Why Does A Northeastern Yankee like Myself Hold Such A Strong Bond With The South?
- Thread starter philly rabbit
- Start date
THE LAKE JOSEPHUS DAYS
We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the
good names--from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the
Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and
then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail
to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good
limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver.
Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets
for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a
drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of
the baby and me sitting together on a log.
I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pictures
developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, wondering
if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension
now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are developed
and easier to please. Look there's the baby ! Look
there's Mushroom Springs ! Look there's me !
I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Helldiver,
and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing,
let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby
woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.
My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and
the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls
of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and
her face was hot and flushed.
We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small
drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out
of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for
some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there
at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the
Zoot suit.
Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the
Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess
they were all just passing fads.
A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961,
is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to
go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy,
among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every
173 years.
She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried
her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and
across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down
to Lake Josephus, she was all right.
She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in
her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert--
ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either.
We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the
good names--from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the
Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and
then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail
to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good
limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver.
Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets
for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a
drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of
the baby and me sitting together on a log.
I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pictures
developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, wondering
if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension
now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are developed
and easier to please. Look there's the baby ! Look
there's Mushroom Springs ! Look there's me !
I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Helldiver,
and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing,
let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby
woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.
My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and
the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls
of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and
her face was hot and flushed.
We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small
drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out
of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for
some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there
at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the
Zoot suit.
Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the
Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess
they were all just passing fads.
A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961,
is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to
go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy,
among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every
173 years.
She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried
her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and
across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down
to Lake Josephus, she was all right.
She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in
her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert--
ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either.
Socrtease
Verified User
I can agree with 1 and 2, but I believe that SF is correct on SlOsu and USC. They both commit unnatural acts with animals as well as defecating in their own hands and throwing it.
cawacko
Well-known member
I would like to add #4 please and that is banning Soc for being a lawyer, a hater and agreeing with Superfreak
You would ban one of your biggest fans, wow, I might have to rethink my fan club membership. Good thing I haven't paid my dues, yet.
TROUT FISHING ON THE STREET OF ETERNITY
Calle de Eternidad: We walked up from Gelatao, birthplace
of Benito Juarez. Instead of taking the road we followed a
path up along the creek. Some boys from the school in Gelatao
told us that up along the creek was the shortcut.
The creek was clear but a little milky, and as I remember
the path was steep in places. We met people coming dowr
the path because it was really the shortcut. They were all
Indians carrying something.
Finally the path went away from the creek and we climbed
a hill and arrived at the cemetery. It was a very old cemetery
and kind of run down with weeds and death growing there
like partners in a dance.
There was a cobblestone street leading up from the cemetery
to the town of Ixtlan, pronounced East-LON, on top of
another hill. There were no houses along the street until you
reached the town.
In the hair of the world, the street was very steep as you
went up into Ixtlan. There was a street sign that pointedback
down toward the cemetery, following every cobblestone with
loving care all the way.
We were still out of breath from the climb. The sign said
Calle de Eternidad. Pointing.
I was not always a world traveler, visiting exotic places
in Southern Mexico. Once I was just a kid working for an old
woman in the Pacific Northwest. She was in her nineties and
I worked for her on Saturdays and after school and during the
summer.
Sometimes she would make me lunch, little egg sandwiches
with the crusts cut off as if by a surgeon, and she'd give
me slices of banana dunked in mayonnaise.
The old woman lived by herself in a house that was like a
twin sister to her. The house was four stories high and had
at least thirty rooms and the old lady was five feet high and
weighed about eighty-two pounds.
She had a big radio from the 1920s in the living room and
it was the only thing in the house that looked remotely as if
it had come from this century, and then there was still a
doubt in my mind.
A lot of cars, airplanes and vacuum cleaners and refrigerators
and things that come from the 1920s look as if they
had come from the 1890s. It's the beauty of our speed that
has done it to them, causing them to age prematurely into the
clothes and thoughts of people from another century.
The old woman had an old dog, but he hardly counted any
more. He was so old that he looked like a stuffed dog. Once
I took him for a walk down to the store. It was just like taking
a stuffed dog for a walk. I tied him up to a stuffed fire
hydrant and he pissed on it, but it was only stuffed piss.
I went into the store and bought some stuffing for the old
lady. Maybe a pound of coffee or a quart of mayonnaise.
I did things for her like chop the Canadian thistles. During
the 1920s (or was it the 1890s) she was motoring in California,
and her husband stopped the car at a filling station
and told the attendant to fill it up.
"How about some wild flower seeds?" the attendant said.
"No, " her husband said. "Gasoline."
"I know that, sir, " the attendant said. "But we're giving
away wild flower seeds with the gasoline today. "
"All right, " her husband said. "Give us some wild flower
seeds, then. But be sure and fill the car up with gasoline.
Gasoline's what I really want. "
"They'll brighten up your garden, sir."
" The gasoline?"
"No, sir, the flowers."
They returned to the Northwest, planted the seeds and
they were Canadian thistles. Every year I chopped themdown
and they always grew back. I poured chemicals on them and
they always grew back.
Curses were music to their roots. A blow on the back of
the neck was like a harpsichord to them. Those Canadian
thistles were there for keeps. Thank you, California, for
your beautiful wild flowers. I chopped them down every year.
I did other things for her like mow the lawn with a grim
old lawnmower. When I first went to work for her, she told
me to be careful with that lawnmower. Some itinerant had
stopped at her place a few weeks before, asked for some
work so he could rent a hotel room and get something to eat,
and she'd said, "You can mow the lawn."
"Thanks, ma'am, " he'd said and went out and promptly
cut three fingers off his right hand with that medieval machine.
I was always very careful with that lawnmower, knowing
that somewhere on that place, the ghosts of three fingers
were living it up in the grand spook manner. They needed no
company from my fingers. My fingers looked just great, right
there on my hands.
I cleaned out her rock garden and deported snakes whenever
I found them on her place. She told me to kill them, but
I couldn't see any percentage in wasting a gartersnake. But
I had to get rid of the things because she always promised me
she'd have a heart attack if she ever stepped on one of them.
So I'd catch them and deport them to a yard across the
street, where nine old ladies probably had heart attacks and
died from finding those snakes in their toothbrushes. Fortunately,
I was never around when their bodies were taken away.
I'd clean the blackberry bushes out of the lilac bushes.
Once in a while she'd give me some lilacs to take home and
they were always fine-looking lilacs, and I always felt good,
walking down the street, holding the lilacs high and proud
like glasses of that famous children's drink: the good flower
wine .
I'd chop wood for her stove. She cooked on a woodstove
and heated the place during the winter with a huge wood furnace
that she manned like the captain of a submarine in a
dark basement ocean during the winter.
In the summer I'd throw endless cords of wood into her
basement until I was silly in the head and everything looked
like wood, even clouds in the sky and cars parked on the
street and cats.
There were dozens of little tiny things that I did for her.
Find a lost screwdriver, lost in 1911. Pick her a pan full of
pie cherries in the spring, and pick the rest of the cherries
on the tree for myself. Prune those goofy, at best half-assed
trees in the backyard. The ones that grew beside an old pile
of lumber. Weed.
