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Bethlehem Steel
Dwayne The Hitchhiker
In the state of Washington a congenial looking fisherman with his thumb extended was walking off the ferry landing at Lopez Island as we drove by and I stopped and picked him up. He had been fishing for salmon near the tip of San Juan when his boat stopped motoring. The fisherman paddled the boat to shore and a woman living up the hill saw his predicament and offered to take him to the ferry and that's how we ran into him. As we drove along he pointed out local houses of interest and told us a bit about the occupants. We dropped him at his weekend house which was in mid construction and he showed us the inside and suggested a place or two on the island to check out in the one hour we had to kill before catching the ferry to Anacortes. He said he had seen seals at a point on the way out that morning so we went to that point and also saw seals, fat juicy seals sunning on the rocks. A few days later leaving out of Hood River, Oregon, towards a town on the other side of Zig Zag Bernadette as driver approached an intersection where stood another--somewhat less congenial looking--hitchhiker and she said, should we pick him up? and before I could clear the hairball stuck in my throat she had pulled over and Dwayne was getting in the back seat. It was eight in the morning and Dwayne was reeking of beer and exuding the love of Christ or someone like Christ, a being or group of higher powered beings with whom he had regular conversations. Dwayne was a talker not impeded by his missing teeth and for twenty miles regaled us with tales about his mother and his father and his spiritual and political leanings. He stayed with his mother sometimes even though they did not really get along too well. These things he talked about when not talking about the mushrooms he was out to hunt in the woods of Oregon and which he would sell, according to him, that same day somewhere in Washington state, hitchhiking all the way. When he was a kid he had found a dollar on the street that he had watched a number of people pass by and his father had taken it and put it in an account. Did you ever see any of that money I asked even though I really did not want to encourage him to speak any more than he was speaking. He would not shut up but I didn't want him to think I was one of those people that picked him up and then told him to shut up, which he admitted was a thing that happened to him occasionally. He said he never saw a penny of that dollar and that was some kind of money back in those days, like he was 85 years old instead of what he was, which was 46. He early on had challenged Bernadette to guess his age and Bernadette had not wanted to hurt his feelings because it was obvious that he was suggesting that he looked much younger than he was but in fact he looked about 8 years older. She guessed 40 thinking she was being kind and he was ok with the 40 guess but he let on that other people thought he was much younger and that he sometimes still got carded when buying alcohol. He spewed on and on about his version of spirituality which was a convolution of Karma meets God meeting the Easter Bunny who then is sucked up by a UFO piloted by a liberal ill-informed Democrat. He kept insisting that he would be ok when we let him out in the middle of nowhere thinking that we would wish to take him all the way to his particular patch of woods laden heavily with desirable mushrooms. These were not hallucinogenic mushrooms he was after. I want to make that clear. However, Dwayne was wrong about us. We did not want to spend anymore time with him. We let him out and said goodbye, and take care, see ya, good luck, okay then, hope you find a bunch, we sure will look for you if we come back this way, and then goodbye we said again wishing he would shut the door and he eventually did. In the future Bernadette and I will probably have some discussion before picking up hitchhikers. Not all of them are ax-murderers but some of them are Dwayne.
