about facts anymore. Facts become true and then become untrue over time.
"These are the facts and they are not in dispute." That was the famous line of Capt. Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon) in the movie A Few Good Men. Such agreement is rarely attained.
The relevance of Captain Ross's facts were altered by the end of the movie.
I am intellectually inadequate. My facts always seem more dated than the facts of others: My facts less important, less relevant, less poignant. I am not sufficiently well-read on any topic regardless of how much effort I expend. I am just not good enough.
Sometimes I wonder if Stephen Colbert has not got it right.
So I stick to writing stuff about stuff. My approach allows me license to selectively use facts without putting myself in a position where I could be proved wrong. I adhere to the realm of the subjunctive and the Utopian, like:
"that could be true...
...in a parallel universe."
************************************************************************
I used to be funny. Now I am tired. I used to read to absorption all the news everyday. Now I skim some headlines. I used to think facts were real. Now I know they are often no more enduring than the weather.
Thank you, Perry Howard.
I would rather write about history or politics or a story about the death of a friend.
I would rather write where I can avoid the fluctuations of interpretation associated with facts.
I would rather
just
make
stuff
up.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
I was trained...
as a sociologist. I was a graduate student for roughly two hundred years. I had many successes, but was an ultimate failure. I am a quitter. I am ABD.
I don't know if I know how sociologists think anymore. I have no intimate contact with any. I seem to remember that even the most broadly intelligent ones were also great babies whose days were filled by (attempts at) compelling intellectual discovery coupled with a grotesque personal pettiness. A few were bitter. Most were people with whom I enjoyed spending time.
The distinction with all non-academic careers I have encountered is the existence of intelligent discourse. Pettiness and personality foible is everywhere a constant. But America, Inc. generally impugns thinking for its own sake. It uses the word "philosopher" as a shrouded insult. Dumb-Luck, on the other hand, gets plenty of good press.
Intelligent discourse is not simply absent as a goal. It is simply absent.
Academic life was thrilling because of the constant intellectual pressure on all boundaries, in all directions, all dimensions. Great heated arguments in the coffee shop or the classroom expanded existing cerebral spaces, or created entire new galaxies from the matter previously hidden within cerebral and empirical black holes.
The gravity in these black holes sucks the curiosity and energy from potential intellectual discourse in real world America, Inc. before it is ever born.
Philosophy and empirical reality are spun together in academic discussion to show the absolute value of both and the absolute value of neither. Theory and fact are bashed on wet rocks to wash away the dirt and expose the underlying fabric.
Academics learned from hippies about their various treatments of blue jeans. Denim, theories and facts have life cycles. Depending on how you treat them, they break-in, shrink, fade, and wear-out. Patching them is an often option, as is creating patches from them. Denim will only stay blue and crisp hanging unused in the closet. Fact and theory are not so fortunate even there. Torn, ripped and faded jeans have a lot of life in them: So too with both fact and theory.
America, Inc. is wont to discard jeans if pressing them does not restore them to some proper sense of fashion. It takes a cowbird approach to the dissemination of ideas. Delineation and fine distinction are not valued when homogenization and domination produce a better result. Individualization gets high marks in America, Inc. but I don't advise that most individuals try it.
It would be flattering to suggest I was an adequate student in most regards. It was a very fulfilling life style, despite the poverty. My current standard of living would not have been attainable with my passion so overwhelmed by my limited competence in that environment. I understood the concept of self-actualization. More idiot than ideal, I failed to understand the gulf to cross to reach even its beachhead.
Craig Taylor of Western Kentucky University once distinguished between sociology as a profession and sociology as a career. Professional sociologists are paid to teach and research common and esoteric topics; career sociologists, once trained, take their pedagogy and zeitgeist into the world and apply it in their non-academic careers.
I am become forced to take the lower trail. I vault breathlessly down this career path trying to run astride the Goddess of Adequacy, hoping to keep the giants visible in my peripheral vision. Failure is common. I fall behind her. I lose sight of the masters. Although I have here circumvented the journal editors, I have no power and no influence. America, Inc. owns too much of the day.
