Wichita Falls, 1959: Before I had my driver’s license, the bus took me to Wichita Falls’ downtown for the Saturday movies. The Horror of Dracula, with Christopher Lee, was clearly the best, but wandering the streets downtown was also great.

Once I could drive, it was even better, because I had a place to drive to. In my two-toned green 1951 Chevrolet, very much a man of the world, I drove to spend an afternoon and my allowance.

There was a tiny store there.

It’s name was ‘Thomas Bookstore’, but it sold very few books. It was a hole in the wall, and pure magic from wall to wall. A portly middle-aged man ran it, probably Mr. Thomas. He was balding, taciturn, apparently wearing the same dark suit, sitting on a chair near the front, gazing out into the sunlight. I now wonder what he dreamed, sitting there.

In the middle of the store, from front to rear, was a glass-enclosed wooden cabinet, well lit, and moving slowly down one side and up the other, I gazed on marvels. Magic tricks, practical jokes, oddments and endments. Fake bandages, rubber worms, a fly inside a plastic ice cube, matches that sputter, eyeglasses with wierd-looking eyes. Everything from the Johnson-Smith Catalog and more. Science fiction and other magazines, including nudist magazines showing people doing ordinary things, but naked! Caveman masks, like Ernie Kovacs’ Nairobi Trio.

With one of these caveman masks, Eddy Frank and I took turns standing beside the road in a heavy coat, hitch-hiking. Eddy Frank swears that one motorist nearly hit the phonepole, swerving as he gawked. I missed it, because you can’t really see well from a caveman mask.

There was no end to the marvels at Thomas Bookstore. Every few weeks, I visited again. It required almost an hour to peruse once around the store, looking at the marvels. I bought now and then, a science-fiction magazine, a deck of shaved cards for magic tricks, a book about Hypnotism.

Then, lunch at Woolworth’s counter. See a movie, then home.

How wonderful such a time, when such things were wonders!

San Anselmo, California, July 24 2003: Today I have a great big truck. It is mighty and it is bright yellow. Tomorrow I’m packing Megatars, shop tools, voicemail equipment, many computers, and a ton or two of books into the great big truck.

On Saturday, I am driving the great big truck, up to the great big mountains, where Adrienne and I will be living in our new house on the side of Mount Shasta. Hanging out with a volcano always seemed like a good idea to me, where the pines are thick, and the air is clean.

In about a month, I will take the rest of our belongings, beds and sofas, remaining shop tools, and the files and working office for the voicemail companies.

Our new house is gray with white trim, a corner lot, with a board fence in the back for Tulip our border collie. There is a nice office and workshop for me, and at 3500 feet altitude, it’s cooler in the summer, and snow to shovel in the winter. Adrienns says she’s going cross-country skiing.

I heard about a woman who did this for a mile a day during the winter, and she then walked for a mile a day in the summer. After a few months, her family had no idea where she was. Hopefully this will not be a problem with Adrienne.

Why are we moving? For several reasons.

First, we want to buy a home, and houses there are affordable compared to here. Next, we’d like a little quieter life, as it’s grown hectic around us where we now live. Third, the place is really, really pretty.

I’m going to be bustling from dawn to dusk through the weekend. I’ll return to posting next week. If you want to help unload the truck then meet me in Mount Shasta.

The practice of bloggistry changes the mind.

This April, just experimenting, I started a kind of tech diary. On blank days, it seemed natural to think about some ‘Looky Back’ days from the past. Over the weeks, I wrote several of these. These stories were so short that I called them ‘micro-stories’. Or, when posting an opinion — like this one — a ‘micro-essay’.

One day, I noticed that these micro-stories and micro-essays are the real deal. In comparison, the tech notes are bland and uninteresting. I began writing more micro-stories, and replaced most of the tech notes.

I discoverd that writing micro-stories changes the mind. Writing them brings up jewels, moments of the past to burnish, shining again, no longer lost. A treasure chest.

They say that it steam-engines at steam-engine time. I suppose bloggistry has now appeared in our world because its time has come. I suppose that the “autoblography” is a natural expression of bloggistry. Evolution is a funny thing — invisible before, inevitable after.

I for one am grateful.

San Anselmo, June 24, 2003: Tonight it is so hot I am unable to fall asleep, and in the wee hours encounter a black mood. Before long the mood will pass, but I think about what we leave behind in this world.

My sometime nemesis, Emmett Chapman, in my opinion, hopes to be remembered for the musical instrument he designed, and for the two-handed tapping technique he pioneered. It might be so, for a while. For forty years, or a hundred, perhaps even longer as a paragraph or footnote in music books.

For most of us, our works do not stand much chance of enduring. Perhaps the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. His works endure, but who knows his name? Perhaps the Taj Mahal. The sultan’s name can be found in history books, as can the name of the woman he so loved. But even history books will some day fade.

For most of us, we have no works likely to endure the long seasons. For a very few of us, we leave works which might last a few hundred years, maybe. The blink of an eye in our cosmos.

I have no children. Some day I will be a memory, slowly fading, and when that memory has faded, will be gone.

But I think of Adrienne who has grown daughters. I think of my brothers and sisters who have children grown and children yet growing. They leave a walking, talking legacy which might endure for a time.

Any guarantee of eternity? None whatever.

But they have a chance.

Near Hurnville, Texas, 1949: My mother’s birthday came in the summertime, and we drove to my Grandparents’ farm, eight miles north of town, for cake and a visit. I was playing on the piano in the parlor, when I heard the sound of cars arriving out front.