In the state of Washington a congenial looking fisherman with his thumb extended was walking off the ferry landing at Lopez Island as we drove by and I stopped and picked him up. He had been fishing for salmon near the tip of San Juan when his boat stopped motoring. The fisherman paddled the boat to shore and a woman living up the hill saw his predicament and offered to take him to the ferry and that's how we ran into him. As we drove along he pointed out local houses of interest and told us a bit about the occupants. We dropped him at his weekend house which was in mid construction and he showed us the inside and suggested a place or two on the island to check out in the one hour we had to kill before catching the ferry to Anacortes. He said he had seen seals at a point on the way out that morning so we went to that point and also saw seals, fat juicy seals sunning on the rocks. A few days later leaving out of Hood River, Oregon, towards a town on the other side of Zig Zag Bernadette as driver approached an intersection where stood another--somewhat less congenial looking--hitchhiker and she said, should we pick him up? and before I could clear the hairball stuck in my throat she had pulled over and Dwayne was getting in the back seat. It was eight in the morning and Dwayne was reeking of beer and exuding the love of Christ or someone like Christ, a being or group of higher powered beings with whom he had regular conversations. Dwayne was a talker not impeded by his missing teeth and for twenty miles regaled us with tales about his mother and his father and his spiritual and political leanings. He stayed with his mother sometimes even though they did not really get along too well. These things he talked about when not talking about the mushrooms he was out to hunt in the woods of Oregon and which he would sell, according to him, that same day somewhere in Washington state, hitchhiking all the way. When he was a kid he had found a dollar on the street that he had watched a number of people pass by and his father had taken it and put it in an account. Did you ever see any of that money I asked even though I really did not want to encourage him to speak any more than he was speaking. He would not shut up but I didn't want him to think I was one of those people that picked him up and then told him to shut up, which he admitted was a thing that happened to him occasionally. He said he never saw a penny of that dollar and that was some kind of money back in those days, like he was 85 years old instead of what he was, which was 46. He early on had challenged Bernadette to guess his age and Bernadette had not wanted to hurt his feelings because it was obvious that he was suggesting that he looked much younger than he was but in fact he looked about 8 years older. She guessed 40 thinking she was being kind and he was ok with the 40 guess but he let on that other people thought he was much younger and that he sometimes still got carded when buying alcohol. He spewed on and on about his version of spirituality which was a convolution of Karma meets God meeting the Easter Bunny who then is sucked up by a UFO piloted by a liberal ill-informed Democrat. He kept insisting that he would be ok when we let him out in the middle of nowhere thinking that we would wish to take him all the way to his particular patch of woods laden heavily with desirable mushrooms. These were not hallucinogenic mushrooms he was after. I want to make that clear. However, Dwayne was wrong about us. We did not want to spend anymore time with him. We let him out and said goodbye, and take care, see ya, good luck, okay then, hope you find a bunch, we sure will look for you if we come back this way, and then goodbye we said again wishing he would shut the door and he eventually did. In the future Bernadette and I will probably have some discussion before picking up hitchhikers. Not all of them are ax-murderers but some of them are Dwayne.
The Chief In Charge
We have a balcony overlooking the dumpster here at the 8th Ave Inn in Seattle and if Bernadette knew it was me that lost that hubcap on the rent a car she would lock me out here as punishment with nothing more than my laptop picking up the wireless signal from the Hurricane 24 hour cafe and a rather prodigious childhood-developed talent for climbing down from balconies. If she even suspected it was me she would make me sit out here and think about where I lost it. I think it's probably in that parking lot in Anacortes where I ran over the curb while she was grocery shopping. I just remembered that. When we first noticed it missing, on Orcas Island, I was as dumbfounded as she but now it seems probable that it is in Anacortes. Bernadette will probably be punished by the rent a car company, as if the Ford Focus is not punishment enough.
Going tonight to see the Mariners play Boston at Safeco Field. Look for us midway between the first base line and the right field fence, in section 115, row 35. I will be the person ducking the foul balls.
Bernadette wants to go see a Gehry building now, yes dear, and some other stuff and then have a nice greasy bowl of Chili at Mike's.
I have been disparaged as navigator and relieved of all duties and now am in charge of picking up trash from the floorboards of the rent a car. The good thing about this duty is that I can drop trash on the floorboards and when Bernadette gives me that look I can toss my chief in charge of car garbage title back at her. I'm going to see if I can get a badge today and maybe a hat, or better yet a hat with a badge on it and then I will be such an intimidating force to deal with that I expect Bernadette will be cowering in my presence, even as I throw Almond Joy wrappers on the floor.
Last night I got dangerously drunk on one martini and a half bottle of Oregon wine and spent a couple of hours in the motel room trying not to throw up. I was successful but it wasn't pretty. I'm feeling much better now.
We have a balcony overlooking the dumpster here at the 8th Ave Inn in Seattle and if Bernadette knew it was me that lost that hubcap on the rent a car she would lock me out here as punishment with nothing more than my laptop picking up the wireless signal from the Hurricane 24 hour cafe and a rather prodigious childhood-developed talent for climbing down from balconies. If she even suspected it was me she would make me sit out here and think about where I lost it. I think it's probably in that parking lot in Anacortes where I ran over the curb while she was grocery shopping. I just remembered that. When we first noticed it missing, on Orcas Island, I was as dumbfounded as she but now it seems probable that it is in Anacortes. Bernadette will probably be punished by the rent a car company, as if the Ford Focus is not punishment enough.