Kristofferson wrote that, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Perhaps this phrase has become cliche in America, Inc. Perhaps it is a matter of perspective, another small tear in these old jeans.
I bid the sociologists their own good day. Thanks for all of the memories.
I will
watch
for you
in my
momentary glimpses
of
the shoulders
of giants.
I don't know if I know how sociologists think anymore. I have no intimate contact with any. I seem to remember that even the most broadly intelligent ones were also great babies whose days were filled by (attempts at) compelling intellectual discovery coupled with a grotesque personal pettiness. A few were bitter. Most were people with whom I enjoyed spending time.
The distinction with all non-academic careers I have encountered is the existence of intelligent discourse. Pettiness and personality foible is everywhere a constant. But America, Inc. generally impugns thinking for its own sake. It uses the word "philosopher" as a shrouded insult. Dumb-Luck, on the other hand, gets plenty of good press.
Intelligent discourse is not simply absent as a goal. It is simply absent.
Academic life was thrilling because of the constant intellectual pressure on all boundaries, in all directions, all dimensions. Great heated arguments in the coffee shop or the classroom expanded existing cerebral spaces, or created entire new galaxies from the matter previously hidden within cerebral and empirical black holes.
The gravity in these black holes sucks the curiosity and energy from potential intellectual discourse in real world America, Inc. before it is ever born.
Philosophy and empirical reality are spun together in academic discussion to show the absolute value of both and the absolute value of neither. Theory and fact are bashed on wet rocks to wash away the dirt and expose the underlying fabric.
Academics learned from hippies about their various treatments of blue jeans. Denim, theories and facts have life cycles. Depending on how you treat them, they break-in, shrink, fade, and wear-out. Patching them is an often option, as is creating patches from them. Denim will only stay blue and crisp hanging unused in the closet. Fact and theory are not so fortunate even there. Torn, ripped and faded jeans have a lot of life in them: So too with both fact and theory.
America, Inc. is wont to discard jeans if pressing them does not restore them to some proper sense of fashion. It takes a cowbird approach to the dissemination of ideas. Delineation and fine distinction are not valued when homogenization and domination produce a better result. Individualization gets high marks in America, Inc. but I don't advise that most individuals try it.
It would be flattering to suggest I was an adequate student in most regards. It was a very fulfilling life style, despite the poverty. My current standard of living would not have been attainable with my passion so overwhelmed by my limited competence in that environment. I understood the concept of self-actualization. More idiot than ideal, I failed to understand the gulf to cross to reach even its beachhead.
Craig Taylor of Western Kentucky University once distinguished between sociology as a profession and sociology as a career. Professional sociologists are paid to teach and research common and esoteric topics; career sociologists, once trained, take their pedagogy and zeitgeist into the world and apply it in their non-academic careers.
I am become forced to take the lower trail. I vault breathlessly down this career path trying to run astride the Goddess of Adequacy, hoping to keep the giants visible in my peripheral vision. Failure is common. I fall behind her. I lose sight of the masters. Although I have here circumvented the journal editors, I have no power and no influence. America, Inc. owns too much of the day.
Kristofferson wrote that, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Perhaps this phrase has become cliche in America, Inc. Perhaps it is a matter of perspective, another small tear in these old jeans.
I bid the sociologists their own good day. Thanks for all of the memories.
I will
watch
for you
in my
momentary glimpses
of
the shoulders
of giants.
Monday, September 24, 2007
David D died...
in his early twenties. He was six or seven years older than I. His sister Donna was my age. I was in love with her in first grade. But her brother David was a local hero.
He was one of the funniest people I've ever met. His powers of observation and imitation were known to everyone. Our moms liked David. Our friends liked David. Our siblings liked David. Everyone who knew him liked David, except perhaps his mother.
David's mother kicked him out the house. She did it over and over, starting from the time he was about seventeen. David was a good person who drank and smoked and violated curfew. David never hurt anyone. He didn't drive fast or get in fights. She was a small town mother who worried more about reputation and discipline than where her son slept. I saw her crying at his funeral. She paid a huge and unthinkable price for her small-town morality.
