Because I am single...

- I can make new handkerchiefs out of jagged chunks of old t-shirts and nobody bitches about it much. If they complain I tell them to go buy me some new ones.

- I can have a really sloppy butter dish with smears of peanut butter or jelly on the butter. It pretty much tastes the same.

- I can smoke cigars in my home. Anywhere. Any cigars too!

- I don’t have to clean the bathroom except when company is coming.

- I can have really awful breath all day on days I don’t feel like brushing my teeth.

- Ditto for shaving

- There are knives and lighters laying all over the place

- Trashy women can visit because I don’t have to set an example for anybody.

- I can cook and eat things like kippered herring, liver and onions, Limburger
cheese, octopus, and nobody tells me it looks gross or smells bad.

Check back later for more.....

What Doug Did.

He had a pretty good history. I met him 13 or 14 years ago at a religious thing and found out he lived right down the street. At the time he was in between professional jobs, hard times, and working in a warehouse stacking pizza crusts. And lived about 10 blocks away from me. And we eventually found that we clicked. He was allergic to wheat products so he baked his own bread in a bread machine out of strange grains like spelt. I got to sample everything and it was just fine. Actually he was a pretty fair cook. He ate sixty zillion herbal nutritional supplements every day. He had two cats (his Spirit Animals were the cat family) named for Star Trek characters. One was Yoda. Both black, both from shelters, a Siamese and a Russian Blue. After awhile they saw some merit in me too. Doug eventually moved to Clayton, for awhile, and we had a great Thanksgiving dinner there that he had cooked. With movies. He followed his professional employment and wound up in Urbana in a great big old apartment with ceilings so high it would rain on damp days. He was a licensed therapist and worked in corrections. He was married once, halfway wanted another relationship and liked oriental women. His last job was in West Jefferson, Ohio where he moved and I lost track of him until three years ago when he phoned me from a nursing home in Middletown and told me he had a stroke.

He was honest and forthright with me. When I had a problem he always asked me if I wanted him to answer as a therapist or a friend. If I said 'friend' he laid it on the line and it wasn't always what I wanted to hear. But it was healthier than my plan. We went to religious things together; stopped at a farm in Urbana to buy ostrich sausage (pretty good actually); went to a fish farm where I got to be a kid and pet the sturgeons. (Cool, rubbery and squeaky clean). Ate meals at the local hospital cafeteria; Discovered the riches of the Urbana Public Library; Talked and talked some more. I listened a lot. So did he. We were easy and cozy with each other. He taught me everything I know about smoking cigars, he was very wise about that art.

The last two and a half years were nursing homes, additional strokes, and I guess he finally got tired of it and decided to go. He believed in past and future lives. Six months ago during a hospitalization he had some very prophetic dreams about another country and another time. South America and altars and wise men. Macchu Picchu style. I figure that's where he's headed. Gonna' miss the dude. Already do. It'll take awhile. Bye Doug! Ta!

Sneaked right past like a thief in the night.

My friend Doug died today at 3.30 in the afternoon. He had another stroke a few days ago and went to the hospital. Than got discharged two days ago and back to the nursing home. When I called the place to check on him I was told that he was back, in room such-and-such and could have visitors. So I decided that Tuesday would be a nice day to go visit and rock and roll. I got a call from one of his friends just now saying that he had died today. What the nursing home didn't tell me when I checked was that Doug WAS back, he was in a semi-vegetative state, had oxygen and a feeding tube and a Dextrose IV and had somebody from Hospice sitting by his side. So he left on his trip to the next stop and here we are. I would have liked to be there to wish him a safe trip but he knew that was my wish. We talked a lot about all this in the last couple years. And he was ready.

i tried to take a nap about 2 this afternoon and tossed and turned and finally got back up. Which is really unusual because I can go to sleep at the drop of a pin. By three thirty I was having chest pains which is NOT characteristic of anything about me (I'm told by doctors I have the heart of a 21-year-old), and wondering if I should call somebody. Pains went away around 4.30. By five I was rocking and rolling again and frying a pork chop and onions and potatoes. I think at 3.30 my chest pains was the Universe letting me know Doug was leaving. That's happened before.