Going tonight to see the Mariners play Boston at Safeco Field. Look for us midway between the first base line and the right field fence, in section 115, row 35. I will be the person ducking the foul balls.
Bernadette wants to go see a Gehry building now, yes dear, and some other stuff and then have a nice greasy bowl of Chili at Mike's.
I have been disparaged as navigator and relieved of all duties and now am in charge of picking up trash from the floorboards of the rent a car. The good thing about this duty is that I can drop trash on the floorboards and when Bernadette gives me that look I can toss my chief in charge of car garbage title back at her. I'm going to see if I can get a badge today and maybe a hat, or better yet a hat with a badge on it and then I will be such an intimidating force to deal with that I expect Bernadette will be cowering in my presence, even as I throw Almond Joy wrappers on the floor.
Last night I got dangerously drunk on one martini and a half bottle of Oregon wine and spent a couple of hours in the motel room trying not to throw up. I was successful but it wasn't pretty. I'm feeling much better now.
Backyard Buck, Orcas Island
Surviving Friendliness
At the Jetro food wholesaler in Brooklyn as a mule for The Restauranteur I waited in the checkout line with a flat cart piled not too high but with notably a small pallet of strawberries that drew the interest of the woman behind me. How much were those strawberries she asked and I did not know. Restauranteur I yelled over the din, how much were the strawberries. She looked at me like I had ask her the square root of some number she should not have to consider in this context and said she did not know. The woman behind me said they were very cheap in Chinatown and was in a completely non threatening way challenging us to justify our total lack of concern for strawberry economics. She looked at the cart and wanted to know what we were, a restaurant or what and I said yeah a restaurant even though there ain't no we about it, as I said before I was just the mule. The woman looking at all the vegetable matter on the cart said what you is, vegetarian? That or a musician or a Subversive or some godforsaken artistic type is the thing you get pegged for all the time if you go around in this world with long hair. I said no, not vegetarian, and she said good because she liked her pork chops. I like pork chops too but I could not comfort her with reportage of a menu that included pork chops so I just shut up which is how many New Yorkers survive the world in which they live when confronted with in-your-face friendly people. As I told the story later a man sitting across from me at the very restaurant for which we were earlier shopping said in response to my wording--that the woman was in-your-face-friendly--that in his opinion those were well chosen descriptive words and they drew a picture of what for him after 25 years in New York was an aspect of humanity that he had little tolerance for. I have some familiarity with urban life and I know that responding to overt friendliness from strangers can turn badly or tedious at times and I too shut it out when necessary but I cannot see that shutting it out as a rule is the way I will be going about it. The woman behind me at the Jetro asked what and where the restaurant was and I told her but then she asked did I have a card and I finally had to tell her I was just a mule and not a card carrying one. I yelled again up to The Restauranteur in front of me but she said she didn't have a card. I said to the woman who seemed disappointed in not getting a card, why do you need a card, I just told you where it was. She said, honey, that's no good because I have craft. Craft? I said. She said yeah, craft, can't remember a fucking thing. I said oh yeah I see what your saying and she said not only do I have craft but I gots CRS. I just waited this time, with the appropriate eagerness she had come to expect from me and she came back with--can't remember shit. I have some of that too, I said. It was a close call that instance of friendliness with a stranger but it seems to be one which up to this point in time I am surviving.