I spent my fourteenth summer hanging out evenings with him and others in the park. He slept in his car when he couldn't find another place. He drank and smoked whatever was available. He was arrested once or twice for underage drinking -- once because he spoke up for someone else. The cop said, "blow in my face." David did. The sheriff smelled the alcohol. "Git'n the car," he said. David was never hostile. He never resisted. He had a bunk that night. He was back in the park the next evening.
David never spoke badly of anyone, though no one was beyond the reach of his humor. It was a privilege to be the subject of one of his jokes. A local dad named Owen had a signature gesture. His over the dashboard wave included wide eyes, a wide open O-shaped mouth, and an outstretched forefinger that tracked his long slow upward nod. We had all seen it all of our lives. It took David's powers of observation to convert something we'd seen a thousand times to the iconic "Big-O Wave". After David adopted Owen's wave, so did everyone else in town.
He had voices and gestures all his own, too, though many of them could be traced back to someone you knew. David always made us laugh. All of us, and our fathers, too.
I once spent a day with David trying to remove a heater core from an old car in a local farmer's barn. David was not mechanically adept enough to extract the used part. It was freezing. His good mood never flagged, though our ultimate failure meant he spent the winter with no heat in his car - a maroon Pontiac of some sort.
He accepted everyone. The rejection he suffered provides a metaphor for small town life. The range of the acceptable is narrow. Different parents handle their children's problems in different ways. David's parents handled theirs tragically. David merely drank. He wasn't a criminal. He wasn't violent. He wasn't abusive.
He was just enough of a clown to prefer a drink in the park to dying at home.
It has been over thirty years since that summer in the park, but I still miss him when I think of him. I felt very sorry for his baby sister Donna. His brother Bobby hugged me at David's funeral, and said, "We've both lost one now." I think I cried.
He left a lot of laughs in my heart, and a lot of tears in my heart, and a lot of laughs in my heart.
David used to laugh and say, "Don't bury me when I die. Just prop me up in the junk yard."
David committed suicide. As a final act of irony, he shot himself standing in a dump.
How can
I
not feel
that
we all
killed
David D?
He was one of the funniest people I've ever met. His powers of observation and imitation were known to everyone. Our moms liked David. Our friends liked David. Our siblings liked David. Everyone who knew him liked David, except perhaps his mother.
David's mother kicked him out the house. She did it over and over, starting from the time he was about seventeen. David was a good person who drank and smoked and violated curfew. David never hurt anyone. He didn't drive fast or get in fights. She was a small town mother who worried more about reputation and discipline than where her son slept. I saw her crying at his funeral. She paid a huge and unthinkable price for her small-town morality.
I spent my fourteenth summer hanging out evenings with him and others in the park. He slept in his car when he couldn't find another place. He drank and smoked whatever was available. He was arrested once or twice for underage drinking -- once because he spoke up for someone else. The cop said, "blow in my face." David did. The sheriff smelled the alcohol. "Git'n the car," he said. David was never hostile. He never resisted. He had a bunk that night. He was back in the park the next evening.
David never spoke badly of anyone, though no one was beyond the reach of his humor. It was a privilege to be the subject of one of his jokes. A local dad named Owen had a signature gesture. His over the dashboard wave included wide eyes, a wide open O-shaped mouth, and an outstretched forefinger that tracked his long slow upward nod. We had all seen it all of our lives. It took David's powers of observation to convert something we'd seen a thousand times to the iconic "Big-O Wave". After David adopted Owen's wave, so did everyone else in town.
He had voices and gestures all his own, too, though many of them could be traced back to someone you knew. David always made us laugh. All of us, and our fathers, too.
I once spent a day with David trying to remove a heater core from an old car in a local farmer's barn. David was not mechanically adept enough to extract the used part. It was freezing. His good mood never flagged, though our ultimate failure meant he spent the winter with no heat in his car - a maroon Pontiac of some sort.
He accepted everyone. The rejection he suffered provides a metaphor for small town life. The range of the acceptable is narrow. Different parents handle their children's problems in different ways. David's parents handled theirs tragically. David merely drank. He wasn't a criminal. He wasn't violent. He wasn't abusive.
