Several months have passed, and now it seems  winter has disappeared. Possibly it has vanished in the same way as Freckles. With winters  seemingly disappearance, there were other disappearances also although I’m not sure I can connect the events.  The men In Black are gone, the old Indian in the receding turbin is gone, the Gene Kelly impersonator on my front porch is one, the little green man, all the phone calls, threats, and disturbances, real or imagined, that plague me when its cold.

Even as winter seems to have almost disappeared. Spring cannot always be considered Spring at this time of year. At least the streets and sidewalks and yards are no longer twelve inches deep in toxic, coffee colored sludge, at least I was no longer freezing my balls off every time I got out of bed.

It gets lonely when the voices no longer talk to you.

I’m getting older

I finally felt it today. So the central point of this entry-follow my logic carefully here-unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It`s insights like this that make me so popular here in the home.) And it only gets worse, because of a law of physics discovered by Albert Einstein, the brilliant physicist who not only invented the White Guy Afro haircut, discovered the Theory of Decade Relativity, which states: “Each decade goes by exactly twice as fast as the decade before.”

So it has been traumatic today trying to decide how I`m going to deal with becoming an older person.

I mean I have to finally face it, the long-precicted aging process. I now see it in many aspects of my own life.

Young people I meet keep using the words sir and “Mister.” Causing me to whirl around and look behind me expecting to see someone with whom I associate this title, such as the Pope or Paul Harvey, only to realize these people are talking to me.

I have long animated conversations with my friends — with whom I used to ingest banned substances and swim naked with-on the importance of a proper diet.
And this is the most terrifying-I sometimes catch myself humming along with elevator music.

Now, I realize, somebody has to be the grownups, and maybe it`s my turn. The problem is, I`m not sure I`m ready, I`ve been hanging around with people roughly my age for the bulk of my life, and frankly I do not feel as a group, I or my friends have acquired the wisdom and maturity to run the world, much less power tools. Many of us, I`m convinced, only look like grownups.

But the alarming truth is, people my age are taking over the government, along with almost everything else, And I`m worried.

I`m not suggesting that anything can be done about this trend. No, the only solution I see is for us to face up (people my age) that we are no longer the Hope For The Future. The Hope Of The Future now consists of the kids who like to shave their heads and ride skate boards off the top of buildings.

So that is why I reflected on my getting older today. My goal is to explore all the ramifications-physiological, emotional, and social of getting older, in hopes that, by improving our understanding and awareness of the true significance of this challenging and extremely important phase of my life, I will acquire, as countless generations have acquired before me, the wisdom, vision, and maturity we need to assume my rightful responsibilities and obligations as a moral, intellectual, political, and spiritual leader-and yes caretaker of this increasingly fragile planet.

Naw-I`m going outside and drink a bunch of beer and set off fireworks.

It’s a few days before St Paddys day, I stood at the kitchen window sipping a cup of coffee, and gazed out at he raw, grainy, deserted, fog-shrouded countenance of 5th Street in Amarillo, Tx. It was rainy and foggy and grey,  so it looked a like I felt.  I was listening to a Hank Williams I was thinking that on New Years day in 1953, Hank had died somewhere along the way to a show in Canton, Ohio.  Whether death is indeed preferable to doing a show in Canton, Ohio has been a much disputed philosophical question ever since.  About the only thing I know is Hank has been dead almost as long as I have been alive, and the older I got the more he seemed to be catching up with me.

A young lady, with her head resting on her knees sat on the divan looking at a bird on the other side of the window.

“You’re probably a big fan of Hank Williams Jr,” I said, on a thinly disguised note of facetiousness.

The girl said nothing. She looked at me calmly for a moment, then she turned her gaze back out the window. Facetiousness, I reflected, was one of many elements of subtlety that was assuredly lost upon the young girl. It was also of course lost upon Hank Williams Jr.  But that wasn’t entirely his fault.

“How would you feel.” I asked , “if  after every show some body would come back stage and say. “Your’re goos kid, but you will never be as good as your daddy.”