At the Jetro food wholesaler in Brooklyn as a mule for The Restauranteur I waited in the checkout line with a flat cart piled not too high but with notably a small pallet of strawberries that drew the interest of the woman behind me. How much were those strawberries she asked and I did not know. Restauranteur I yelled over the din, how much were the strawberries. She looked at me like I had ask her the square root of some number she should not have to consider in this context and said she did not know. The woman behind me said they were very cheap in Chinatown and was in a completely non threatening way challenging us to justify our total lack of concern for strawberry economics. She looked at the cart and wanted to know what we were, a restaurant or what and I said yeah a restaurant even though there ain't no we about it, as I said before I was just the mule. The woman looking at all the vegetable matter on the cart said what you is, vegetarian? That or a musician or a Subversive or some godforsaken artistic type is the thing you get pegged for all the time if you go around in this world with long hair. I said no, not vegetarian, and she said good because she liked her pork chops. I like pork chops too but I could not comfort her with reportage of a menu that included pork chops so I just shut up which is how many New Yorkers survive the world in which they live when confronted with in-your-face friendly people. As I told the story later a man sitting across from me at the very restaurant for which we were earlier shopping said in response to my wording--that the woman was in-your-face-friendly--that in his opinion those were well chosen descriptive words and they drew a picture of what for him after 25 years in New York was an aspect of humanity that he had little tolerance for. I have some familiarity with urban life and I know that responding to overt friendliness from strangers can turn badly or tedious at times and I too shut it out when necessary but I cannot see that shutting it out as a rule is the way I will be going about it. The woman behind me at the Jetro asked what and where the restaurant was and I told her but then she asked did I have a card and I finally had to tell her I was just a mule and not a card carrying one. I yelled again up to The Restauranteur in front of me but she said she didn't have a card. I said to the woman who seemed disappointed in not getting a card, why do you need a card, I just told you where it was. She said, honey, that's no good because I have craft. Craft? I said. She said yeah, craft, can't remember a fucking thing. I said oh yeah I see what your saying and she said not only do I have craft but I gots CRS. I just waited this time, with the appropriate eagerness she had come to expect from me and she came back with--can't remember shit. I have some of that too, I said. It was a close call that instance of friendliness with a stranger but it seems to be one which up to this point in time I am surviving.
San Juan Islands, Washington
Not By Bus
BC emailed on Monday. There were no words or pictures or links in the email because all he wanted to say was What Up? and he said that in the subject line. Some people are gabby and some people are not. I emailed back and said, Hangin. I do not have even remotely the same volume of people communicating with me, by email or by any other means, as does BC, so I considered maybe I should be more loquacious. I added some words that drew a picture of me as on top of so much Mt. Pleasant related business that my fingertips were burning just getting it all out. He doesn't really give a damn. In his reply he just wanted to know did I want to fly with him and son, Middle BC, to New Orleans for a day, where he had some business to consider, and then to East Texas to see his parents. A 48 hour whirlwind. I have enjoyed his parents for 43 years and they have very politely tolerated me for all those years. I said yes I did. I called some contractors due the next day and rescheduled them for future dates. BC can travel by Greyhound bus but he chooses instead to fly in small six seater jets.
The next day we left out of the Manassas airport and arrived in New Orleans a couple of hours later. A rent a car immediately pulled up to the plane and we signed some papers and headed to the Pontalba Apartments in the French Quarter. I used to find tourists very tiresome when I lived in New Orleans and now I was one. It is a lucky thing that I have some experience with self-loathing. But I like being a tourist with BC in New Orleans. It gives me a unique perspective and there is nothing I treasure more. Would I treasure it as much if I had spent 20 hours on a Greyhound bus to get there? I will have to get back to you on that.
BC had to schmooz with some business associates on the balcony so Middle BC and I went for a walk. We came out the door onto the flagstone outside Jackson Square and past the film crew for a new New Orleans-based TV show called K-ville. I do not even want to know what K stands for but if it stands for Kafka I will watch the show. We turned right, past the Cabildo where the Louisiana Purchase was consummated, next door to St. Louis Cathedral, under which the Baroness Pontalba's husband is buried and then entered the gates of the Square, to the backside of Andrew Jackson up on his horse. A man said he was locking up the square so we exited out the side gate and walked across Decatur and up the steps to where sits the canon. A man and a woman were getting married up there and we sat and watched some of that while people speaking Portugese and French strolled by.
On the river sitting on an iron bench I looked at the glittering brown water of the Mississippi River and MBC looked, tired. BC called and said find a restaurant and he would meet us there. We headed back and a man with some handicap wanted to recite for MBC a poem. It was a very nice poem about respecting your father. I gave the man three dollars but he said that he had not been fishing for a handout. I insisted though because if there was ever a poem worth three dollars it was that one.