One early autumn day she loaned me to the woman next
door and I fixed a small leak in the roof of her woodshed.
The woman gave me a dollar tip, and I said thank you, and
the next time it rained, all the newspapers she had been saving
for seventeen years to start fires with got soaking wet.
From then on out, I received a sour look every time I
passed her house. I was lucky I wasn't lynched.
I didn't work for the old lady in the winter. I'd finish the
year by the last of October, raking up leaves or something
or transporting the last muttering gartersnake to winter
quarters in the old ladies' toothbrush Valhalla across the
street.
Then she'd call me on the telephone in the spring. I would
always be surprised to hear her little voice, surprised that
she was still alive. I'd get on my horse and go out to her
place and the whole thing would begin again and I'd make a
few bucks and stroke the sun-warmed fur of her stuffed dog.
One spring day she had me ascend to the attic and clean
up some boxes of stuff and throw out some stuff and put some
stuff back intd its imaginary proper place.
I was up there all alone for three hours. It was my first
time up there and my last, thank God. The attic was stuffed
to the gills with stuff.
Everything that's old in this world was up there. I spent
most of my time just looking around.
An old trunk caught my eye. I unstrapped the straps, unclicked
the various clickers and opened the God-damn thing.
It was stuffed with old fishing tackle. There were old rods
and reels and lines and boots and creels and there was a metal
box full of flies and lures and hooks.
Some of the hooks still had worms on them. The worms
were years and decades old and petrified to the hooks. The
worms were now as much a part of the hooks as the metal itself.
There was some old Trout Fishing in America armor in
the trunk and beside a weather-beaten fishing helmet, I saw
an old diary. I opened the diary to the first page and it said:
The Trout Fishing Diary of Alonso Hagen
It seemed to me that was the name of the old lady's brother
who had died of a strange ailment in his youth, a thing I found
out by keeping my ears open and looking at a large photograph
prominently displayed in her front room.
I turned to the next page in the old diary and it had in columns:
The Trips and The Trout Lost
April 7, 1891 Trout Lost 8
April 15, 1891 Trout Lost 6
April 23, 1891 Trout Lost 12
May 13, 1891 Trout Lost 9
May 23, 1891 Trout Lost 15
May 24, 1891 Trout Lost 10
May 25, 1891 Trout Lost 12
June 2, 1891 Trout Lost 18
June 6, 1891 Trout Lost 15
June 17, 1891 Trout Lost 7
June 19, 1891 Trout Lost 10
June 23, 1891 Trout Lost 14
July 4, 1891 Trout Lost 13
July 23, 1891 Trout Lost 11
August 10, 1891 Trout Lost 13
August 17, 1891 Trout Lost 8
August 20, 1891 Trout Lost 12
August 29, 1891 Trout Lost 21
September 3, 1891 Trout Lost 10
September 11, 1891 Trout Lost 7
September 19, 1891 Trout Lost 5
September 23, 1891 Trout Lost 3
Total Trips 22 Total Trout Lost 239
Average Number of Trout Lost Each Trip 10.8
I turned to the third page and it was just like the preceding
page except the year was 1892 and Alonso Hagen went on
24 trips and lost 317 trout for an average of 13. 2 trout lost
each trip.
The next page was 1893 and the totals were 33 trips and
480 trout lost for an average of 14. 5 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1894. He went on 27 trips, lost 349
trout for an average of 12.9 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1895. He went on 41 trips, lost 730
trout for an average of 17.8 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1896. Alonso Hagen only went out 12
times and lost 115 trout for an average of 9.5 trout lost each
trip.
The next page was 1897. He went on one trip and lost one
trout for an average of one trout lost for one trip.
The last page of the diary was the grand totals for the
years running from 1891-1897. Alonso Hagen went fishing
160 times and lost 2,231 trout for a seven-year average of
13.9 trout lost every time he went fishing.
Under the grand totals, there was a little Trout Fishing
in America epitaph by Alonso Hagen. It said something like:
"I've had it.
I've gone fishing now for seven years
and I haven't caught a single trout.
I've lost every trout I ever hooked.
They either jump off
or twist off.
or squirm off
or break my leader
or flop off
or fuck off.
I have never even gotten my hands on a trout.
For all its frustration,
I believe it was an interesting experiment
in total loss
but next year somebody else
will have to go trout fishing.
Somebody else will have to go
out there."
Calle de Eternidad: We walked up from Gelatao, birthplace
of Benito Juarez. Instead of taking the road we followed a
path up along the creek. Some boys from the school in Gelatao
told us that up along the creek was the shortcut.
The creek was clear but a little milky, and as I remember
the path was steep in places. We met people coming dowr
the path because it was really the shortcut. They were all
Indians carrying something.
Finally the path went away from the creek and we climbed
a hill and arrived at the cemetery. It was a very old cemetery
and kind of run down with weeds and death growing there
like partners in a dance.
There was a cobblestone street leading up from the cemetery
to the town of Ixtlan, pronounced East-LON, on top of
another hill. There were no houses along the street until you
reached the town.
In the hair of the world, the street was very steep as you
went up into Ixtlan. There was a street sign that pointedback
down toward the cemetery, following every cobblestone with
loving care all the way.
We were still out of breath from the climb. The sign said
Calle de Eternidad. Pointing.
I was not always a world traveler, visiting exotic places
in Southern Mexico. Once I was just a kid working for an old
woman in the Pacific Northwest. She was in her nineties and
I worked for her on Saturdays and after school and during the
summer.
Sometimes she would make me lunch, little egg sandwiches
with the crusts cut off as if by a surgeon, and she'd give
me slices of banana dunked in mayonnaise.
The old woman lived by herself in a house that was like a
twin sister to her. The house was four stories high and had
at least thirty rooms and the old lady was five feet high and
weighed about eighty-two pounds.
She had a big radio from the 1920s in the living room and
it was the only thing in the house that looked remotely as if
it had come from this century, and then there was still a
doubt in my mind.
A lot of cars, airplanes and vacuum cleaners and refrigerators
and things that come from the 1920s look as if they
had come from the 1890s. It's the beauty of our speed that
has done it to them, causing them to age prematurely into the
clothes and thoughts of people from another century.
The old woman had an old dog, but he hardly counted any
more. He was so old that he looked like a stuffed dog. Once
I took him for a walk down to the store. It was just like taking
a stuffed dog for a walk. I tied him up to a stuffed fire
hydrant and he pissed on it, but it was only stuffed piss.
I went into the store and bought some stuffing for the old
lady. Maybe a pound of coffee or a quart of mayonnaise.
I did things for her like chop the Canadian thistles. During
the 1920s (or was it the 1890s) she was motoring in California,
and her husband stopped the car at a filling station
and told the attendant to fill it up.
"How about some wild flower seeds?" the attendant said.
"No, " her husband said. "Gasoline."
"I know that, sir, " the attendant said. "But we're giving
away wild flower seeds with the gasoline today. "
"All right, " her husband said. "Give us some wild flower
seeds, then. But be sure and fill the car up with gasoline.