He was just enough of a clown to prefer a drink in the park to dying at home.
It has been over thirty years since that summer in the park, but I still miss him when I think of him. I felt very sorry for his baby sister Donna. His brother Bobby hugged me at David's funeral, and said, "We've both lost one now." I think I cried.
He left a lot of laughs in my heart, and a lot of tears in my heart, and a lot of laughs in my heart.
David used to laugh and say, "Don't bury me when I die. Just prop me up in the junk yard."
David committed suicide. As a final act of irony, he shot himself standing in a dump.
How can
I
not feel
that
we all
killed
David D?
Sunday, September 23, 2007
If I could choose a super power...
it would be the ability to be relaxed and always pleasant.
It is harsh being coarse and having a temper. Impromptu presents a constant danger. I do not suffer an attack supine.
I do not drink alcohol. My continued abstinence has nothing to do with any moral judgment. It has mostly to do with my certain knowledge that intemperance does not mix well with my intemperance.
I am basic working-class peasant stock. I found my reflection just where I needed it.
I have worked very hard to educate myself, including diction lessons, German universities, and history books. I have poured tens of thousands of educational dollars into conquering my self doubt.
I have not overcome it.
I have not mastered the rage of inequity, though I have largely mastered its visible aspects. I have mastered the fear of public speech, but not the ellipsis of disorganization native to my mind. I have come to accept that I am often better at what I do than others, but I cannot relax to take my advantage for granted.
I am explosive with the need to prove myself to myself. Peasants have no need to prove themselves to others. Except to prove our control over self.
To what sort of inverted self-actualization am I addicted?
I know that my super power now comes in a bottle labeled Prozac or Seredyn. Personality in a bottle. I could not live with such an admission of failure.
I can live without my super power.
I hope
those I meet,
those I love,
would be friends,
can
live well
without it
too.
It is harsh being coarse and having a temper. Impromptu presents a constant danger. I do not suffer an attack supine.
I do not drink alcohol. My continued abstinence has nothing to do with any moral judgment. It has mostly to do with my certain knowledge that intemperance does not mix well with my intemperance.
I am basic working-class peasant stock. I found my reflection just where I needed it.
I have worked very hard to educate myself, including diction lessons, German universities, and history books. I have poured tens of thousands of educational dollars into conquering my self doubt.
I have not overcome it.
I have not mastered the rage of inequity, though I have largely mastered its visible aspects. I have mastered the fear of public speech, but not the ellipsis of disorganization native to my mind. I have come to accept that I am often better at what I do than others, but I cannot relax to take my advantage for granted.
I am explosive with the need to prove myself to myself. Peasants have no need to prove themselves to others. Except to prove our control over self.
To what sort of inverted self-actualization am I addicted?
I know that my super power now comes in a bottle labeled Prozac or Seredyn. Personality in a bottle. I could not live with such an admission of failure.
I can live without my super power.
I hope
those I meet,
those I love,
would be friends,
can
live well
without it
too.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
I envy the gall...
of a thief. I am enamored of anyone with so little anxiety - the prototypical sociopath.
Someone cut all of the wires off of my camper in the past week or so to get the copper. He (or they) cut the wires from three other campers on our mountain. He has also harvested copper wiring from some, perhaps many, houses in the area. Most boldly, I'm told, he felled trees to knock down power lines, and cultivated wire from that source. (I'm not certain power lines are copper, but our thief probably is not an electrical engineer.)
My Grandfather said, "A lock stops an honest thief." There are at least two types of thieves: those who steal because they can, and those who steal because they must. Some steal to get food; others steal because no one is looking. (This categorization omits the professional adventurer.)
I have hired a number of people from the area. I have sought help for various projects for several years. It is difficult to find people who want to work. I don't think most people steal - even most lazy people. But thieves who refuse available work earn no mercy.
The Cherokee County North Carolina police received a lot of press, and great accolades, a few years ago after their fortuitous, if accidental, capture of Eric Rudolph - the Olympic Bomber. He is alleged to have spent the better part of a decade "hiding" there. The current epidemic of destruction and theft of property has become clearly and well known to them.