MBC suggested we eat at a little tourist dive he had seen so we went there and called BC and he came down. We ordered drinks. MBC had a Shirley Temple, I had a Budweiser, and BC had water. After dinner MBC wanted to go back to the apartment and watch TV but BC thought we should take a buggy ride so we did. The last time I had taken a New Orleans buggy ride was with my father on a business trip 35 years previous, when I was about the age of MBC. I don't know many people in New Orleans so I was not concerned about, as a former resident ghetto chronicler, being spotted doing the quintessential tourist activity. As the buggy driver crossing Bourbon St. on St. Louis recited his specious version of New Orleans history I heard someone call out my name. It was my friend and next door neighbor from my house on Rocheblave, The Chauffeur. I got off the buggy and we caught up a little, standing in the street. If I had to be spotted by someone I guess The Chauffeur would have been one of my top choices. Hey, uh, don't tell anyone you saw me riding on a buggy through the French Quarter. He laughed and said my secret was safe.
After the buggy ride MBC really wanted to go home but his father, with admirable patience, made his case for hanging outside of bars on Bourbon St. to hear live music.
Thirty minutes later we were back at the apartment and I fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning BC went off to a conference and I waited for MBC to wake up. He didn't really want to go for beignets so I offered to bring him some but he said he wanted to do that with his father. I said I would go get him something else and he said he would like a York peppermint patty, some spearmint gum, and a Dr. Pepper. I went up the street to the A&P and while there Mrs. BC called. I told her what I was doing and she questioned the wisdom of this breakfast choice. I concurred and went over to Matassa's and got an egg sandwich and brought it back. MBC spent the rest of the morning in bed watching Sponge Bob while I burned some CDs for BC. I called my nephew and he came over and lightly made fun of me for being at the Pontalba. We caught up on life as it is and about 12:30 BC called and said he was ready. MBC and I lugged the bags over to the Vieux Carre parking garage and loaded up the rental car and drove over to the conference hall and then over to the Lakefront Airport, the buildings of which are still tattered from that storm two years ago.
In EastTexas I enjoyed the comfort of extend family as represented by BC's parents and one of his brothers who also lives in the area. Years ago the brother and I used to ride our bikes to some trails along the Trinity River in Dallas and hunt each other with BB guns. I talked politics with BC's dad and received from him some gifts intended for Bernadette, whom I will see in NY later this week. BC's mom and I talked about the limitations of small town life and agreed that the single most limiting factor was the scarcity of people with whom you could be your stupid self.
This morning I woke up at Mt. Pleasant.
BC emailed on Monday. There were no words or pictures or links in the email because all he wanted to say was What Up? and he said that in the subject line. Some people are gabby and some people are not. I emailed back and said, Hangin. I do not have even remotely the same volume of people communicating with me, by email or by any other means, as does BC, so I considered maybe I should be more loquacious. I added some words that drew a picture of me as on top of so much Mt. Pleasant related business that my fingertips were burning just getting it all out. He doesn't really give a damn. In his reply he just wanted to know did I want to fly with him and son, Middle BC, to New Orleans for a day, where he had some business to consider, and then to East Texas to see his parents. A 48 hour whirlwind. I have enjoyed his parents for 43 years and they have very politely tolerated me for all those years. I said yes I did. I called some contractors due the next day and rescheduled them for future dates. BC can travel by Greyhound bus but he chooses instead to fly in small six seater jets.
The next day we left out of the Manassas airport and arrived in New Orleans a couple of hours later. A rent a car immediately pulled up to the plane and we signed some papers and headed to the Pontalba Apartments in the French Quarter. I used to find tourists very tiresome when I lived in New Orleans and now I was one. It is a lucky thing that I have some experience with self-loathing. But I like being a tourist with BC in New Orleans. It gives me a unique perspective and there is nothing I treasure more. Would I treasure it as much if I had spent 20 hours on a Greyhound bus to get there? I will have to get back to you on that.
BC had to schmooz with some business associates on the balcony so Middle BC and I went for a walk. We came out the door onto the flagstone outside Jackson Square and past the film crew for a new New Orleans-based TV show called K-ville. I do not even want to know what K stands for but if it stands for Kafka I will watch the show. We turned right, past the Cabildo where the Louisiana Purchase was consummated, next door to St. Louis Cathedral, under which the Baroness Pontalba's husband is buried and then entered the gates of the Square, to the backside of Andrew Jackson up on his horse. A man said he was locking up the square so we exited out the side gate and walked across Decatur and up the steps to where sits the canon. A man and a woman were getting married up there and we sat and watched some of that while people speaking Portugese and French strolled by.