There'll be some kind of remembrance service one of these days, nothing fancy, and I'll take a handful of photos to it and three of us (Doug's Only Friends) will sit around and tell stories about him. And that's good. Ta!

Mixed Vegetables, Radits and Carrishes.

We had chili at my house tonight. With homemade sausage, tomato sauce, chili powder, braised onions and garlic, cocoa and sugar. And we used Cheese Curls for crackers. We're in a warming trend right now and in front of my garage is standing water over ice. I do not go there at present, I park in the front of the house. I was looking for a couple women this afternoon, not for immoral purposes, and one had quit the job she was at so I can't find her and the other is on vacation in upstate New York. They have two feet of snow up there and people go to the supermarket on ice skates. But this girl is a little loopy so she is on vacation there.

I have two godsons, Devin and Ryeley. They live kind of out in the country. With various animals including parents and a grandfather. The responsibility of a godfather, such as I am, is to provide for the children's religious training and awareness. So far I have taught them how to spit straight and how to chase cows. I think there may be something religious about this. There is another godson yet to come but he will appear only on St. Swithin's Day in March. I keep calling him Adam Ant and Ethan Allen but his name is actually Ethan Adam and I'm not sure I have that right. I am going to post pictures of all of them soon right in this post. Have a nice upcoming week! Ta!

When I was growing up - 2

In about 1949 - don't quote me - we moved to 905 E 11th Street, a two story, red brick siding house which isn't there anymore. The place is part of the front lawn of a factory. Miller lived next door east, had a '37 Packard Clipper and a kid named Billy who was a bully and we were afraid of. Babe Daniels was on the other side, a fireman, and his kid Jerry got polio in one leg. It had to be massaged every night and it hurt and you could hear him crying. Fire engines used to run up the next street with their sirens going - like the one in the picture, 40's LaFrances - and coming back from the fire the driver would toll the big brass bell on the side of the cab.





Nick and I were running around by then and my twin sisters were born there. Mom had a hard time with all this and all of us had a really hard time with Mom. Dad went to work in the next town every morning and came back at suppertime. This was the house of most of our childhood baggage. But Nick and I had bikes and, during the summer we were able to take off without siperivison and head for the railroad where we played. Don't tell Mom. The crossing on Chartres Street was where the Monon line came into town over a bridge and then eventually right through town in the middle of 15th Street.



We liked Chartres Street, the crossing smelled like creosote, we saw trains up close but not too close, and the railroad man would come to open the big silver cabinet there and fill the batteries in it with caustic soda. The batteries powered the crossing signals. Chartres was a neighborhood kind of on the rough side but we didn't know that when we were kids. We didn't know about poor and disadvantaged. Just more dogs and no sidewalks and beat up cars.



Over on Beeler the Beck Sisters ran a dry goods store. Carrie and her sister. mom shopped there sometimes and it was a palace of wonderful fabrics, thread, plastic model kits, some aftershave, paper and pens and pencils.



The Becks used to sit in the side yard where their house was to catch a breeze in the evening.

There will be more about growing up in the next installment when I get nostalgic enough to write it! Ta!

When I was growing up - 1

Google Maps and Google Earth have this thing called Street View now and it is fun to play with. After I got tired of looking at my house and my girlfriends’ houses I looked at all the houses I grew up in. Mostly New Albany Indiana. This is not the same childhood town that I knew but we are talking the 1950’s and the whole world isn’t the same in some ways either. I found out how to save the street view as a J-peg photo.

According to Mom my first home was someplace on Rear Market Street. 1810 seems to stick in my mind. I guess right after World War II you didn’t have a lot of places to choose from because there weren’t a lot. Rear Market was the wrong side of the tracks, literally behind the railroad station and you could hear trains. That is all I remember. Mom remembers roaches on the walls when you turned the lights on. Not me. There was also an apartment in between someplace on Spring Street where we lived when Dad was on sea duty with the Navy. One night some diapers hanging over a gas heater to dry caught on fire. Mom put it out. Scared the poop out of me.