Perhaps there would be limited incentive for the police to allocate appropriate and sufficient resources to solve such a case if it were only the personal property of a few snow-birds and rural folk located 25 miles from town. I have never seen the Cherokee County police within miles of my place -- except once when I called them. But this situation is a pretty substantial and wide-spread problem. I hope the attack on the other subdivisions and communities, and on the power company, will be sufficient to cause the police to engage.
I am pretty angry about the damage to my property. I would hate to think how I would react if I ever caught someone in the act.
It would be good
not
to have
a gun
if I did.
Post-Script: Only a few hours after I posted this article, I have learned via telephone that a cabin in our mountain subdivision has burned down. The police and fire department were still on the scene around 11:00 PM EST, according to friends in the area. There is nothing left of the cabin.
I know of no reason to suspect any linkage with the copper thief.
Someone cut all of the wires off of my camper in the past week or so to get the copper. He (or they) cut the wires from three other campers on our mountain. He has also harvested copper wiring from some, perhaps many, houses in the area. Most boldly, I'm told, he felled trees to knock down power lines, and cultivated wire from that source. (I'm not certain power lines are copper, but our thief probably is not an electrical engineer.)
My Grandfather said, "A lock stops an honest thief." There are at least two types of thieves: those who steal because they can, and those who steal because they must. Some steal to get food; others steal because no one is looking. (This categorization omits the professional adventurer.)
I have hired a number of people from the area. I have sought help for various projects for several years. It is difficult to find people who want to work. I don't think most people steal - even most lazy people. But thieves who refuse available work earn no mercy.
The Cherokee County North Carolina police received a lot of press, and great accolades, a few years ago after their fortuitous, if accidental, capture of Eric Rudolph - the Olympic Bomber. He is alleged to have spent the better part of a decade "hiding" there. The current epidemic of destruction and theft of property has become clearly and well known to them.
Perhaps there would be limited incentive for the police to allocate appropriate and sufficient resources to solve such a case if it were only the personal property of a few snow-birds and rural folk located 25 miles from town. I have never seen the Cherokee County police within miles of my place -- except once when I called them. But this situation is a pretty substantial and wide-spread problem. I hope the attack on the other subdivisions and communities, and on the power company, will be sufficient to cause the police to engage.
I am pretty angry about the damage to my property. I would hate to think how I would react if I ever caught someone in the act.
It would be good
not
to have
a gun
if I did.
Post-Script: Only a few hours after I posted this article, I have learned via telephone that a cabin in our mountain subdivision has burned down. The police and fire department were still on the scene around 11:00 PM EST, according to friends in the area. There is nothing left of the cabin.
I know of no reason to suspect any linkage with the copper thief.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Our modern written language suffers...
from the sterility imposed by the Electronic Grammar Police. The word processor Spell Check Nazis try to impose the death of uniformity on the petals of my paragraphs the instant I create them. This is the great sin of modern technology: the enormous crushing pressure of expression into the mode.
The value of any word is, at best, the median of our inter-subjective agreement. The meaning of a phrase, of a sentence, or any longer construction, always contains an interpretative component.
Literary constructions are often more historically enduring when a bit more interpretation is required.
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is a grammatical nightmare, according to the algorithms available to my computer, but it is one of world's great books. Garcia-Marquez writes in his biography, "Living to Tell the Tale," of how he never learned to spell -- ever. (A difficulty with spelling is typical of a Montessori education in a non-phonetic language.)
I do not condone ignorance by those with a choice. There are many who just never learned to write. But the Blues are not subject to spell check. Nor are poetry, prose, and Bob Dylan lyrics.
The Microsoft Sentence Stasi should be recognized for it's heinous flattening of the robust consciousness of language; for it's violence against the potential variable character of every written construction. Word Perfect - and the name itself should send one groping for an air sickness bag - should be banished for suggesting and pushing sentences onto paper as polished and sterile as something spoken on a medical TV show written and taped in university theater in Ohio. Is this device now become John Fay's Monster?
Business doth not thereby prosper. Children do not expand intellectually. My mind becomes a leaden weight that watches for discolored text and I know not. I think even less.