Gasoline's what I really want. "
"They'll brighten up your garden, sir."
" The gasoline?"
"No, sir, the flowers."
They returned to the Northwest, planted the seeds and
they were Canadian thistles. Every year I chopped themdown
and they always grew back. I poured chemicals on them and
they always grew back.
Curses were music to their roots. A blow on the back of
the neck was like a harpsichord to them. Those Canadian
thistles were there for keeps. Thank you, California, for
your beautiful wild flowers. I chopped them down every year.
I did other things for her like mow the lawn with a grim
old lawnmower. When I first went to work for her, she told
me to be careful with that lawnmower. Some itinerant had
stopped at her place a few weeks before, asked for some
work so he could rent a hotel room and get something to eat,
and she'd said, "You can mow the lawn."
"Thanks, ma'am, " he'd said and went out and promptly
cut three fingers off his right hand with that medieval machine.
I was always very careful with that lawnmower, knowing
that somewhere on that place, the ghosts of three fingers
were living it up in the grand spook manner. They needed no
company from my fingers. My fingers looked just great, right
there on my hands.
I cleaned out her rock garden and deported snakes whenever
I found them on her place. She told me to kill them, but
I couldn't see any percentage in wasting a gartersnake. But
I had to get rid of the things because she always promised me
she'd have a heart attack if she ever stepped on one of them.
So I'd catch them and deport them to a yard across the
street, where nine old ladies probably had heart attacks and
died from finding those snakes in their toothbrushes. Fortunately,
I was never around when their bodies were taken away.
I'd clean the blackberry bushes out of the lilac bushes.
Once in a while she'd give me some lilacs to take home and
they were always fine-looking lilacs, and I always felt good,
walking down the street, holding the lilacs high and proud
like glasses of that famous children's drink: the good flower
wine .
I'd chop wood for her stove. She cooked on a woodstove
and heated the place during the winter with a huge wood furnace
that she manned like the captain of a submarine in a
dark basement ocean during the winter.
In the summer I'd throw endless cords of wood into her
basement until I was silly in the head and everything looked
like wood, even clouds in the sky and cars parked on the
street and cats.
There were dozens of little tiny things that I did for her.
Find a lost screwdriver, lost in 1911. Pick her a pan full of
pie cherries in the spring, and pick the rest of the cherries
on the tree for myself. Prune those goofy, at best half-assed
trees in the backyard. The ones that grew beside an old pile
of lumber. Weed.
One early autumn day she loaned me to the woman next
door and I fixed a small leak in the roof of her woodshed.
The woman gave me a dollar tip, and I said thank you, and
the next time it rained, all the newspapers she had been saving
for seventeen years to start fires with got soaking wet.
From then on out, I received a sour look every time I
passed her house. I was lucky I wasn't lynched.
I didn't work for the old lady in the winter. I'd finish the
year by the last of October, raking up leaves or something
or transporting the last muttering gartersnake to winter
quarters in the old ladies' toothbrush Valhalla across the
street.
Then she'd call me on the telephone in the spring. I would
always be surprised to hear her little voice, surprised that
she was still alive. I'd get on my horse and go out to her
place and the whole thing would begin again and I'd make a
few bucks and stroke the sun-warmed fur of her stuffed dog.
One spring day she had me ascend to the attic and clean
up some boxes of stuff and throw out some stuff and put some
stuff back intd its imaginary proper place.
I was up there all alone for three hours. It was my first
time up there and my last, thank God. The attic was stuffed
to the gills with stuff.
Everything that's old in this world was up there. I spent
most of my time just looking around.
An old trunk caught my eye. I unstrapped the straps, unclicked
the various clickers and opened the God-damn thing.
It was stuffed with old fishing tackle. There were old rods
and reels and lines and boots and creels and there was a metal
box full of flies and lures and hooks.
Some of the hooks still had worms on them. The worms
were years and decades old and petrified to the hooks. The
worms were now as much a part of the hooks as the metal itself.
There was some old Trout Fishing in America armor in
the trunk and beside a weather-beaten fishing helmet, I saw
an old diary. I opened the diary to the first page and it said:
The Trout Fishing Diary of Alonso Hagen
It seemed to me that was the name of the old lady's brother
who had died of a strange ailment in his youth, a thing I found
out by keeping my ears open and looking at a large photograph
prominently displayed in her front room.
I turned to the next page in the old diary and it had in columns:
The Trips and The Trout Lost
April 7, 1891 Trout Lost 8
April 15, 1891 Trout Lost 6
April 23, 1891 Trout Lost 12
May 13, 1891 Trout Lost 9
May 23, 1891 Trout Lost 15
May 24, 1891 Trout Lost 10
May 25, 1891 Trout Lost 12
June 2, 1891 Trout Lost 18
June 6, 1891 Trout Lost 15
June 17, 1891 Trout Lost 7
June 19, 1891 Trout Lost 10
June 23, 1891 Trout Lost 14
July 4, 1891 Trout Lost 13
July 23, 1891 Trout Lost 11
August 10, 1891 Trout Lost 13
August 17, 1891 Trout Lost 8
August 20, 1891 Trout Lost 12
August 29, 1891 Trout Lost 21
September 3, 1891 Trout Lost 10
September 11, 1891 Trout Lost 7
September 19, 1891 Trout Lost 5
September 23, 1891 Trout Lost 3
Total Trips 22 Total Trout Lost 239
Average Number of Trout Lost Each Trip 10.8
I turned to the third page and it was just like the preceding
page except the year was 1892 and Alonso Hagen went on
24 trips and lost 317 trout for an average of 13. 2 trout lost
each trip.
The next page was 1893 and the totals were 33 trips and
480 trout lost for an average of 14. 5 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1894. He went on 27 trips, lost 349
trout for an average of 12.9 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1895. He went on 41 trips, lost 730
trout for an average of 17.8 trout lost each trip.
The next page was 1896. Alonso Hagen only went out 12
times and lost 115 trout for an average of 9.5 trout lost each
trip.
The next page was 1897. He went on one trip and lost one
trout for an average of one trout lost for one trip.
The last page of the diary was the grand totals for the
years running from 1891-1897. Alonso Hagen went fishing
160 times and lost 2,231 trout for a seven-year average of
13.9 trout lost every time he went fishing.
Under the grand totals, there was a little Trout Fishing
in America epitaph by Alonso Hagen. It said something like:
"I've had it.
I've gone fishing now for seven years
and I haven't caught a single trout.
I've lost every trout I ever hooked.
They either jump off
or twist off.
or squirm off
or break my leader
or flop off
or fuck off.
I have never even gotten my hands on a trout.
For all its frustration,
I believe it was an interesting experiment
in total loss
but next year somebody else
will have to go trout fishing.
Somebody else will have to go
out there."
cawacko
Well-known member
THE TOWEL
We came down the road from Lake Josephus and down the
road from Seafoam. We stopped along the way to get a drink
of water. There was a small monument in the forest. I
walked over to the monument to see what was happening. The
glass door of the lookout was partly open and a towel was
hanging on the other side.
At the center of the monument was a photograph. It was
the classic forest lookout photograph I have seen before, from
that America that existed during the 1920s and 30s.
