Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
Mount Shasta, California, December 28, 2019 — When I was a child and a teenager, I was very insecure. And needing reassurance all the time, in the tough-guy culture of Northern Texas, I became a loud show-off smart-alec, even though I was actually an introvert.
As a result, even when I gained confidence over the years, I had to *learn* how to talk to strangers, and how to approach women. I did learn. However I wish I’d seen this article, which is both simple and [Read more…]
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Panda Express, Medford, Oregon, May 14, 2018 — My favorite, and pretty much only place I get lunch when I don’t want to cook/prep, is Panda Express, because you can get vegetables instead of rice, and while not perfect, it’s a pretty healthy meal.
I take gooddog Charlie so he gets an outing, but I don’t let him out so I bring him the fortune cookie. (He eats them, but I do not.) And so naturally that means the fortune is actually gooddog Charlie’s fortune.
Lately I’ve begun to question these Panda Express fortunes that he gets. I was suspicious last week when he got, “You will be a great success, both in business and socially.”
And now, after yesterday — when he got “Good news will come to you by mail.” — I am seriously questioning the accuracy of these Panda Express fortunes.
Specs Bar in North Beach, San Francisco, September 1975 — It was because I was dating a writer named Barbara Austin, whom I’d picked up at San Francisco State using a fancy pick-up women technique.
And Barbara had a pal named Suzie.
At that time there was a fancy fellowship to a woodsy place all scenic as hell back east, perhaps Connecticut. And if you applied, and if they accepted you as a proper artiste, then they’d put you up for several weeks in a cabin in the scenic woods and while you worked on your art. Now Suzie was a painter who specialized in pictures of Navajo blankets draped on chairs, and Barbara wrote poignant novels. Since both of them were accepted at this ritzy fellowship this summer, worked on their respective art, and became friends.
Now it seems that Suzie and her boyfriend, Jules Pfeiffer, whose cartoons adorned the New Yorker, and newspapers, and Playboy magazine which me and my friends often read because we liked the articles so darn much.
And that’s how it was that [Read more…]
Shady Shores community, near Dallas Texas, 1964: Paul H. was the largest roommate, and visiting his girlfriend in Fort Worth, he drove that highway often. A large and quiet guy, when he returned that day, all excited, we knew something was up.
“What is it?” asked Hardy M., the art student, a rugged fellow of sour demeanor. Paul lowered his voice.
“It’s a boat, with two big Evenrude motors,” he said, “It’s just sitting on a trailor beside the highway!”
My roommates, and myself, instantly became criminals.
“You mean … just sitting there?” asked Pat M. Always affecting calm, always worried.
“Trailer hitch,” Paul said. “I’d have grabbed it but I don’t have a trailor hitch.” On his car, he meant. They all looked at me. My car had a trailor hitch.
“OK,” I said. And so off we drove, to steal a boat.
Along the way, Hardy in the back seat was dozing. Each time he nodded off, Pat jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “Stop it!” Hardy said, irritable. Pat told him not to be leaning on him. Hardy said ok, and a short time later, was dozing again.
With the two of them bickering like children, we drove. The day was late, and daylight fading. I’d forgotten a ham in the oven. We found it the next day, much smaller and very salty.
Watching for the boat as we drove, it seemed like we’d never get there. And finally, Paul said that either we’d missed it, or somebody had picked up the boat. So we turned around.
By now, Hardy was deep asleep in the back seat. He woke occasionally, but Pat told him we weren’t there yet. This continued until we were pulling into Shady Shores, where we lived lakeside in a concrete-block house.
About a block from our house was a small copse of wood, and, as it was now full dark, instead of going home, I pulled my car into that tiny wood. And in the darkness, the nearby houses were invisible from within the trees.
Hardy woke as we exited, but we told him we were going to get the boat, and we needed him to stay with the car. Sleepy, he agreed, and promptly fell asleep again. We walked to our house, and stayed up late, talking about our big adventure — failing to steal a boat — and then eventually everybody went to bed.
Hardy, of course, woke up sometime during the evening, but didn’t dare leave the car. He didn’t want to be stranded in an unknown place near Fort Worth.
In the morning, about coffee-time. Hardy came through the door.
“That’s not funny,” he said.
In one of the last scenes in the fun movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the heroine makes a statement about the leading man. She says, lovingly, “He’s a pirate.”
As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.
And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?
Medford, Oregon – Daylight Savies Day, 2017 — Before I share my handy tip with you, I gotta say that in my opinion, William Willett has a lot to answer for, because best I can tell he was the scurvy dog — not Benjamin Franklin — who actually “invented” what is now Daylight Savings Time. Or maybe I should say he was the scurvy dog who unleashed the Daylight Savings Scam upon an unsuspecting populace.
‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’ — Indian Saying
Ain’t it just the truth!
And right here, right now I want to put to rest the scurrilous rumors that [Read more…]