Help me write badly, thus defined.
I don't
know
how
to
ignore it
here.
The value of any word is, at best, the median of our inter-subjective agreement. The meaning of a phrase, of a sentence, or any longer construction, always contains an interpretative component.
Literary constructions are often more historically enduring when a bit more interpretation is required.
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is a grammatical nightmare, according to the algorithms available to my computer, but it is one of world's great books. Garcia-Marquez writes in his biography, "Living to Tell the Tale," of how he never learned to spell -- ever. (A difficulty with spelling is typical of a Montessori education in a non-phonetic language.)
I do not condone ignorance by those with a choice. There are many who just never learned to write. But the Blues are not subject to spell check. Nor are poetry, prose, and Bob Dylan lyrics.
The Microsoft Sentence Stasi should be recognized for it's heinous flattening of the robust consciousness of language; for it's violence against the potential variable character of every written construction. Word Perfect - and the name itself should send one groping for an air sickness bag - should be banished for suggesting and pushing sentences onto paper as polished and sterile as something spoken on a medical TV show written and taped in university theater in Ohio. Is this device now become John Fay's Monster?
Business doth not thereby prosper. Children do not expand intellectually. My mind becomes a leaden weight that watches for discolored text and I know not. I think even less.
Help me write badly, thus defined.
I don't
know
how
to
ignore it
here.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
She asked me to stay all night...
and I told her that I already had a place to stay, but that I appreciated the offer.
I was twenty-six, and dancing with one of the hottest girls I have ever danced with. I completely misunderstood her offer.
I was visiting a friend in Atlanta during a national Sociology conference. She was my best friend's friend's girlfriend. We spent several hours at her house before we went dancing. We got along extremely well.
I realized what I had done about three minutes later.
Three minutes and two sentences too late.
I've spent the last twenty years in utter disbelief. I'm nearly beyond the despair, the grief, the remorse.
Perhaps I'm no better now than I ever was at reading such signs. There's no telling what opportunity I might have alienated during nearly fifty years of completely missing gestures I thought covered by genetic receptors. I guess. I doubt if there are many hot women who've thrown themselves at me. I guess.
I wonder if my seamless slide into letchery has altered my perceptiveness.
It matters less now.
It matters
less
than
ever.
I was twenty-six, and dancing with one of the hottest girls I have ever danced with. I completely misunderstood her offer.
I was visiting a friend in Atlanta during a national Sociology conference. She was my best friend's friend's girlfriend. We spent several hours at her house before we went dancing. We got along extremely well.
I realized what I had done about three minutes later.
Three minutes and two sentences too late.
I've spent the last twenty years in utter disbelief. I'm nearly beyond the despair, the grief, the remorse.
Perhaps I'm no better now than I ever was at reading such signs. There's no telling what opportunity I might have alienated during nearly fifty years of completely missing gestures I thought covered by genetic receptors. I guess. I doubt if there are many hot women who've thrown themselves at me. I guess.
I wonder if my seamless slide into letchery has altered my perceptiveness.
It matters less now.
It matters
less
than
ever.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A guy named Tracey...
vomited out the passenger window of a 1976 Rabbit at over 90 mph.
Jim's reaction was pretty intense. He was asleep in the back seat. It must have been an immeasurably unpleasant awakening.
I was merely driving - and thus located outside the splatter zone.
Tracey demolished three-quarters of a case of Coors as we Jetta'ed across Iowa toward Kansas. You couldn't get Coors regularly east of Iowa back then.
Tracey was one of those toughish guys who emitted a great throaty post-gulping noise - "phhhffftsssss - aaahhhhh" - after ....... every ....... single ....... swallow.
Do you know how many swallows are in a case of Coors? Any idea how many swallows between Dowagiac, MI and Wichita, KS?
He demanded we let him drive at the next gas station. Jim and I cleverly declined, though it required one of us to remain in the driver seat for the entire stop - taking turns to manage all the essentials.
Jim was one of the greatest guys I ever met. I haven't seen him in over 25 years. How great is that?