There was a man in the photograph who looked a lot like
Charles A. Lindbergh. He had that same Spirit of St. Louis
nobility and purpose of expression, except that his North Atlantic
was the forests of Idaho.
There was a woman cuddled up close to him. She was one
of those great cuddly women of the past, wearing those pants
they used to wear and those hightop, laced boots.
They were standing on the porch of the lookout. The sky was
behind them, no more than afewfeet away. People in those days
liked to take that photograph and they liked to be in it.
There were words on the monument. They said:
"In memory of Charley J. Langer, District
Forest Ranger, Challis NationalForest, Pilot
Captain Bill Kelly and Co-Pilot Arthur A. Crofts,
of the U. S. Army killed in an Airplane Crash
April 5, 1943, near this point while searching
for survivors of an Army Bomber Crew."
0 it's far away now in the mountains that a photograph
guards the memory of a man. The photograph is all alone out
there. The snow is falling eighteen years after his death. It
covers up the door. It covers up the towel.
We came down the road from Lake Josephus and down the
road from Seafoam. We stopped along the way to get a drink
of water. There was a small monument in the forest. I
walked over to the monument to see what was happening. The
glass door of the lookout was partly open and a towel was
hanging on the other side.
At the center of the monument was a photograph. It was
the classic forest lookout photograph I have seen before, from
that America that existed during the 1920s and 30s.
There was a man in the photograph who looked a lot like
Charles A. Lindbergh. He had that same Spirit of St. Louis
nobility and purpose of expression, except that his North Atlantic
was the forests of Idaho.
There was a woman cuddled up close to him. She was one
of those great cuddly women of the past, wearing those pants
they used to wear and those hightop, laced boots.
They were standing on the porch of the lookout. The sky was
behind them, no more than afewfeet away. People in those days
liked to take that photograph and they liked to be in it.
There were words on the monument. They said:
"In memory of Charley J. Langer, District
Forest Ranger, Challis NationalForest, Pilot
Captain Bill Kelly and Co-Pilot Arthur A. Crofts,
of the U. S. Army killed in an Airplane Crash
April 5, 1943, near this point while searching
for survivors of an Army Bomber Crew."
0 it's far away now in the mountains that a photograph
guards the memory of a man. The photograph is all alone out
there. The snow is falling eighteen years after his death. It
covers up the door. It covers up the towel.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
LOL!
SANDBOX MINUS JOHN DILLINGER EQUALS WHAT?
Often I return to the cover of Trout Fishing in America. I
took the baby and went down there this morning. They were
watering the cover with big revolving sprinklers. I saw some
bread lying on the grass. It had been put there to feed the
pigeons.
The old Italians are always doing things like that. The
bread had been turned to paste by the water and was squashed
flat against the grass. Those dopey pigeons were waiting until
the water and grass had chewed up the bread for them, so
they wouldn't have to do it themselves.
I let the baby play in the sandbox and I sat down on a bench
and looked around. There was a beatnik sitting at the other
end of the bench. He had his sleeping bag beside him and he
was eating apple turnovers. He had a huge sack of apple turnovers
and he was gobbling them down like a turkey. It was
probably a more valid protest than picketing missile bases.
The baby played in the sandbox. She had on a red dress
and the Catholic church was towering up behind her red dress.
There was a brick john between her dress and the church. It
was there by no accident. Ladies to the left and gents to the
right.
A red dress, I thought. Wasn't the woman who set John
Dillinger up for the FBI wearing a red dress? They called
her "The Woman in Red. "
It seemed to me that was right. It was a red dress, but so
far, John Dillinger was nowhere in sight. my daughter
played alone in the sandbox.
Sandbox minus John Dillinger equals what?
The beatnik went and got a drink of water from the fountain
that was crucified on the wall of the brick john, more toward
the gents than the ladies. He had to wash all those apple turnovers
down his throat.
There were three sprinklers going in the park. There was
one in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue and one to the
side of him and one just behind him. They were all turning in
circles. I saw Benjamin Franklin standing there patiently
through the water.
The sprinkler to the side of Benjamin Franklin hit the lefthand
tree. It sprayed hard against the trunk and knocked some
leaves down from the tree, and then it hit the center tree,
sprayed hard against the trunk and more leaves fell. Then it
sprayed against Benjamin Franklin, the water shot out to the
sides of the stone and a mist drifted down off the water. Benjamin
Franklin got his feet wet.
The sun was shining down hard on me. The sun was bright
and hot. After a while the sun made me think of my own discomfort.
The only shade fell on the beatnik.
The shade came down off the Lillie Hitchcock Colt statue
of some metal fireman saving a metal broad from a mental
fire. The beatnik now lay on the bench and the shade was two
feet longer than he was.
A friend of mine has written a poem about that statue. Goddamn,
I wish he would write another poem about that statue,
SO it would give me some shade two feet longer than my body.
I was right about "The Woman in Red, " because ten minutes
later they blasted John Dillinger down in the sandbox.
The sound of the machine-gun fire startled the pigeons and
they hurried on into the church.
My daughter was seen leaving in a huge black car shortly
after that. She couldn't talk yet, but that didn't make any difference.
The red dress did it all.
John Dillinger's body lay half in and half out of the sandbox,
more toward the ladies than the gents. He was leaking
blood like those capsules we used to use with oleomargarine,
in those good old days when oleo was white like lard.
The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, batlight
shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream
parlor at Filbert and Stockton.
An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred
double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow
to get them back to the car.
Often I return to the cover of Trout Fishing in America. I
took the baby and went down there this morning. They were
watering the cover with big revolving sprinklers. I saw some
bread lying on the grass. It had been put there to feed the
pigeons.
The old Italians are always doing things like that. The
bread had been turned to paste by the water and was squashed
flat against the grass. Those dopey pigeons were waiting until
the water and grass had chewed up the bread for them, so
they wouldn't have to do it themselves.
I let the baby play in the sandbox and I sat down on a bench
and looked around. There was a beatnik sitting at the other
end of the bench. He had his sleeping bag beside him and he
was eating apple turnovers. He had a huge sack of apple turnovers
and he was gobbling them down like a turkey. It was
probably a more valid protest than picketing missile bases.
The baby played in the sandbox. She had on a red dress
and the Catholic church was towering up behind her red dress.
There was a brick john between her dress and the church. It
was there by no accident. Ladies to the left and gents to the
right.
A red dress, I thought. Wasn't the woman who set John
Dillinger up for the FBI wearing a red dress? They called
her "The Woman in Red. "
It seemed to me that was right. It was a red dress, but so
far, John Dillinger was nowhere in sight. my daughter
played alone in the sandbox.
Sandbox minus John Dillinger equals what?
The beatnik went and got a drink of water from the fountain
that was crucified on the wall of the brick john, more toward
the gents than the ladies. He had to wash all those apple turnovers
down his throat.
There were three sprinklers going in the park. There was
one in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue and one to the
side of him and one just behind him. They were all turning in
circles. I saw Benjamin Franklin standing there patiently
through the water.