The girl continued to watch the bird. I continued to drink my coffee. The fog continued to roll across 5th Street until it took on the bleak beckoning, ghostly visage of an early-fifties Tennessee highway heading inexorably toward the Canton, Ohio of the mind.

It was well over an hour later and the young lady and I were both at the window staring at the street.   The bird was gone and I had no idea what she was looking at. There was nothing out there but a few parked cars and several wisps of fog that slowly eddied away like dreams from childhood or hopes from the sixties.

Early evening the night before, i was pacing back and forth the wooden floor. waiting on the girl on my sofa to arrive. She was late.  Then I heard the click of high heels. I walked to the window and thought the fog was playing tricks on me.

Then I saw her. She was a tall leggy blond that seemed to be rising out of the fog like a pirate ship.

She enters and you go into the kitchen to get ice for her drink. It was the kind of thing you dreamed about as a child. A mysterious phone call. Then a mysterious mystical blond beauty  walks through the mist. She enters your home and you get ice.You glance at the woman, she glances at you, then you gaze at the refrigerator.  You are hungry for her. There is no need to open the refrigerator. You already know the world is cold.

Our eyes meet and something is unlocked as if my an old  fashioned hotel key.

As I watched her legs recede toward the bedroom, I began to feel pretty good.  This could be a financial pleasure. And if she came over often there would be lots of opportunities to watch those legs walk away. And there was plenty of leg to watch.

“One more question,”  I asked . She turned and once again I noticed the pale lovely face, the long blond hair, the blue eyes that came at you with the gentleness of rain on the roof.

“How much?”

There is more than one way to find happiness in the world, or so I’ve been told.

Back to this morning. I asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee. She did not respond. she was sound asleep on the couch. possibly dreaming of far away places. Judging from the peaceful expression on her face, maybe she wasn’t dreaming at all.  Maybe she had found what she had been looking for. I picked up the coffee cup and poured the entire cup down my throat. It went down like a friendly fire. One or two more stunts like that I thought and I might very likely be looking for myself.

Like almost everybody else in the world I was operating under the delusion I had any morals.

But it was an important right of passage. Unfortunately, as you go through life, the things you think are important are very rarely important at all and the things you think are not important are eventually, inexorably, vitally, profoundly, soul-searchingly important.

I put on my cowboy hat and headed out for pastries. As I headed up 6th Street the light rain was steady and fell on the street, softening the lights of the neighborhood and lending the neon an almost comforting appearance, like cotton candy at a county fair.

Walk out my front door. Turn right and walk out to that apple tree stump. Now look up into the clear Texas night. See that star there, the third one from the right. Yea, thats it…Miss Amarillo 1969. Those stars around her: My Dad, my Mother, Bill, my best friend killed while we were in Vietnam, my brother, my grandparents, all in the salt shaker stars in the Texas sky.

While in a narcotic state in a hospital recently, I heard a voice. Seeking, comforting encouraging. I momentarily stripped away the background sounds and communed with that voice I had known so well. One that I had taken for granted that it would always be with me. At that moment I felt a great inner peace, as if I had died and gone to Baby Jesus, or Buddha or L. Ron Hubbard, but I suddenly realized they were all in attendance at the same AA meeting in the sky.

It was a mystical experience for me-almost as if I’d been working out for an hour on my Thigh-Master. It was four-thirty in the morning and only paranoia was keeping me awake.

So much drama recently, as I made the long climb to being #1. So much in fact that I have been lax in keeping you informed, as is my duty, of important matters of other concern.

Here at the Amarillo Chapter of the Bureau of Medical Alarm, I continue to receive shocking new evidence that being human is an extremely dangerous occupation that probably should be prohibited by law.

For example, consider the alarming article I read in a recent addition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, titled, “Toothpick-Related Injuries In The United States, 1999-2009, ” This article notes with concern that although toothpicks are long, slender, hard, sharp and indigestible, they are rarely considered objects of potential injury and death. “Yes, death!” This article reports that during the period studied, there have been thousands of toothpick related injuries and three actual fatal deaths.

