Out on a limb
Needless to say I did not have collision insurance. I understand I am lucky to be alive.
Hate to see anybody get railroaded. I took the train to New Hampshire. Four nights sleeping in a chair moving seventy miles per hour. Finally figured out what AMTRAK means. All My Troubles Really Are Karma.
Grant was in California for ten days visiting his family, so I spent Christmas alone. Killing time on my birthday, I took the dog for an imaginary walk. Oh, the walk was real enough, it’s the dog who was spectral.
After four nights sleeping in a railroad seat, I slept on Grant’s television couch, not yet ready to make the transition to an actual bed. Expect to see Grant and I on an upcoming edition of “Lifestyles Of The Rich & The Homeless.” I spent the first week there alone pretending to be fabulously wealthy.
Grant is a man I love, in spite of his millions, not to mention his thirty-five thousand books, his video library and seventy-seven-inch television set with satellite dish. His upstairs beer bar. Made me feel right at home, not counting his refusal to adopt me. When I was not running mile after mile on the computerized treadmill, or swimming in the heated indoor pool, I was reading (seventeen books before departure) or watching videos (forty-three). There is no poverty here, no news, no stupidity, only momentum to do good work. And learn. Becoming more and more my own hero.
If I close my eyes and try real hard, I could almost forget – I’m thinking about putting this to music – I have no home, no job, no car, no driver’s license, no insurance, no health care, no woman, no dog. Hold it! I didn’t even think to mention… something of a constant… no money.
Soon such inefficiencies may bode ill, but at Rolling Acres, two men are an island.
Guess I alone am responsible for the infamous Wild Weather Curse, which dogged every moment of The Dog’s 1992 American Tour. T’was the snowiest winter in New England’s history, which goes back a few years. The coldest ninety days in New Hampshire since the Ice Age. Trudging the half-mile-long driveway to get the mail had a distinct Iditarod feel to it.
My only chores were picking up the mail and feeding cracked corn to a flock of ten wild turkeys. Moose and bear have been reported on the property, but I didn’t see any. One day I watched a mink slide down the south pasture on his tummy.
As part of my DUI conviction, I was forced to take drug & alcohol counseling. What better place to seek treatment for driving under the influence than New Hampshire, a state which operates liquor stores at highway rest stops. Spent fourteen hours a couple Saturdays and Sundays in treatment. Inside a hospital, Psychiatry department. With eight other drunken drivers, who turned out not to be such bad people.
One woman who looks positively pickled has had two DUI’s, blames everybody else for her problems and claims not to drink. Another guy has had three DUI convictions and downs a six-pack nightly on average, including last night. Some people haven’t had a drink since the incident. Most, like myself, haven’t been drunk since arrested.
The instructor was a pleasant attractive young woman who tried not to make the entire experience a total bummer. (Oregon tends to be punitive, while New Hampshire is curative.) I fell in love with her.
We watched videos about rotten livers and waitresses who have to pay eight million dollars to their victims’ parents, and the guy doing forty-five years in prison without the possibility of parole for running down seven (7) people at a bus stop, and on and on. So, the first night I dreamt I got drunk, killed an old friend, nobody you know, had sex with his wife, also nobody you know and, to escape the police, stole a passenger jet, later forgetting where I’d parked it . Stereotypical alcoholic behavior.
The rest of the dream involved walking through Portland at night in the pouring rain attempting to evade the authorities while trying to locate the damn airplane. On my search I bumped into Tim Winn, my predecessor as Director Of Public Relations at NIKE, who’d gotten even fatter and was measuring a running course with a metric wheel. Which seemed unbalanced.
Enough to drive a man to drink.
Not to mention, after untold hours of worry, torment and anguish, nobody, not once, tested me for alcohol or any other drug usage. It’s been ninety or more days, so I’m ready. Go ahead, somebody, test me. Ha! Actually, a smoke would be good about now.
By the way, it’s official: I am not an alcoholic, and I have a paper to prove it.
At Grant’s, I finally got started on my novel, The Last American Cowboy, which was actually going pretty well, too, until treatment began. Haven’t yet regained my momentum. However, I can reread the seventeen thousand some words over and over again and still feel pretty damn good about almost every one of them. That’s saying plenty.
I purchased a copy of The Bridges of Madison County by Robert Waller, as a thank-you gift for my host there and as a study of what constitutes a popular megabestseller in the current publishing environment.
Please note, I have been calling Barker Ajax the last American cowboy for a number of years by now; Waller – who wrote his book in fourteen days – calls his hero, his hero calls himself, “the last cowboy.” Ouch! And Francesca’s dog is named Jack.
Will everybody think I stole the idea? Will I be perceived as some supercilious sleazebag trying to dirtball his way onto the armored car bandwagon by appropriating another’s ideas? Oh, Lordy mama, I hope not.
My goal, one of them, of writing TLAC was to plug into the baby-boomer zeitgeist, thereby creating a cultural phenomenon. i.e., major bucks and acclaim. Makes all the sense in the world, I guess, there’s more than one middle-aged guy out here (see Waller) trying to the same thing.
Whether you’re Jack D. The Wild Dog, Barker Ajax, The Last American Cowboy, or Robert Kincaid, there’s a very real sense of not being in the right space at the proper moment. Being here now seems out of place, today is not the right time. Some of us aren’t adapting and see little reason why we should. The days of the open range are over.
