Think Brown And Flaky
I was born at the Methodist hospital in South Oak Cliff way ahead of the cool curve, just a few years before Oswald shot the President and officer Tippet and tried to hide out in the dark of a theater somewhere near the house I was in coloring a snowman on fire while listening on the combo radio/45 record player to the news of an assassinated President. Its not that scenic where I grew up, then or now, an area just barely fighting off the blight pressed upon it by the nearby snaking Interstate 35, which constricts the hopefulness out of the neighborhoods into which it carries the hopeful.
A year after the assassination we packed up and I'm not saying we rode that snake out of there because that sounds nasty. We jumped in the station wagon and relocated to the edge of farmland that is now the middle of North Dallas. If you left from that house today looking for the edge of farmland you better gas up first.
On the construction sites that were my playground I fell in infrastructure ditches full of chocolate rainwater and floated on discarded lumber in my heavy winter coat while waiting to be rescued. I traveled for miles underground in storm sewers during the Vietnam War only I was doing it in North Dallas, finally exiting onto the brown hillside that overlooked the earth movers creating the LBJ freeway.
My friend and I dug a hole in his backyard and I could think of nothing else during the Sunday sermon at the Methodist church than getting back to the digging of that hole. The preacher would later divorce his wife and his son was rumored to be gay and as long as it could last we all felt fortunate to know about such things without having the stain of similar impropriety on our own happy days. My friend had been on the grassy knoll that day the bullets whizzed by but we never talked about it. We were old enough to know better but we fantasized about maybe actually getting to China if we dug long enough. We hit a gas pipe many days into the project and I can only guess his parents were relieved because the hole was considerably deeper than was necessary for the tree they had intended to plant there, which now couldn't be planted there at all because of the gas pipe.
Before everybody fenced in their properties I pedaled between houses at full speed on my purple Schwinn Stingray with banana seat and slick rear tire, crossing blindly the paved alleyways that ran behind our houses, only once getting hit by a car.
Footballs soared and I reached up casually during full stride and pulled them to my chest, never slowing down until crossing somebody's driveway marking the end zone of our imaginary greatness. I had a Leroy Kelly jersey and I just loved it because while wearing it I not only looked super cool, I was possibly in possession of supernatural talent. The day it ripped during a tackle was like days that would follow, only harder, for the lack of the cumulative experience which becomes our perspective.
This morning things have gotten to the point where all I'm thinking about is food and each successive check proves true the same reality, that I have very little to eat here. I could but won't eat the garbanzo beans, the black beans, the chunk light tuna, the refried beans, or the can of soup, for breakfast. I did have a bowl of cereal and could have another one but I feel saddened by the prospect of that. What I will eat apparently, is the microwave spaghetti and meatballs. Last night I had a can of soup from the bighouse cupboard and then went out to the 211 Quickee Mart and got me a pint of Ben and Jerry's NY Super Chunk Fudge chocolate ice cream. I felt so good when I first dug in that I decided to just eat the whole pint and see what happens. And let me tell you something--what happens is near death, so be careful with that, you ice cream addicts.
Well, that was like a snack, the spaghetti and meatballs. Hey, let me tell you something useful, finally. If where you shop offers a sale on Stouffer's frozen dinners, like 5 for ten dollars or something, go easy on the spaghetti and meatballs and instead try the chicken pot pies (the lasagna is an ok value too). You are thinking oh my stove doesn't work or oh I don't want to heat up the kitchen for one little pot pie and the microwave browning technology offered by that silver cardboard stuff in frozen dinners is whack, hey, no, no, they finally got it down, at least with the Stouffer's frozen pot pies. Trust me, think, brown and flaky. Think brown and flaky. And now, having improved your life just that little bit, I bid you adieu.
Midland didn't have storm sewers so I had to experience that tunneling vicariously via friends who moved out of town and reported back from exotic places like Lawrence, KS.
What Midland has is public parks that are deep bowls in the earth, and that fill up with water during the city's two annual heavy rains.
It is in these valleys that the frogs young George Bush allegedly blew up magically appear, as if by spontaneous generation.
Personally I'm skeptical about the frog story. It came from a reminiscin' friend of Bush's, not the man himself. Every kid tells stories about torturing frogs and the like--either that they'd done it or "knew someone" who had. The whiny liberal blogosphere took that bit of juvenile bragging WAY too fucking seriously. I've seen deep scholarly psychological essays about Bush's inherent cruelty based on that one offhand story.
Which isn't to say he isn't cruel, he gives new meaning to the word, just that people say shit--especially people who were once kids.
Yeah, funny, one of my edit-outs this morning was a frog story.
i have a frog story im not willing to tell as well.
In Houston we had toads that peed as self-defense, when startled. A game was to find a "full" one, pick it up very slowly, aim it at someone and give it a jiggle to unleash the stream.
Now that toad is an endangered species. I think it had more to do with suburban sprawl than my toad hassling behavior. At least that's what I try to convince myself.
...brown and flakey, brown and flakey...