The sprinkler to the side of Benjamin Franklin hit the lefthand
tree. It sprayed hard against the trunk and knocked some
leaves down from the tree, and then it hit the center tree,
sprayed hard against the trunk and more leaves fell. Then it
sprayed against Benjamin Franklin, the water shot out to the
sides of the stone and a mist drifted down off the water. Benjamin
Franklin got his feet wet.
The sun was shining down hard on me. The sun was bright
and hot. After a while the sun made me think of my own discomfort.
The only shade fell on the beatnik.
The shade came down off the Lillie Hitchcock Colt statue
of some metal fireman saving a metal broad from a mental
fire. The beatnik now lay on the bench and the shade was two
feet longer than he was.
A friend of mine has written a poem about that statue. Goddamn,
I wish he would write another poem about that statue,
SO it would give me some shade two feet longer than my body.
I was right about "The Woman in Red, " because ten minutes
later they blasted John Dillinger down in the sandbox.
The sound of the machine-gun fire startled the pigeons and
they hurried on into the church.
My daughter was seen leaving in a huge black car shortly
after that. She couldn't talk yet, but that didn't make any difference.
The red dress did it all.
John Dillinger's body lay half in and half out of the sandbox,
more toward the ladies than the gents. He was leaking
blood like those capsules we used to use with oleomargarine,
in those good old days when oleo was white like lard.
The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, batlight
shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream
parlor at Filbert and Stockton.
An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred
double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow
to get them back to the car.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
Actually the French are one of the most martial peoples in the world, and historically some of the best soldiers ever from the time of the Roman Republic until today. It's only because of their poor showing in WW2 that we get the impression that the French are pussies. Trust me, they are anything but.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
Your mom and dad are also your brother and aunt.
THE LAST TIME I SAW TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
The last time we met was in July on the Big Wood River, ten
miles away from Ketchum. It was just after Hemingway had
killed himself there, but I didn't know about his death at the
time. I didn't know about it until I got back to San Francisco
weeks after the thing had happened and picked up a copy of
Life magazine. There was a photograph of Hemingway on the
cover.
"I wonder what Hemingway's up to, " I said to myself. I
looked inside the magazine and turned the pages to his death.
Trout Fishing in America forgot to tell me about it. I'm certain
he knew. It must have slipped his mind.
The woman who travels with me had menstrual cramps.
She wanted to rest for a while, so I took the baby and my spinning
rod and went down to the Big Wood River. That's where
I met Trout Fishing in America.
I was casting a Super-Duper out into the river and letting
it swing down with the current and then ride on the water up
close to the shore. It fluttered there slowly and Trout Fishing
in America watched the baby while we talked.
I remember that he gave her some colored rocks to play
with. She liked him and climbed up onto his lap and she started
putting the rocks in his shirt pocket.
We talked about Great Falls, Montana. I told Trout Fishing
in America about a winter I spent as a child in GreatFalls.
"It was during the war and I saw a Deanna Durbin movie seven
times, "I said.
The baby put a blue rock in Trout Fishing in America's
shirt pocket and he said, "I've been to Great Falls many
times. I remember Indians and fur traders. I remember
Lewis and Clark, but I don't remember ever seeing a Deanna
Durbin movie in Great Falls."
"I know what you mean, " I said. "The other people in
Great Falls did not share my enthusiasm for Deanna Durbin,
The theater was always empty. There was a darkness to that
theater different from any theater I've been in since. Maybe
it was the snow outside and Deanna Durbin inside. I don't
know what it was."
"What was the name of the movie?" Trout Fishing in America
said.
"I don't know, " I said. "She sang a lot. Maybe she was a
chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was a rich
girl or they needed money for something or she did something
Whatever it was about, she sang! and sang! but I can't remember
a God-damn word of it.
"One afternoon after I had seen the Deanna Durbin movie
again, I went down to the Missouri River. Part of the Missouri
was frozen over. There was a railroad bridge there.
I was very relieved to see that the Missouri River had not
changed and begun to look like Deanna Durbin.
"I'd had a childhood fancy that I would walk down to the
Missouri River and it would look just like a Deanna Durbin
movie--a chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was
a rich girl or they needed money for something or she did something.
"To this day I don't know why I saw that movie seven
times. It was just as deadly as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.
I wonder if the Missouri River is still there?" I said.
"It is, " Trout Fishing in America said smiling. "But it
doesn't look like Deanna Durbin. "
The baby by this time had put a dozen or so of the colored
rocks in Trout Fishing in America's shirt pocket. He looked
at me and smiled and waited for me to go on about Great
Falls, but just then I had a fair strike on my Super-Duper. I
jerked the rod back and missed the fish.
Trout Fishing in America said, "I know that fish who just
struck. You'll never catch him. "
"Oh, " I said.
"Forgive me, " Trout Fishing in America said. "Go on
ahead and try for him. He'll hit a couple of times more, but
you won't catch him. He's not a particularly smart fish. Just
lucky. Sometimes that's all you need. "
"Yeah, " I said. "You're right there. "
I cast out again and continued talking about Great Falls.
Then in correct order I recited the twelve least important
things ever said about Great Falls, Montana. For the twelfth
and least important thing of all, I said, "Yeah, the telephone
would ring in the morning. I'd get out of bed. I didn't have to
answer the telephone. That had all been taken care of, years
in advance.
"It would still be dark outside and the yellow wallpaper in
the hotel room would be running back off the light bulb. I'd
put my clothes on and go down to the restaurant where my
stepfather cooked all night.
"I'd have breakfast, hot cakes, eggs and whatnot. Then
he'd make my lunch for me and it would always be the same
thing: a piece of pie and a stone-cold pork sandwich. Afterwards
I'd walk to school. I mean the three of us, the Holy
Trinity: me, a piece of pie, and a stone-cold pork sandwich.
This went on for months.
"Fortunately it stopped one day without my having to do
anything serious like grow up. We packed our stuff and left
town on a bus. That was Great Falls, Montana. You say the
Missouri River is still there?"
"Yes, but it doesn't look like Deanna Durbin, " Trout Fishing
in America said. "I remember the day Lewis discovered
the falls. They left their camp at sunrise and a few hours
later they came upon a beautiful plain and on the plain were
more buffalo than they had ever seen before in one place.
"They kept on going until they heard the faraway sound of
a waterfall and saw a distant column of spray rising and disappearing.
They followed the sound as it got louder and louder.
After a while the sound was tremendous and they were at
the great falls of the Missouri River. It was about noon when
they got there.
"A nice thing happened that afternoon, they went fishing
below the falls and caught half a dozen trout, good ones, too,
from sixteen to twenty-three inches long.
"That was June 13, 1805.
"No, I don't think Lewis would have understood it if the
Missouri River had suddenly begun to look like a Deanna Durbin
movie, like a chorus girl who wanted to go to college, "
Trout Fishing in America said.
The last time we met was in July on the Big Wood River, ten
miles away from Ketchum. It was just after Hemingway had
killed himself there, but I didn't know about his death at the
time. I didn't know about it until I got back to San Francisco
weeks after the thing had happened and picked up a copy of
Life magazine. There was a photograph of Hemingway on the
cover.
