unappreciated gift. Life itself is not exactly a gift. Life is a loan. That’s the deal. No use whining when we must pay up. You don’t like the deal, then don’t play.

I like the deal. I’m in.

San Francisco, 1975: Castro Street leaves Market Street and climbs a big hill. Past the top, descending, you come to 24th street. There you’ll find Bud Edlin’s ice cream store. The sign says “Bud’s Ice Cream.”

Fabulously popular. Bud’s secret?

Most ice creams have a butterfat content around 16%. Bud’s ice cream has a butterfat content around 22%.

I learned this from Phil Groves, the first client of Simple Simon Bookkeeping Service, my first business. Phil sold Bud’s ice cream from a shop in the Haight Ashbury area. The name of Phil’s store was “Raskin-Flakker’s Ice Cream”. He thought that was funny.

Of course, the real story is that Bud Edlin refused to permit anybody to sell his ice cream. Approached many times, he always turned it down.

So when Phil Groves decided that he wanted to open a store selling Bud’s ice cream, he didn’t know how to go about it.

Now picture Bud’s store on the corner. The big windows, and the front door, are on Castro, and like most San Francisco shops, the shop was long and narrow. The back room, where the ice cream was made, therefore had a door opening onto 24th street, and in the summertime this door was usually open.

There in that doorway stood Phil Groves.

Age? Perhaps 28-30. Bud Edlin was working there in the back room, making ice cream in big stainless steel machines, and wheeling the packages around. If you’ve never seen one, a commercial container of ice cream is a cylinder about two feet tall and a foot across. That is to say, it’s large and heavy.

Phil was afraid to say anything to Bud Edlin, so he just stood there, paralysed. He couldn’t speak; and he couldn’t leave.

Bud looked up from time to time, but said nothing. It was a hot day and Bud was working hard. This went on for some time. Finally Bud said, “Hand me that container.”

Phil fetched the container. Bud gave him more instructions. Phil did it. The remainder of the afternoon passed in this manner.

Toward the end of the day, Bud said, “What do you want?”

“I want to sell your ice cream,” Phil replied.

Bud nodded. “OK.”