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I was born at the Methodist hospital in South Oak Cliff way ahead of the cool curve, just a few years before Oswald shot the President and officer Tippet and tried to hide out in the dark of a theater somewhere near the house I was in coloring a snowman on fire while listening on the combo radio/45 record player to the news of an assassinated President. Its not that scenic where I grew up, then or now, an area just barely fighting off the blight pressed upon it by the nearby snaking Interstate 35, which constricts the hopefulness out of the neighborhoods into which it carries the hopeful.
A year after the assassination we packed up and I'm not saying we rode that snake out of there because that sounds nasty. We jumped in the station wagon and relocated to the edge of farmland that is now the middle of North Dallas. If you left from that house today looking for the edge of farmland you better gas up first.
On the construction sites that were my playground I fell in infrastructure ditches full of chocolate rainwater and floated on discarded lumber in my heavy winter coat while waiting to be rescued. I traveled for miles underground in storm sewers during the Vietnam War only I was doing it in North Dallas, finally exiting onto the brown hillside that overlooked the earth movers creating the LBJ freeway.
My friend and I dug a hole in his backyard and I could think of nothing else during the Sunday sermon at the Methodist church than getting back to the digging of that hole. The preacher would later divorce his wife and his son was rumored to be gay and as long as it could last we all felt fortunate to know about such things without having the stain of similar impropriety on our own happy days. My friend had been on the grassy knoll that day the bullets whizzed by but we never talked about it. We were old enough to know better but we fantasized about maybe actually getting to China if we dug long enough. We hit a gas pipe many days into the project and I can only guess his parents were relieved because the hole was considerably deeper than was necessary for the tree they had intended to plant there, which now couldn't be planted there at all because of the gas pipe.
Before everybody fenced in their properties I pedaled between houses at full speed on my purple Schwinn Stingray with banana seat and slick rear tire, crossing blindly the paved alleyways that ran behind our houses, only once getting hit by a car.
Footballs soared and I reached up casually during full stride and pulled them to my chest, never slowing down until crossing somebody's driveway marking the end zone of our imaginary greatness. I had a Leroy Kelly jersey and I just loved it because while wearing it I not only looked super cool, I was possibly in possession of supernatural talent. The day it ripped during a tackle was like days that would follow, only harder, for the lack of the cumulative experience which becomes our perspective.
This morning things have gotten to the point where all I'm thinking about is food and each successive check proves true the same reality, that I have very little to eat here. I could but won't eat the garbanzo beans, the black beans, the chunk light tuna, the refried beans, or the can of soup, for breakfast. I did have a bowl of cereal and could have another one but I feel saddened by the prospect of that. What I will eat apparently, is the microwave spaghetti and meatballs. Last night I had a can of soup from the bighouse cupboard and then went out to the 211 Quickee Mart and got me a pint of Ben and Jerry's NY Super Chunk Fudge chocolate ice cream. I felt so good when I first dug in that I decided to just eat the whole pint and see what happens. And let me tell you something--what happens is near death, so be careful with that, you ice cream addicts.
Well, that was like a snack, the spaghetti and meatballs. Hey, let me tell you something useful, finally. If where you shop offers a sale on Stouffer's frozen dinners, like 5 for ten dollars or something, go easy on the spaghetti and meatballs and instead try the chicken pot pies (the lasagna is an ok value too). You are thinking oh my stove doesn't work or oh I don't want to heat up the kitchen for one little pot pie and the microwave browning technology offered by that silver cardboard stuff in frozen dinners is whack, hey, no, no, they finally got it down, at least with the Stouffer's frozen pot pies. Trust me, think, brown and flaky. Think brown and flaky. And now, having improved your life just that little bit, I bid you adieu.
- jimlouis 8-09-2005 6:52 pm
Midland didn't have storm sewers so I had to experience that tunneling vicariously via friends who moved out of town and reported back from exotic places like Lawrence, KS.
What Midland has is public parks that are deep bowls in the earth, and that fill up with water during the city's two annual heavy rains.
It is in these valleys that the frogs young George Bush allegedly blew up magically appear, as if by spontaneous generation.
Personally I'm skeptical about the frog story. It came from a reminiscin' friend of Bush's, not the man himself. Every kid tells stories about torturing frogs and the like--either that they'd done it or "knew someone" who had. The whiny liberal blogosphere took that bit of juvenile bragging WAY too fucking seriously. I've seen deep scholarly psychological essays about Bush's inherent cruelty based on that one offhand story.
Which isn't to say he isn't cruel, he gives new meaning to the word, just that people say shit--especially people who were once kids.
- tom moody 8-09-2005 7:16 pm [add a comment]
Yeah, funny, one of my edit-outs this morning was a frog story.
- jimlouis 8-09-2005 7:26 pm [add a comment]
i have a frog story im not willing to tell as well.
- bill 8-09-2005 7:29 pm [add a comment]
In Houston we had toads that peed as self-defense, when startled. A game was to find a "full" one, pick it up very slowly, aim it at someone and give it a jiggle to unleash the stream.
Now that toad is an endangered species. I think it had more to do with suburban sprawl than my toad hassling behavior. At least that's what I try to convince myself.
- mark 8-09-2005 10:59 pm [add a comment]
...brown and flakey, brown and flakey...
- steve 8-10-2005 6:10 pm [add a comment]