"I wonder what Hemingway's up to, " I said to myself. I
looked inside the magazine and turned the pages to his death.
Trout Fishing in America forgot to tell me about it. I'm certain
he knew. It must have slipped his mind.
The woman who travels with me had menstrual cramps.
She wanted to rest for a while, so I took the baby and my spinning
rod and went down to the Big Wood River. That's where
I met Trout Fishing in America.
I was casting a Super-Duper out into the river and letting
it swing down with the current and then ride on the water up
close to the shore. It fluttered there slowly and Trout Fishing
in America watched the baby while we talked.
I remember that he gave her some colored rocks to play
with. She liked him and climbed up onto his lap and she started
putting the rocks in his shirt pocket.
We talked about Great Falls, Montana. I told Trout Fishing
in America about a winter I spent as a child in GreatFalls.
"It was during the war and I saw a Deanna Durbin movie seven
times, "I said.
The baby put a blue rock in Trout Fishing in America's
shirt pocket and he said, "I've been to Great Falls many
times. I remember Indians and fur traders. I remember
Lewis and Clark, but I don't remember ever seeing a Deanna
Durbin movie in Great Falls."
"I know what you mean, " I said. "The other people in
Great Falls did not share my enthusiasm for Deanna Durbin,
The theater was always empty. There was a darkness to that
theater different from any theater I've been in since. Maybe
it was the snow outside and Deanna Durbin inside. I don't
know what it was."
"What was the name of the movie?" Trout Fishing in America
said.
"I don't know, " I said. "She sang a lot. Maybe she was a
chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was a rich
girl or they needed money for something or she did something
Whatever it was about, she sang! and sang! but I can't remember
a God-damn word of it.
"One afternoon after I had seen the Deanna Durbin movie
again, I went down to the Missouri River. Part of the Missouri
was frozen over. There was a railroad bridge there.
I was very relieved to see that the Missouri River had not
changed and begun to look like Deanna Durbin.
"I'd had a childhood fancy that I would walk down to the
Missouri River and it would look just like a Deanna Durbin
movie--a chorus girl who wanted to go to college or she was
a rich girl or they needed money for something or she did something.
"To this day I don't know why I saw that movie seven
times. It was just as deadly as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.
I wonder if the Missouri River is still there?" I said.
"It is, " Trout Fishing in America said smiling. "But it
doesn't look like Deanna Durbin. "
The baby by this time had put a dozen or so of the colored
rocks in Trout Fishing in America's shirt pocket. He looked
at me and smiled and waited for me to go on about Great
Falls, but just then I had a fair strike on my Super-Duper. I
jerked the rod back and missed the fish.
Trout Fishing in America said, "I know that fish who just
struck. You'll never catch him. "
"Oh, " I said.
"Forgive me, " Trout Fishing in America said. "Go on
ahead and try for him. He'll hit a couple of times more, but
you won't catch him. He's not a particularly smart fish. Just
lucky. Sometimes that's all you need. "
"Yeah, " I said. "You're right there. "
I cast out again and continued talking about Great Falls.
Then in correct order I recited the twelve least important
things ever said about Great Falls, Montana. For the twelfth
and least important thing of all, I said, "Yeah, the telephone
would ring in the morning. I'd get out of bed. I didn't have to
answer the telephone. That had all been taken care of, years
in advance.
"It would still be dark outside and the yellow wallpaper in
the hotel room would be running back off the light bulb. I'd
put my clothes on and go down to the restaurant where my
stepfather cooked all night.
"I'd have breakfast, hot cakes, eggs and whatnot. Then
he'd make my lunch for me and it would always be the same
thing: a piece of pie and a stone-cold pork sandwich. Afterwards
I'd walk to school. I mean the three of us, the Holy
Trinity: me, a piece of pie, and a stone-cold pork sandwich.
This went on for months.
"Fortunately it stopped one day without my having to do
anything serious like grow up. We packed our stuff and left
town on a bus. That was Great Falls, Montana. You say the
Missouri River is still there?"
"Yes, but it doesn't look like Deanna Durbin, " Trout Fishing
in America said. "I remember the day Lewis discovered
the falls. They left their camp at sunrise and a few hours
later they came upon a beautiful plain and on the plain were
more buffalo than they had ever seen before in one place.
"They kept on going until they heard the faraway sound of
a waterfall and saw a distant column of spray rising and disappearing.
They followed the sound as it got louder and louder.
After a while the sound was tremendous and they were at
the great falls of the Missouri River. It was about noon when
they got there.
"A nice thing happened that afternoon, they went fishing
below the falls and caught half a dozen trout, good ones, too,
from sixteen to twenty-three inches long.
"That was June 13, 1805.
"No, I don't think Lewis would have understood it if the
Missouri River had suddenly begun to look like a Deanna Durbin
movie, like a chorus girl who wanted to go to college, "
Trout Fishing in America said.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
Dung, I'm nominating you for poster of the year for your performance here.
IN THE CALIFORNIA BUSH
I've come home from Trout Fishing in America, the highway
bent its long smooth anchor about my neck and then stopped.
Now I live in this place. It took my whole life to get here, to
get to this strange cabin above Mill Valley.
We're staying with Pard and his girlfriend. They have
rented a cabin for three months, June 15th to September 15th,
for a hundred dollars. We are a funny bunch, all living here
together.
Pard was born of Okie parents in British Nigeria and came
to America when he was two years old and was raised as a
ranch kid in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
He was a machinegunner in the Second World War, against
the Germans. He fought in France and Germany. Sergeant
Pard. Then he came back from the war and went to some
hick college in Idaho.
After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became
an Existentialist, He had a photograph taken of Existentialism
and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was
wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with
barely enough room in his body to contain it.
When Pard came back to America from Paris, he worked
as a tugboat man on San Francisco Bay and as a railroad
man in the roundhouse at Filer, Idaho.
Of course, during this time he got married and had a kid.
The wife and kid are gone now, blown away like apples by the
fickle wind of the Twentieth Century. I guess the fickle wind
of alltime. The family that fell in the autumn.
After he split up with his wife, he went to Arizona and was
a reporter and editor of newspapers. He honky-tonked in
Naco, a Mexican border town, drank illegal Mescal Triunfo, played
cards and shot the roof of his house full of bullet holes.
Pard tells a story about waking one morning in Naco, all
hungover, with the whips and jingles. A friend of his was sitting
at the table with a bottle of whisky beside him.
Pard reached over and picked up a gun off a chair and
took aim at the whisky bottle and fired. His friend was then
sitting there, covered with flecks of glass, blood and whisky.
"What the fuck you do that for?" he said.
Now in his late thirties Pard works at a print shop for
$1.35 an hour. It is an avant-garde print shop. They print
poetry and experimental prose. They pay him $1.35 an hour
for operating a linotype machine. A $1.35 linotype operator
is hard to find, outside of Hong Kong or Albania.
Sometimes when he goes down there, they don't even have
enough lead for him. They buy their lead like soap, a bar or
two at a time.
Pard's girlfriend is a Jew. Twenty-four years old, getting
over a bad case of hepatitis, she kids Pard about a nude photograph
of her that has the possibility of appearing in Playboy
magazine.