What gets my goat, here at the Bureau of Medical Alarm, is that these needless tragedies could be avoided if the government would simply require all toothpicks to carry this printed message:

Warning: THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT YOU SHOULD NOT SWALLOW THIS TOOTHPICK OR STAB YOURSELF IN THE EYEBALL WHILE TRYING TO READ THIS WARNING.

Why hasn’t this been done? When will the politicians stop knuckling under the powerful toothpick lobby, with it easy money, fast boats, and loose women? How come these powerful lobbies never send loose women down here to the Bureau of Medical Alarm? These are just some of the questions very much on my mind. But, I was distracted by an even more alarming article, sent to me by my alert friend Antic. Who sent me an article from an issue of the Canadian Medical Journal, Unfortunately I cannot be to specific about this article, because of the widely growing number of younger readers. All I can say is that it involves an upsetting development that can occur when a well known male body part gets to close to a working vacuum cleaner. This seems to be a fairly common occurrence, at least in Canada. The article contains the following quotations, which I swear I am not making up, although for reasons of tastefulness, the bodily part will be refered to as “Morton” (not its real name).

Case I. A 60 year old man said that he was changing the plug of his Hoover Dustette vacuum cleaner In the nude while his wife was shopping. It “turned itself on” and caught his Morton.

Case 2. A 65 year old railway signalmen was in his signal box when he bent down to pick up his tools and caught his Morton in a Hoover Dustette, “which happened to be turned on.”

These quotations definitely touched a nerve here at the Bureau, Clearly males need to be more careful, especially if they get naked anywhere near a Hoover Dustette, which is apparently auditioning for a role in Fatal Attraction II.

We actually have more alarming medical, items to report to you but my fingers are getting pointy from missing the keys and getting stuck between them. So I will just close with this Health reminder. Don’t smoke or drink. Or eat. Or go outside. Or breathe.

I went to bed feeling like the kind of old man young nerds always tell to get a life. I had a life. Unfortunately, it had become a fairly tedious life for sometime now.  Maybe I could recycle the damn thing.  Perhaps next time around I could be a cat or an Elvis impersonator.  let somebody else play the chess game to a stalemate.  Let some other player find it too painful to make the next move.  And what if the next move is wrong?

Did I know or want to admit the game is almost over? Maybe?  It was wrong in the sad, empty eyes of the world, it would look cleaner.

Suddenly, my friend Bill in all his glory descended a celestial staircase and gave me a jaunty little left-handed salute that carried lightly across the lonely years of man.  With that gesture and that smile, he banished all resignations, all despair, all sense of loss.  I knew I was dreaming but I wasn’t going to let it stop me now. I was on a roll.

He walked across a small bar in a ceiling fanned building near China Beach Vietnam, empty except for a skinny kid from Texas sitting on  a barstool. The kid got up and hugged Bill like they were long-lost friends. They were. It had taken 50 years but they finally met up again.

The two of them lifted their glasses in a toast. they drank. It was one of the two things they did well together. The other was raise hell.

They sat there at heaven’s door drinking, talking, laughing, catching up, for a long time. If you could have caught snippets of the conversation you could tell they were happy and at peace with themselves. It was more than we the living, even we the dreaming could say.

They closed the place, stumbling out into some starlit, cloud lined, staircase to the stars. walking hand in hand like the last scene of  Breaker Morant. into a grainy, black- and- white sunset.  Bill was home and I knew it.  Even in the dream, or possibly, especially in the dream, I knew i wasn’t far from there either.

My friend Bill was killed in 1970 by a mortar in Vietnam. As kids we had always been  heroic friends locked in a fast lane death dance in a rock and roll time beyond anyones control.  A piece of me died when Bill died. But a piece of Bill still lives with me.

Me- scared to death

Me lying down on the right, Bill far right

In the jukebox of my dreams I have vivid early memories of moments of fine madness, high lonesome nights, running and playing together like the kids we were, when all the pearls were in the ocean and all the stars were in the sky. Today, as I sit on the porch, where my mother once lived, I can clearly recall a vanished vista of flat prairies, replaced by a glut of new houses, the bigger the better, as far as the eye can see. The city has become more progressive, more conservative at he same time, some say, for the worse. But underneath, I know the old DNA is still there.

