Henrietta, Texas, 1948: Mrs. Miller started a dayschool, and off I went. The first day, my mother walked the four blocks with me, to show me how to get there and back. We lived behind Uncle Doc’s medical office, and she worked there as a nurse.

During that first season, I learned about coloring books, and naps and cookies, and how you don’t run while playing a trumpet because falling down can hurt you. I was warned not to eat the castor beans growing beside the house.

In just a few months, Mrs. Miller seems to have learned her dayschool lesson. The dayschool was closed. No more herd of children in her home and backyard.

But my mother made some special arrangement, and though the mob of children had gone, still every day I walked to Mrs. Miller’s, and played with her sons Rex and Mike, until their father came home from work. He’d swing them up and down. He didn’t swing me up and down, which seemed a great disappointment. Then I went home.

That summer, the vacant lot beside their house had grown weeds as high as us boys. A man on a tractor came and mowed the weeds, and a vast torrent of grasshoppers came flying from the devastation.

Quickly we grabbed jars, and captured hundreds of them.

There was then the question of what to do with them, but Rex, the older one, knew just what to do. And so we went around the neighborhood to houses where nobody was home. Doors were generally left unlocked, so it was simple to open the door, shake out a jar full of grasshoppers, and then leave.

I suppose our belief was that, this way, everybody could share our joy.

Sure, that’s what we thought.

Us rascals.

Adrienne and I will be scouting Northern California for a few days, investigating to locate a new site you might say. But fear not! Portions of this program have been previously pre-recorded. I will return to wondering what to say on the 17th. As always, your comments are welcome.

Online: at Haiku the Blog (now defunky), 15 March 2003:

St. Peter loses
the keys to heaven; God to
call for a locksmith.

~dayla_starr at 05:37:4

San Francisco, 1989: After selling the answering service, after my adventures as a private investigator, I’d finally given up the office flat at 3304 Geary Boulevard and was running Action800 voicemail company from a small office in our flat on Lyon street.

The flat was built into a garrett beneath the roof, four floors up, on the corner of Lyon and Oak. Our high kitchen windows overlooked Panhandle Park, and each year we’d awake one morning to the sound of thousands of runners passing on the Bay to Breakers race, and each year on another day we’d awake to see the stage of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. From our high windows front and back we could see the high tops of the victorian houses around us. Janice Joplin had lived in the blue house across the street, once upon a time.

From my tiny office, however, the windows opened only to show the roof of the next house, perhaps six feet away. An occasional gull walked the roof. Not much to see.

But in this room I discovered a house.

Adrienne had introduced me to the books of Charles Givens, who suggests that you save 10% of your earnings, and who spelled out for me the virtue of buying a house. I wasn’t so sure about that 10%, but I’d decided to buy a house.

Every day people called my phoneline to buy voicemail, and on this day I was chatting with a guy who’d called to inquire. He’d lived in San Francisco, down in the lower Mission in a rough part of town, but now had another home in Marin county surrounded by pine trees.

When I told him I was looking to buy a house, he suggested that I might take over the payments on his San Francisco house, which was just about to be foreclosed. I said good idea, and he mailed me a key to go see it.

In case you don’t know, houses in San Francisco are very, very expensive. Even the smallest ones back then cost a quarter of a million dollars, and during the high interest rates of the 1980’s, for a self-employed person, monthly mortgage payments would generally exceed $2000. I’d probably be able to handle that, but the down payment would exceed $60,000, and I’d never, ever had that much cash at one time.

This house had payments already made, so its cost was $130,000. I was interested. The house was run down, slightly set back as if hiding narrowly between two other homes. Behind a high fence, it was two stories, dingy and cheap throughout. It would take a lot of work. But with no downpayment other than the back payments, and a monthly payment of $1400, it was a good opportunity. My contractor friend Pat looked at it. He regularly bought and fixed up homes. He said it was a good deal.

I raised the back-payments money from my friend Dennis, signed an agreement with the fellow who owned it, and took a check to the bank. Now in less than a week I owned a house.

Proudly, I took Adrienne to see our new house.

She became silent when we arrived in our new neighborhood, and was frowning on our new street. Her eyes widened as we parked outside. Once inside, she seemed stupified, and then burst into angry tears.

She hated it. How could I have bought such an ugly place? My pride contracted … became concern … evaporated. She said she would never live in such a place. It was ugly. It wasn’t a nice house!

I was in a quandry. The money had already been paid to a bank. Too late, I realized I’d made a fundamental error in not consulting her. I’d thought she’d be as delighted as I was. It was to be a surprise, and the surprise had gone bad.

Oddly enough, the next day, the bank sent back my check, uncashed, for the back payments. They said that the payment had to be a cashier’s check. I gave the money back to Dennis, and phoned my regrets to the house’s owner.

Today, that house would be worth perhaps $400,000, perhaps more. It would have been a stupendously good investment. But I don’t have that house. In fact, I have no house at all.

But I do have Adrienne. She’s my million-dollar baby.

Near Picadilly Circus, London, 1968: I parked my Austin Mini and we got out, on our way to Carnaby Street. Sharon and I, plus Ron David McCoy and his wife.

His name really wasn’t Ron David, but when I met him in Dallas, he worked as D.J. on the local rock station, which insisted that each D.J. be named David. So Ron McCoy became Ron David McCoy. I visited his control room while he spun chatter and platters with a rapid-fire style I found amazing. Good-humored, a skinny guy with Elvis hair, and a baby-doll wife, a real looker.

The McCoys were fun, too. But I was shivering.

The wind whistled up Carnaby Street, and I’d come with no coat. The girls were bundled up, and Ron David had a long trench coat which reminded me of one I’d bought at Midwestern University, years ago, charcoal-black with a subtle gold-brown check, lined, with deep pockets. I’d thought it made me look very much like Holden Caulfield.

I’d got it muddied almost at once, and thought it ruined, but took it to Ray Moore’s Cleaners in Henrietta. Ray had dry cleaned for my family all my life. Back came the trench coat, perfect. You’d think it new except for the tiny tag of cloth pinned inside with my name. I think about all the clothes over all those years, and wonder how many tiny tags Ray had made for my family, for all the families in our town. Somewhere today, in a back closet, in a junk yard, I imagine an old garment long forgotten, still with the faded tag of cloth fluttering to tell the world my name.

Me and that trench coat had travelled many miles. I wished I had it now, because I was chilling to the bone. I looked enviously at Ron David. I tried to walk faster.

The three of them were laughing and telling stories, but I was trying to remember. My trench coat should be in the house in East Grinstead, but I didn’t think so. I knew I’d brought it from Texas to St. Louis because I remember Sam putting me up for a few days, and he’d borrowed it. And then I’d packed it up again and moved to the unheated house trailer off the end of the jet runway. I’d not worn it that winter: too cold for a trench coat.

But I couldn’t remember packing it for England. Maybe I’d finally lost it. Then I had a thought, and turned to Ron.

“That’s a nice coat,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, looking down at it.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“Oh, I borrowed it from Sam,” he said. Aha!

“You know, Ron,” I said, “That’s my coat.”

“What are you talking about?” He stared. I nodded.

“I left it with Sam for safe-keeping,” I said, “You’re wearing my coat.” He looked indignant.

“I don’t see your name on it!” he said. Wrong answer.

“Open it up,” I said. He did.

Thank you, Ray Moore. There, near the hem, a tiny piece of cloth fluttered.

So nice to have my coat back! So nice of Ron David to bring it to me, all the way from St. Louis, and just when I needed it, too. So nice and warm, there on Carnaby street.