"There's nothing to worry about, " she says. "If they use
that photograph, it only means that 12,000,000 men will look
at my boobs. "
This is all very funny to her. Her parents have money. As
she sits in the other room in the California bush, she's on
her father's payroll in New York.
What we eat is funny and what we drink is even more hilarious:
turkeys, Gallo port, hot dogs, watermelons, Popeyes,
salmon croquettes, frappes, Christian Brothers port, orange
rye bread, canteloupes, Popeyes, salads, cheese--booze,
grub and Popeyes.
Popeyes?
We read books like The Thief's Journal, Set This House
on Fire The Naked Lunch, Krafft-Ebing. We read Krafft-
Ebing aloud all the time as if he were Kraft dinner.
"The mayor of a small town in Eastern Portugal was seen
one morning pushing a wheelbarrow full of sex organs into
the city hall. He was of tainted family. He had a woman's
shoe in his back pocket. It had been there all night. " Things
like this make us laugh.
The woman who owns this cabin will come back in the autumn.
She's spending the summer in Europe. When she comes
back, she will spend only one day a week out here: Saturday.
She will never spend the night because she's afraid to. There
is something here that makes her afraid.
Pard and his girlfriend sleep in the cabin and the baby
sleeps in the basement, and we sleep outside under the
apple tree, waking at dawn to stare out across San Francisco
Bay and then we go back to sleep again and wake once more,
this time for a very strange thing to happen, and then we go
back to sleep again after it has happened, and wake at sunrise
to stare out across the bay.
Afterwards we go back to sleep again and the sun rises
steadily hour after hour, staying in the branches of a eucalyptus
tree just a ways down the hill, keeping us cool and asleep
and in the shade. At last the sun pours over the top of the
tree and then we have to get up, the hot sun upon us.
We go into the house and begin that two-hour yak-yak activity
we call breakfast. We sit around and bring ourselves
slowly back to consciousness, treating ourselves like fine
pieces of china, and after we finish the last cup of the last
cup of the last cup of coffee, it's time to think about lunch or
go to the Goodwill in Fairfax.
So here we are, living in the California bush above Mill
Valley. We could look right down on the main street of Mill
Valley if it were not for the eucalyptus tree. We have to park
the car a hundred yards away and come here along a tunnellike
path.
If all the Germans Pard killed during the war with his
machine-gun were to come and stand in their uniforms around
this place, it would make us pretty nervous.
There's the warm sweet smell of blackberry bushes along
the path and in the late afternoon, quail gather around a dead
unrequited tree that has fallen bridelike across the path. Sometimes
I go down there and jump the quail. I just go down there
to get them up off their butts. They're such beautiful birds.
They set their wings and sail on down the hill.
O he was the one who was born to be king! That one, turning
down through the Scotch broom and going over an upsidedown
car abandoned in the yellow grass. That one, his gray
wings .
One morning last week, part way through the dawn, I awoke
under the apple tree, to hear a dog barking and the rapid
sound of hoofs coming toward me. The millennium? An invasion
of Russians all wearing deer feet?
I opened my eyes and saw a deer running straight at me.
It was a buck with large horns. There was a police dog chasing
after it.
Arfwowfuck ! Noisepoundpoundpoundpoundpoundpound !
POUND ! POUND !
The deer didn't swerve away. He just kept running straight
at me, long after he had seen me, a second or two had passed.
Arfwowfuck! Noisepoundpoundpoundpoundpoundpound!
POUND ! POUND !
I could have reached out and touched him when he went by.
He ran around the house, circling the john, with the dog
hot after him. They vanished over the hillside, leaving
streamers of toilet paper behind them, flowing out and entangled
through the bushes and vines.
Then along came the doe. She started up the same way,
but not moving as fast. Maybe she had strawberries in her
head.
"Whoa!" I shouted. "Enough is enough! I'm not selling
newspapers!"
The doe stopped in her tracks, twenty-five feet away and
turned and went down around the eucalyptus tree.
Well, that's how it's gone now for days and days. I wake
up just before they come. I wake up for them in the same
manner as I do for the dawn and the sunrise. Suddenly knowing
they're on their way.
I've come home from Trout Fishing in America, the highway
bent its long smooth anchor about my neck and then stopped.
Now I live in this place. It took my whole life to get here, to
get to this strange cabin above Mill Valley.
We're staying with Pard and his girlfriend. They have
rented a cabin for three months, June 15th to September 15th,
for a hundred dollars. We are a funny bunch, all living here
together.
Pard was born of Okie parents in British Nigeria and came
to America when he was two years old and was raised as a
ranch kid in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
He was a machinegunner in the Second World War, against
the Germans. He fought in France and Germany. Sergeant
Pard. Then he came back from the war and went to some
hick college in Idaho.
After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became
an Existentialist, He had a photograph taken of Existentialism
and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was
wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with
barely enough room in his body to contain it.
When Pard came back to America from Paris, he worked
as a tugboat man on San Francisco Bay and as a railroad
man in the roundhouse at Filer, Idaho.
Of course, during this time he got married and had a kid.
The wife and kid are gone now, blown away like apples by the
fickle wind of the Twentieth Century. I guess the fickle wind
of alltime. The family that fell in the autumn.
After he split up with his wife, he went to Arizona and was
a reporter and editor of newspapers. He honky-tonked in
Naco, a Mexican border town, drank illegal Mescal Triunfo, played
cards and shot the roof of his house full of bullet holes.
Pard tells a story about waking one morning in Naco, all
hungover, with the whips and jingles. A friend of his was sitting
at the table with a bottle of whisky beside him.
Pard reached over and picked up a gun off a chair and
took aim at the whisky bottle and fired. His friend was then
sitting there, covered with flecks of glass, blood and whisky.
"What the fuck you do that for?" he said.
Now in his late thirties Pard works at a print shop for
$1.35 an hour. It is an avant-garde print shop. They print
poetry and experimental prose. They pay him $1.35 an hour
for operating a linotype machine. A $1.35 linotype operator
is hard to find, outside of Hong Kong or Albania.
Sometimes when he goes down there, they don't even have
enough lead for him. They buy their lead like soap, a bar or
two at a time.
Pard's girlfriend is a Jew. Twenty-four years old, getting
over a bad case of hepatitis, she kids Pard about a nude photograph
of her that has the possibility of appearing in Playboy
magazine.
"There's nothing to worry about, " she says. "If they use
that photograph, it only means that 12,000,000 men will look
at my boobs. "
This is all very funny to her. Her parents have money. As
she sits in the other room in the California bush, she's on
her father's payroll in New York.
What we eat is funny and what we drink is even more hilarious:
turkeys, Gallo port, hot dogs, watermelons, Popeyes,
salmon croquettes, frappes, Christian Brothers port, orange
rye bread, canteloupes, Popeyes, salads, cheese--booze,
grub and Popeyes.
Popeyes?
We read books like The Thief's Journal, Set This House
on Fire The Naked Lunch, Krafft-Ebing. We read Krafft-
Ebing aloud all the time as if he were Kraft dinner.