One of the concepts I’ve been working on is READING SIGN, the way the old Indian scouts did, the hunter looking for footprints in the sand, the broken twig, the bent grass, the scuffed moss. In the business world, I was an abject failure at corporate politics. As a columnist, I never noticed the editor’s clues about offending advertisers. Etc. Cut to the chase. I am learning to read signs about myself, and I feel certain I’m on the write track.
After ten weeks, Grant was anxious to see me go, practically panting. Can’t imagine why. So, I flew to Florida to visit my aunt and uncle for a month.
Every day here is like the best day in the middle of August. First day of Spring the mercury reached 89 degrees. Last night’s low was 77. Jasmine in bloom. Gardenia and hibiscus, too.
I can tell you everything you need to know about Miami in two words: kosher fajitas.
Things are different here in Boca Raton, literally “Mouth of The Rat.” I wonder sometimes why we all don’t live in Florida. Try to find a parking space at the beach during Season, it seems we all do. But, for dog’s sake, don’t go in the water. Man of war, riptides, sea lice, schools of black-finned sharks reported this week.
Florida – State Motto: “Connect The Liver Spots” – is by nature basically unfit for human habitation, especially foreign tourists. The State Game & Fresh Water Fish Commission issues seven thousand permits annually to licensed trappers to destroy gators who have become a nuisance. “They’re lightning quick,” says one expert, and he doesn’t mean the trappers. “No other animals or human beings can outrun them in an ambush-type or frontal charge. They have the largest brain of all living reptiles.”
Which is like saying somebody has the biggest heart of all federal prosecutors. Apparently, there are smarter dead reptiles.
Adds the education director of the local Wildlife Center, “Alligators can’t distinguish between food and small children or small pets. Whenever you’re in an area with alligators, always look around you. Be aware of your surroundings.”
Advice like that is why she’s paid the big bucks.
How big are the insects here? This from The News. ” A Boca Raton woman called police Thursday night after she spotted a large spider in her den. Police responded to the woman’s Northeast 20th Street apartment, located the spider and killed it, reports said.”
The Exotic Pest Plant Council has given Lather Leaf, a.k.a., “The Hawaiian Strangler”, a Category 1 ranking on the most unwanted list. The aggressive shrub, which suffocates domestic flora, joins some 30 other Killer Bushes From Other Countries, like the dreaded Brazilian Pepper and Australian Pine.
Took a chance. Picked strawberrys day before Easter.
A local school board may fire an elementary music teacher, probably a percussionist, for carrying a loaded .357 Magnum with his lesson plans.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are so busy arguing over two bills, one which will okay chemical castration and another which will prohibit public nudity, they can’t agree on the state’s annual budget.
Went out to dinner the other night, with my aunt and uncle. The taut, nubile, young waitress took one look at me and charged me the senior citizen rate.
Remind me to dye my mustache.
Sam Shepherd said, “the most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning.”
Except for the infrequent highway overpass, there are no hills within a twenty mile radius. I ran for an hour a couple of times on bike paths before discovering a wonderful park. The park includes three manicured soccer fields where I can run on grass.
So, thirty-eight minutes into my first grass run, my left calf – for no good reason – blew out. Bummer. Lost my fine treadmill edge. Which didn’t seem to carry over much anyway. Yesterday I managed thirty-two minutes on grass. God, it’s hot. Thus, I embark upon Comeback # 769.
Other people keep track of their mileage….
Meanwhile, my cousin wants to be a writer.
Meanwhile, I am working on my other book THE WRITING COACH, an unregistered trademark and a marvelous means to avoid work on the novel. As is this letter.
So, I’m thinking…. being a professional writer is something like being a truck driver. You can be a consummate operator of the vehicle, you might even own your own truck. Doesn’t mean you should start your own trucking company. No, you need a full load and a place to deliver it. Content and outlet. Something to say and somebody to pay you for saying it, for transporting the material.
Running Times has asked me to do a profile on Philip H. Knight. On the premise he may actually respect me enough to answer questions. My Mary Decker Tabb Slaney piece, my debut in RT, is scheduled for July. Wild Dog should appear in June. Guess I’ll just keep on truckin’.
I am determined, by the way, definitely somehow to return to college, get my M.F.A., hopefully teach. I have much to offer.
I have an attorney-buddy in Seattle looking into my accident. Granted I was not insured for collision, but the four(4) eighteen-wheel freighter trucks certainly were. Unfortunately, my insurance company is the same company that insures Truck #1. Bottomline, no one was at fault, according to them, so they paid the truck and washed their hands of me. Washed them clean. Doesn’t seem fair. After all, they crashed into me, they were insured. I just don’t feel happy about the company who SHOULD pay, deciding IF they should pay.
I will be at my parents’ home April 11. I am due at 2147 NW Irving, Portland on or about April 24, where I will house-sit until June. End of the foreseeable future.
Is suicide is a viable option?
Just kidding. I couldn’t afford the bullet anyway.
And the way my luck is going, I’d probably miss.
According to a West African proverb, “The beginning of wisdom is to get you a roof.” It’s about time to wise up.
And that’s the news. Hope you’re doing simply swell yourself.
Let me hear from you. Bone chance.