But on to 530 E 8th Street which might have been the first nice house that we had. That's the photo on top of the page. I was the first kid for a couple years and I was spoiled and coddled there. I remember a red wood wagon and chocolate birthday cake. One night there was a wreck outside and Dad went out to check. The blinking yellow light that hung over the intersection was a foot above the street and swinging wildly. There was rain. There’s a scar over one eyebrow today that I apparently got falling on a metal toy on the back steps and cutting my head open. And I remember mixing yellow dye in margarine because it came in a white block to satisfy the dairy industry and their real butter. There was a Holy Roller church across the street but I was told never to go in so I didn't see much rolling going on. 530 E 8th was a fine place to live. As I remember. No brothers or sisters to speak of. Grandma Grantz’ house was up the street and across the alley at 9th and Oak. It was spotlessly white and her flowers bloomed in floods and came out through the fence. She had a two story shed the size of a small barn in the back where she had a kerosene stove and made lye soap from meat fat. There was a coal bin in there too and it was fun to play in. Today it is the office building for some kind of waste disposal yard. More soon. Ta!

Bridget’s Phantasm

If somebody can tell me the way to peel a soft boiled egg without
destroying the edible part I will say nice things about you the next time I write in this blog. Send me an e- at russianxak@sbcglobal.net.

Today is Bridget’s Day, the return of the light, the blessing of the wells, the first stirrings of seeds in the ground. If you are a Celtic Pagan you will be dancing and making music and generally raising holy hell on this day. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Bridget myself because I slept most of the day. I got up at 6, went to sleep in the easy chair at 7, woke up at 10, went back to sleep until 1pm. That is Old Dog behavior and it scares the poop out of me!

I had a really strange dream sometime during all that sleep. Courtesy of, I don’t know what. Wish I could decipher it. I think dreams are some kind of message from a Higher Power and one time years ago I participated in a dream workshop at a Catholic retreat center and learned a lot. Now I have forgotten it. But I am having a hell of a time forgetting this dream.

Here it is:

I attended a weekend workshop with a bunch of people mostly including neighbors and family from my married years. It was given by people who advocated something that I wouldn’t have touched earlier with a ten foot pole because my ex-wif3e was big in it and it had to do with Church and I thought it was a cult. But we all had conferences and dialog and all that psycho-energetic stuff and when it was over we were all in love with everybody. I was I love with everybody including my ex- (no I am not going back to her in real life). Totally, to the core. I saw all the mistakes I had made in all of my past life from birth and they were all somehow wiped away. I was friends with my (former) spouse as well as being in love with her, pals with my kids. Part of the exercise, after the weekend was a trip to Ottawa, Canada (don’t ask, I don’t know either). On the trip (we went in a Jeep that Mark G. drove, in real life he died about a year and a half ago) we went through sites where people, big industry, were building new bridges out of steel. In Ottawa we wound up at a ‘40’s Greyhound Station with a ‘40’s black bakelite phone what I used to try to call my Mom. It didn’t work. Then we drove to Hastings, Nebraska to the seminary I used to go to school at. I showed my ex- the Plains (like, you know, flat for miles, as far as the eye could see, and all newly plowed…) Visited with seminary people from of old, classmates, teachers, priests. Don’t remember that we did anything but eat supper.

But the feelings just about killed me. With joy? I don’t know. Even after I woke up and sucked down gallons of coffee and went shopping and driving in the real world, I couldn’t shake this universe-moving feeling of “What have I missed all these years?” I don’t know if it was sad or joyous. But it’s there down to my core even now at eight o’ clock at night. I would like it to go away. Or, at best, just have wimpy, absurd, fluffy dreams tonight. Any clues out there? Tresa??? If this is about getting centered with the Universe I would rather have it in smaller doses. If it is about getting rich and ordering pounds of tobacco from Europe I want every last detail. If it is about the shortbread cookies I had during the news last night, I will never eat them again!

My sometime friend Tommy M. died last week. He had a heart attack, got two stints surgically implanted, came home and sent emails to everybody about how well he was doing. And dropped dead. Ta!