"The mayor of a small town in Eastern Portugal was seen
one morning pushing a wheelbarrow full of sex organs into
the city hall. He was of tainted family. He had a woman's
shoe in his back pocket. It had been there all night. " Things
like this make us laugh.
The woman who owns this cabin will come back in the autumn.
She's spending the summer in Europe. When she comes
back, she will spend only one day a week out here: Saturday.
She will never spend the night because she's afraid to. There
is something here that makes her afraid.
Pard and his girlfriend sleep in the cabin and the baby
sleeps in the basement, and we sleep outside under the
apple tree, waking at dawn to stare out across San Francisco
Bay and then we go back to sleep again and wake once more,
this time for a very strange thing to happen, and then we go
back to sleep again after it has happened, and wake at sunrise
to stare out across the bay.
Afterwards we go back to sleep again and the sun rises
steadily hour after hour, staying in the branches of a eucalyptus
tree just a ways down the hill, keeping us cool and asleep
and in the shade. At last the sun pours over the top of the
tree and then we have to get up, the hot sun upon us.
We go into the house and begin that two-hour yak-yak activity
we call breakfast. We sit around and bring ourselves
slowly back to consciousness, treating ourselves like fine
pieces of china, and after we finish the last cup of the last
cup of the last cup of coffee, it's time to think about lunch or
go to the Goodwill in Fairfax.
So here we are, living in the California bush above Mill
Valley. We could look right down on the main street of Mill
Valley if it were not for the eucalyptus tree. We have to park
the car a hundred yards away and come here along a tunnellike
path.
If all the Germans Pard killed during the war with his
machine-gun were to come and stand in their uniforms around
this place, it would make us pretty nervous.
There's the warm sweet smell of blackberry bushes along
the path and in the late afternoon, quail gather around a dead
unrequited tree that has fallen bridelike across the path. Sometimes
I go down there and jump the quail. I just go down there
to get them up off their butts. They're such beautiful birds.
They set their wings and sail on down the hill.
O he was the one who was born to be king! That one, turning
down through the Scotch broom and going over an upsidedown
car abandoned in the yellow grass. That one, his gray
wings .
One morning last week, part way through the dawn, I awoke
under the apple tree, to hear a dog barking and the rapid
sound of hoofs coming toward me. The millennium? An invasion
of Russians all wearing deer feet?
I opened my eyes and saw a deer running straight at me.
It was a buck with large horns. There was a police dog chasing
after it.
Arfwowfuck ! Noisepoundpoundpoundpoundpoundpound !
POUND ! POUND !
The deer didn't swerve away. He just kept running straight
at me, long after he had seen me, a second or two had passed.
Arfwowfuck! Noisepoundpoundpoundpoundpoundpound!
POUND ! POUND !
I could have reached out and touched him when he went by.
He ran around the house, circling the john, with the dog
hot after him. They vanished over the hillside, leaving
streamers of toilet paper behind them, flowing out and entangled
through the bushes and vines.
Then along came the doe. She started up the same way,
but not moving as fast. Maybe she had strawberries in her
head.
"Whoa!" I shouted. "Enough is enough! I'm not selling
newspapers!"
The doe stopped in her tracks, twenty-five feet away and
turned and went down around the eucalyptus tree.
Well, that's how it's gone now for days and days. I wake
up just before they come. I wake up for them in the same
manner as I do for the dawn and the sunrise. Suddenly knowing
they're on their way.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
You have an award for plagiarizing now?
THE LAST MENTION OF TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA SHORTY
Saturday was the first day of autumn and there was a festival
being held at the church of Saint Francis. It was a hot day
and the Ferris wheel was turning in the air like a thermometer
bent in a circle and given the grace of music.
But all this goes back to another time, to when my daughter
was conceived. We'd just moved into a new apartment and
the lights hadn't been turned on yet. We were surrounded by
unpacked boxes of stuff and there was a candle burning like
milk on a saucer. So we got one in and we're sure it was the
right one.
A friend was sleeping in another room. In retrospect I
hope we didn't wake him up, though he has been awakened and
gone to sleep hundreds of times since then.
During the pregnancy I stared innocently at that growing
human center and had no idea the child therein contained
would ever meet Trout Fishing in America Shorty.
Saturday afternoon we went down to Washington Square.
We put the baby down on the grass and she took off running
toward Trout Fishing in America Shorty who was sitting under
the trees by the Benjamin Franklin statue.
He was on the ground leaning up against the right-hand
tree. There were some garlic sausages and some bread sitting
in his wheelchair as if it were a display counter in a
strange grocery store.
The baby ran down there and tried to make off with one of
his sausages.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty was instantly alerted,
then he saw it was a baby and relaxed. He tried to coax her
to come over and sit on his legless lap. She hid behind his
wheelchair, staring past the metal at him, one of her hands
holding onto a wheel.
"Come here, kid, " he said. "Come over and see old Trout
Fishing in America Shorty. "
Just then the Benjamin Franklin statue turned green like
a traffic light, and the baby noticed the sandbox at the other
end of the park.
The sandbox suddenly looked better to her than Trout Fishing
in America Shorty. She didn't care about his sausages
any more either.
She decided to take advantage of the green light, and she
crossed over to the sandbox.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty stared after her as if
the space between them were a river growing larger and
larger.
Saturday was the first day of autumn and there was a festival
being held at the church of Saint Francis. It was a hot day
and the Ferris wheel was turning in the air like a thermometer
bent in a circle and given the grace of music.
But all this goes back to another time, to when my daughter
was conceived. We'd just moved into a new apartment and
the lights hadn't been turned on yet. We were surrounded by
unpacked boxes of stuff and there was a candle burning like
milk on a saucer. So we got one in and we're sure it was the
right one.
A friend was sleeping in another room. In retrospect I
hope we didn't wake him up, though he has been awakened and
gone to sleep hundreds of times since then.
During the pregnancy I stared innocently at that growing
human center and had no idea the child therein contained
would ever meet Trout Fishing in America Shorty.
Saturday afternoon we went down to Washington Square.
We put the baby down on the grass and she took off running
toward Trout Fishing in America Shorty who was sitting under
the trees by the Benjamin Franklin statue.
He was on the ground leaning up against the right-hand
tree. There were some garlic sausages and some bread sitting
in his wheelchair as if it were a display counter in a
strange grocery store.
The baby ran down there and tried to make off with one of
his sausages.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty was instantly alerted,
then he saw it was a baby and relaxed. He tried to coax her
to come over and sit on his legless lap. She hid behind his
wheelchair, staring past the metal at him, one of her hands
holding onto a wheel.
"Come here, kid, " he said. "Come over and see old Trout
Fishing in America Shorty. "
Just then the Benjamin Franklin statue turned green like
a traffic light, and the baby noticed the sandbox at the other
end of the park.
The sandbox suddenly looked better to her than Trout Fishing
in America Shorty. She didn't care about his sausages
any more either.
She decided to take advantage of the green light, and she
crossed over to the sandbox.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty stared after her as if
the space between them were a river growing larger and
larger.
Minister of Truth
Practically Perfect
Are you descended from Mel Gibson and Sophie Marceau?