Peeking through the window, I saw Uncle Dick and Uncle Eugene unfolding from their cars, and my mother greeting them with a kiss. But then Uncle Eugene called out, “Say! You know that today is Maggie’s birthday?”

Uncle Dick said, “That’s right!” and grabbed my mother.

And then they spanked her!

Jittering from one foot to the other, crying in pain and fear, I ran to the porch, to see her laughing and trying to escape. They saw me and stopped. My mother told me it was just a joke, but I was inconsolable that somebody could spank my mother!

The terrible moment passed, and yet the day was not done. Was it later that day? Perhaps it was another day soon after, for I’d been at Rex and Mike’s that summer, and had my first brush with fashion.

In the summer, no youngster wore shirt and shoes. It was just too hot. In the first few days, the feet were tender from a winter of hiding in socks and shoes, but soon they grew hard and impervious to most stickers. Only the dreaded goathead stickers would penetrate our thick skin, hobbling our running into limping.

From Rex I had learned that it was very fashionable to wear blue jeans, cut off into shorts, and with no belt. I don’t recall hearing the word ‘style’ or ‘fashion’, and the word ‘cool’ hadn’t been invented yet. So how I learned I cannot fathom. But somehow I knew: the way to dress was no shoes, no shirt, in cut-off jeans with no belt.

On this later day, once again I’d come from the parlor. But on this day, for some reason, my grandmother’s yard was filled with children. I didn’t know any of them. Most were older than myself. I remember only that it was summer, I was very proud of my fashionable attire, and that I walked out onto the porch, and was standing above a yard full of others.

That is when my pants fell off.

Today, Adrienne took me to the TwoBird Cafe for breakfast, and we celebrated by buying a cheese scone and orange juice in addition to our usual breakfast. We’re wild.

I found a wrapped present on the kitchen table, apparently from my children, Tulip the dog, and Percy the cat. Unwrapped it, I discovered a bright red bowl, labled “Complimentary Cereal Bowl”, and around the inner rim bearing the legend: “You’re the man! You’re handsome. You’re strong. You’re charming.” I know that’s going over the top, just a little, but after all, they’re just animals and cannot be expected to comprehend the subtleties of our language.

I asked Adrienne where she’d found it.

She’d bought it back around Mother’s Day, from the Great Acorn store in San Anselmo. On display was a red one and and yellow one. Adrienne wanted blue or green. The proprietor lady offered to order it. Adrienne decided not to wait.

“No,” she said, “I’d better buy the red one. It’s for Father’s Day.” The lady proprietor seemed alarmed.

“Father’s Day?” she asked, “That’s months away!”

“I know,” Adrienne said. “But when I see something I want, I just get it.”

You go, girl!

The Hurn Farm, near Hurnville, Spring 1964: On the north side of my grandmother’s two-story house, it was cooler. She planted flowers and ferns there, and, just north of the stone smokehouse, a bed of delicious strawberries.

My grandfather had fallen from the horse, and it had addled his thought. She cared for him, for he could not work any more. On a weekend away from college, I visited as she dug up bulbs with her trowel, near the fence. Or perhaps she was planting them.

“Why not move into town?” I said, echoing my mother and my Uncle Doc. Between jabs at the earth, she glared, then her face softened.

“This is my home,” she said. Though at the time I thought myself very mature, probably she realized she’d have to spell it out for my ignorance. “I’ve lived here all my life,” she said. “We made our life here.” She pointed with the trowel at the flowers, at the fruit trees, at the cornfield. “We’ve grown these things, and we’ve grown old. This is our home.”

“But now that you have to take care of Granddaddy,” I persisted, “you’re vulnerable out here. In town you’d be closer to help if you ever needed it.” I loved her very much. She’d been consistently kind and clear all of my life. All of us were worried.

“I’ve never been a town lady,” she said, returning to the bulbs. “I’ve never been one to drink tea with my little finger in the air.” She paused, thinking, then said, “I’d rather dig.”

And dig she did. Was she angry? Angry at this turn of life? I don’t know. My flibberty-gibbert mind probably flew away to other, less important and more consuming matters. But for just a moment, squatting near the earth with her, watching her gnarled brown hands, hearing her voice, I knew there was a rightness in what she said, something fierce, true, and wonderful.

Only two weeks later, I got a call and came to see her in hospital. She’d had some Hershey’s syrup, a sweet thing, and she’d stored it in the can in the refrigerator. And, having a treat, contracted food poisoning which flattened her in bed that afternoon. She called out to Frank, her husband.

He came and saw something was wrong.

He had difficulty operating the telephone. He had to make a number of attempts. Time was passing. Finally he succeeded in reaching somebody on the party line. They couldn’t understand him but understood something was wrong.

Everybody knows everybody else. They called my Uncle Doc, who rushed an ambulance to the farm, eight miles north of town. And in the hospital she died. My grandfather was housed in a home nearby, from which he never escaped alive. I visited him there; it was no life for the man he had been, and he soon left. His heart had been torn out.

Have you ever read the I Ching book, where it will describe disaster, and then it says “There is no error.” In other words, things go to hell, but you did nothing wrong. Once, at a convention in Las Vegas, I played some blackjack with a buddy who was a good gambler. I stayed pat with sixteen, and lost the hand. As I groused, he looked at me with clear eyes.

“You did the right thing,” he said, “but you lost.”

Frank Hurn and Maud Hurn. My grandparents.

They did the right thing.