On the river sitting on an iron bench I looked at the glittering brown water of the Mississippi River and MBC looked, tired. BC called and said find a restaurant and he would meet us there. We headed back and a man with some handicap wanted to recite for MBC a poem. It was a very nice poem about respecting your father. I gave the man three dollars but he said that he had not been fishing for a handout. I insisted though because if there was ever a poem worth three dollars it was that one.
MBC suggested we eat at a little tourist dive he had seen so we went there and called BC and he came down. We ordered drinks. MBC had a Shirley Temple, I had a Budweiser, and BC had water. After dinner MBC wanted to go back to the apartment and watch TV but BC thought we should take a buggy ride so we did. The last time I had taken a New Orleans buggy ride was with my father on a business trip 35 years previous, when I was about the age of MBC. I don't know many people in New Orleans so I was not concerned about, as a former resident ghetto chronicler, being spotted doing the quintessential tourist activity. As the buggy driver crossing Bourbon St. on St. Louis recited his specious version of New Orleans history I heard someone call out my name. It was my friend and next door neighbor from my house on Rocheblave, The Chauffeur. I got off the buggy and we caught up a little, standing in the street. If I had to be spotted by someone I guess The Chauffeur would have been one of my top choices. Hey, uh, don't tell anyone you saw me riding on a buggy through the French Quarter. He laughed and said my secret was safe.
After the buggy ride MBC really wanted to go home but his father, with admirable patience, made his case for hanging outside of bars on Bourbon St. to hear live music.
Thirty minutes later we were back at the apartment and I fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning BC went off to a conference and I waited for MBC to wake up. He didn't really want to go for beignets so I offered to bring him some but he said he wanted to do that with his father. I said I would go get him something else and he said he would like a York peppermint patty, some spearmint gum, and a Dr. Pepper. I went up the street to the A&P and while there Mrs. BC called. I told her what I was doing and she questioned the wisdom of this breakfast choice. I concurred and went over to Matassa's and got an egg sandwich and brought it back. MBC spent the rest of the morning in bed watching Sponge Bob while I burned some CDs for BC. I called my nephew and he came over and lightly made fun of me for being at the Pontalba. We caught up on life as it is and about 12:30 BC called and said he was ready. MBC and I lugged the bags over to the Vieux Carre parking garage and loaded up the rental car and drove over to the conference hall and then over to the Lakefront Airport, the buildings of which are still tattered from that storm two years ago.
In EastTexas I enjoyed the comfort of extend family as represented by BC's parents and one of his brothers who also lives in the area. Years ago the brother and I used to ride our bikes to some trails along the Trinity River in Dallas and hunt each other with BB guns. I talked politics with BC's dad and received from him some gifts intended for Bernadette, whom I will see in NY later this week. BC's mom and I talked about the limitations of small town life and agreed that the single most limiting factor was the scarcity of people with whom you could be your stupid self.
This morning I woke up at Mt. Pleasant.