I was welcomed by the Kansas State Police the next morning as I screamed into Wichita at 6 AM. He nailed me for going 76 mph in a 55 zone. I drove over 90 mph all night long, so I paid my ticket like a pathetic whiny baby.
I stayed drunk in Wichita for four days, and watched the 1979 National Junior College Cross Country Nationals. I was injured, useless and not terribly talented. I think my team was second. It must have been fun.
I bought an obnoxious straw baseball cap at a great western store, and wore it in the hotel hot tub. I kept that goofy looking hat for years. I can blame the initial weekend on alcohol. The subsequent period may be attributable to nature or nurture, but was combined with inexcusable ignorance in either case.
Tracey bought a lot of Coors on the return trip to take back to Michigan.
I think he stayed sober during the ride.
I wonder if
he
still
makes
that
sound.
Jim's reaction was pretty intense. He was asleep in the back seat. It must have been an immeasurably unpleasant awakening.
I was merely driving - and thus located outside the splatter zone.
Tracey demolished three-quarters of a case of Coors as we Jetta'ed across Iowa toward Kansas. You couldn't get Coors regularly east of Iowa back then.
Tracey was one of those toughish guys who emitted a great throaty post-gulping noise - "phhhffftsssss - aaahhhhh" - after ....... every ....... single ....... swallow.
Do you know how many swallows are in a case of Coors? Any idea how many swallows between Dowagiac, MI and Wichita, KS?
He demanded we let him drive at the next gas station. Jim and I cleverly declined, though it required one of us to remain in the driver seat for the entire stop - taking turns to manage all the essentials.
Jim was one of the greatest guys I ever met. I haven't seen him in over 25 years. How great is that?
I was welcomed by the Kansas State Police the next morning as I screamed into Wichita at 6 AM. He nailed me for going 76 mph in a 55 zone. I drove over 90 mph all night long, so I paid my ticket like a pathetic whiny baby.
I stayed drunk in Wichita for four days, and watched the 1979 National Junior College Cross Country Nationals. I was injured, useless and not terribly talented. I think my team was second. It must have been fun.
I bought an obnoxious straw baseball cap at a great western store, and wore it in the hotel hot tub. I kept that goofy looking hat for years. I can blame the initial weekend on alcohol. The subsequent period may be attributable to nature or nurture, but was combined with inexcusable ignorance in either case.
Tracey bought a lot of Coors on the return trip to take back to Michigan.
I think he stayed sober during the ride.
I wonder if
he
still
makes
that
sound.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
You'd think the same thing...
if you thought what I think.
Honor is not worth death for the poor. They are offered so little of the honor, so much of the death, in such great disproportion.
The wealth preserved beneath such moral concepts yields no legal tender. Honor provides no currency at the general store. No clothes, no bedding, no shelter, no food be had.
If honor is worth death, let us make infantry and marine officers of the those who vote for war. Let the offspring of our high office holders stand in the fore as foot soldiers in the armed services.
No, honor is not worth death to them. Death is contemptible.
There may be times, even judged by history, when the capable owe death to a cause. So many times the price was high. Too high. So many times we would have paid so much more.
Honor aspires to rule. It offers itself as a credential, an entitlement, a grant to the acquisition of power.
Science fiction and philosophy conspire to suggest my consciousness is contained within the dream of God.
Then
he
is
having
a nightmare.
Honor is not worth death for the poor. They are offered so little of the honor, so much of the death, in such great disproportion.
The wealth preserved beneath such moral concepts yields no legal tender. Honor provides no currency at the general store. No clothes, no bedding, no shelter, no food be had.
If honor is worth death, let us make infantry and marine officers of the those who vote for war. Let the offspring of our high office holders stand in the fore as foot soldiers in the armed services.
No, honor is not worth death to them. Death is contemptible.
There may be times, even judged by history, when the capable owe death to a cause. So many times the price was high. Too high. So many times we would have paid so much more.
Honor aspires to rule. It offers itself as a credential, an entitlement, a grant to the acquisition of power.
Science fiction and philosophy conspire to suggest my consciousness is contained within the dream of God.
Then
he
is
having
a nightmare.
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