Since my fathers death in 1987 and my mothers death in 1998, I find myself hanging around the San Jacinto, old Route 66 area even more than usual. Like the blues notes from an old Gibson guitar from one of the clubs on 6th street, I relish those rare moments of peace that life and love and leaf blowers occasionally bestow. Like the blues, Im caught in the headlights of the twenty-first century, somewhere between progress and the world I used to know.

It’s just possible that all of us are fictional characters in some perverse comedy that never did much at the box office.

Lately I’ve been observing a whole set of social conventions evolving around an institution that’s a relative newcomer to our culture: the cappuccino bar. If one spends an hour or so in idle caffeinated reverie at ye olde coffee shoppe, he or she will discover certain implied dos and don’ts, the unspoken rules of behavior designed to make things go smoothly.

Let’s start with The Entry. Since the coffee shoppe is a social institution first and a dining establishment second, there’s a natural temptation for a person entering the shop to quickly swivel his head left and right to see who’s seated in the audience. After all, seeing and being seen is at least as important a reason for frequenting the shoppe as drinking coffee. If it were only the caffeine one needed, one could just stay home and pop a No-Doz.

But the refined aficionado will refrain from blatant room-scanning. One doesn’t want to appear overeager to see who’s there. Better to keep one’s eyes straight ahead and permit one’s acquaintances - if any be present - to call out one’s name.

Then and only then is it permissible to give a little half-glance in their direction and nod a greeting. No shouting, exaggerated waving or hugging, please. If a friend does call one’s name, one must never turn and shout, “HEY, GOOBER!” A wan smile is sufficient.

Another thing to remember during one’s Entry phase is to never sweep into the establishment while talking on a cellular phone.

It’s perfectly all right to have a phone on one’s person or in a purse, or better yet to hold it in one’s hand for others to see and admire. But only the pathologically needy talk on the phone while walking; everyone present will assume he placed the call himself in order to appear Indispensable to Society during Entry phase.

And while we’re on the subject of cell phones, if one’s phone rings during coffee, one must not answer it by yelling at the top of one’s voice, “Oh, HI KEL!” Or, “OH TEEL, thanks for calling back!” The only exception allowed is for persons who are actually members of the caller’s immediate family.

The seasoned coffee drinker knows what one wants before arriving at the order line. One must never hem and haw, order a latte, then rescind the order and insist on a mocha. Such vacillation is unbecoming a caffeine junkie.

And when one pays the tab, he should avoid using any denomination of bill larger than a 20. If one simply must display one’s wealth, he should quietly do so by dropping a generous gratuity into the tip basket. This behavior has the added advantage of cementing one’s visage onto the mind’s eye of the people behind the counter, and ensuring excellent service next time.

After The Entry phase and the Ordering and Paying phase, one arrives at the Finding a Seat phase.

The thing to remember is to avoid appearing in too big a hurry. Hurrying is for the culturally disadvantaged. One should take one’s time, sip one’s drink and work the crowd.

Discreetly glance around to see who’s there and move toward an empty table. Save emotional displays for the all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet down the street. Stay cool.

Finally, there’s a vast body of etiquette associated with sitting and drinking coffee, but we’ll just note the high points:

If one has a pierced cheek or lip, she must try to avoid dribbling coffee out the holes.

Don’t do a double take if a patron enters the shoppe sporting green hair with orange spots. Such coiffure is de rigeur.

Avoid staring at people as they perform their Entry; this isn’t the runway of some Paris fashion house.

Checking out other patrons is permissible as long as it’s done tastefully - a quick visual scan followed by averting one’s glance and replaying the image in the mind’s eye to check the details.

Good luck and happy sipping.

OK The Evil Evilfury and I have been having a slight feud. She had asked me to help her with some writing. I laughed after she provided me her response to the excercise I had given her.   I asked her to use the word handsome in a sentence,  here is her sentence:

“When I get tired giving head I use my handsome.”

I laughed and now she is beaning me privately and publicly.