Sixty-Nine Pound Heavyweight
I think I broke some of the knuckles on both my hands awhile back. I am mostly interested in getting the word knuckles on paper because I don't think the average person considers knuckles to be a subject worthy of their interest and my mission is to change that. Consider the knuckle. Being a handful of inches shy of six foot nine in height and weighing not much more than sixty-nine pounds it is not like this knuckle thing is the single most important factor in whether or not I pursue a career as a heavy weight boxer. That is really the only time I notice the knuckles, when I clench my fists. As a man who has given up on heavy weight boxing I'm not even sure why I clench my fists unless it is to get in touch with my knuckles. On top of one of the recently broken knuckles is a comma of a white scar that I just now noticed. I have a double-jointed thumb on that same hand. On top of its knuckle is an extra crease that is the result of slicing up a flap of flesh while playing with a knife, when I was a young boy left to my whims at the State Fair of Texas. I was at the freak show on the midway. I guess in those days playing the draglines (where I scooped up the knife) and going to the freak show were pretty much my favorite things to do. This was back in the days when parents gave their kids a fair amount of autonomy. On the underside of that thumb, just above that fleshy part that is supposed to approximate the various degrees of doneness in cooked meat, I have another white comma scar that is from having a bottle thrown at me while I was driving a tractor alongside the highway outside a small town in the vicinity of Houston, when I was twenty. Twenty is an interesting word too if you look at it hard. I stare sometimes a the backs of my hands when I pause from writing or when trying to achieve higher states of unconsciousness while dreaming. They are, and always have been, a lot older than the rest of me, but lately I realize the rest of me is catching up. The other hand has also been damaged, by baseballs and lawn mowers and another cheap knife. In little league they used to put me in right field because I sucked. I got a game ball once for throwing a kid out at home plate and then another ball the next year for hitting a game winning triple to win a championship game between third and fourth place teams. In between those two events though, I sucked. I didn't go to the championship party so actually I never got that second game ball. During one game, I was maybe eleven or twelve, I tried to bring in with my un-gloved hand a blooper that bad hopped into right field and it split the webbing between my index and middle finger. A couple of weeks later I did the same thing at practice and broke the stitches. I had a run of good luck and didn't do anymore damage to my hands until I was fifteen and to clear a bit of wet grass stuck my index finger into the chute of a running lawn mower, which caused a minor bit of mutilation to the tip of that finger. A few weeks later I tried to get my pen knife away from a classmate and I grabbed for it thinking he would let go but he didn't and I dropped blood all the way to the nurses office one floor below. My mom came and picked me up and I remember her being uncharacteristically un-sympathetic. I was using up too much of the family budget with my careless accidents. And she had had just about enough of my Leave it to Beaver antics.
I think I broke some of the knuckles on both my hands awhile back. I am mostly interested in getting the word knuckles on paper because I don't think the average person considers knuckles to be a subject worthy of their interest and my mission is to change that. Consider the knuckle. Being a handful of inches shy of six foot nine in height and weighing not much more than sixty-nine pounds it is not like this knuckle thing is the single most important factor in whether or not I pursue a career as a heavy weight boxer. That is really the only time I notice the knuckles, when I clench my fists. As a man who has given up on heavy weight boxing I'm not even sure why I clench my fists unless it is to get in touch with my knuckles. On top of one of the recently broken knuckles is a comma of a white scar that I just now noticed. I have a double-jointed thumb on that same hand. On top of its knuckle is an extra crease that is the result of slicing up a flap of flesh while playing with a knife, when I was a young boy left to my whims at the State Fair of Texas. I was at the freak show on the midway. I guess in those days playing the draglines (where I scooped up the knife) and going to the freak show were pretty much my favorite things to do. This was back in the days when parents gave their kids a fair amount of autonomy. On the underside of that thumb, just above that fleshy part that is supposed to approximate the various degrees of doneness in cooked meat, I have another white comma scar that is from having a bottle thrown at me while I was driving a tractor alongside the highway outside a small town in the vicinity of Houston, when I was twenty. Twenty is an interesting word too if you look at it hard. I stare sometimes a the backs of my hands when I pause from writing or when trying to achieve higher states of unconsciousness while dreaming. They are, and always have been, a lot older than the rest of me, but lately I realize the rest of me is catching up. The other hand has also been damaged, by baseballs and lawn mowers and another cheap knife. In little league they used to put me in right field because I sucked. I got a game ball once for throwing a kid out at home plate and then another ball the next year for hitting a game winning triple to win a championship game between third and fourth place teams. In between those two events though, I sucked. I didn't go to the championship party so actually I never got that second game ball. During one game, I was maybe eleven or twelve, I tried to bring in with my un-gloved hand a blooper that bad hopped into right field and it split the webbing between my index and middle finger. A couple of weeks later I did the same thing at practice and broke the stitches. I had a run of good luck and didn't do anymore damage to my hands until I was fifteen and to clear a bit of wet grass stuck my index finger into the chute of a running lawn mower, which caused a minor bit of mutilation to the tip of that finger. A few weeks later I tried to get my pen knife away from a classmate and I grabbed for it thinking he would let go but he didn't and I dropped blood all the way to the nurses office one floor below. My mom came and picked me up and I remember her being uncharacteristically un-sympathetic. I was using up too much of the family budget with my careless accidents. And she had had just about enough of my Leave it to Beaver antics.