The author as a senior, trying to keep his cool. Uniforms were mandatory.
I‘m going to tell you that I’m in Wichita for the express purpose of attending my 10-year high school reunion. And you’re not going to believe me.
I may have a screw loose.
This is the whole enchilada; tailgating at the Bishop Carroll homecoming football game against our crosstown rivals Kapaun Mt. Carmel, a campus tour of buildings unfamiliar, and a swanky formal at a downtown art gallery to cap the weekend off.
Never in a million years would you have caught me even considering this idea. But I’m unable to find any downsides.
The train has stopped in rural Missouri, where cell phone reception covers the countryside like disintegrating tissue paper. In front of me, a woman is having a Sunday morning Baptist service with her cell phone.
I’ve heard “Yes Lord” nearly 300 times. “Thank You Jesus” repeated a meager 230 times. She points to the ceiling like a football player after a touchdown. “That one made it to heaven,” she says to no one in particular.
Suddenly, she pauses: “Can you hear me?” We wonder if she’s addressing God or Verizon.
6 minutes later, the call is finished. And she begins singing.
Chicago Theatre marquee, 1952 (Hoagy Carmichael Collection, Indiana University)
Hoagy Carmichael croons from my apartment like he hasn’t since the ’30s and ’40s. What prompted that? This McSweeney’s video mixing writing process with roasting beans.
Our farmer’s market is hot – no, torrid – for a Saturday morning. I still don’t understand the appeal of hosting it on a parking lot, but I deal with it. No fruit, sadly, but veggies are becoming plentiful. I pick up a half dozen ears of sweet corn, along with a couple of squash and cucumbers. A loaf of cinnamon-chip bread rounds out the bounty. I eat a filo-bread breakfast without eyeglasses. Oops.
There was a double-feature at the Apollo Theater in downtown Peoria. The Blob & The Girl Can’t Help It. I like both.
I sit down at the bar, but not for a drink: I’ll take a hamburger with Swiss, please. The bartender is cute with a dash of punky, and I’m out of practice in flirting. Or I never got into practice in the first place. The place is relatively dead, but I sit there silently after a quick high-five from another bartender that I’ve known for years. The recognition feels great, but I’d be lying if I said that I felt happy.
Back to my apartment with my hamburger. I fire up a Garrison Keillor podcast and devour every bit of it.
I’ve been on the porch long enough to notice the moon sneaking sideways across the leaves. There’s a man who keeps walking back and forth on the street, checking his phone and occasionally dropping loose change.
My citronella candle continues to flicker, mixing with both the moonlight and sodium vapor streetlamps, and I’m a content old man.
Writing-wise, I share things on the page that would mortify me if they came up in casual conversation, but these seizures of self-disclosure are triggered by the imminence of tongue-loosening deadlines and vertiginous health insurance premiums and should therefore not be confused with me at the post office, where I tend to study my boots and mumble.
– Pg. 159 of “Truck: A Love Story” by Michael Perry
I just finished this book and feel lost. Not because it was a bad book; in fact, it was folksy and comfortable like any summer reading should be. But where do you go from here? I have the intimidating “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace on loan from a coworker… but that just doesn’t work well with ice tea on a porch, does it?
A scruffy, old man in ball cap and overalls, clutching a copy of Mark Twain’s “Roughing It,” stops by for coffee. A dog follows him unleashed, one that may or may not be his. As he ducks in for brew, she waits on alert in the cool, humid air outside. Loyal.
She has collie features, but is more accurately deemed a mutt: two-toned long fur, white and ruddy brown.
A small baking pan is brought with ice water. She drinks guiltily, then settles in. He cracks the tattered paperback, lights a cigarette. His free hand absentmindedly scratches the dog’s head, her tongue dangling in ecstasy.
After a while, the man pauses, wipes the sweat from his brow, and the dog jumps to attention. “Stay, baby” he softly requests.
Scene at Moe’s in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
There’s a young woman, no older than 22, paying me more attention than usual. She’s a few tables away, wearing a multi-colored dress and far too many bracelets. I’m just trying to scarf down a burrito before boarding my flight to Illinois. No time for googley eyes.
A few minutes pass, and then…
“Can I put my hand on your knee?”
She’s asking the older man at the table between us. I can see that he’s bandaged up, but this seems out of the ordinary for conversation between two strangers. Even with hot sauce flowing freely.
He replies: “Umm, sure.” She scoots over, puts her hand on his injured knee, and starts praying. In the middle of the restaurant. In the middle of Concourse C. At the busiest airport in the world.
This transition from spring to summer has been schizophrenic, seesawing between “no jacket required”-stifling humidity to bitter, Hemingway-depression. Count me in that latter camp: I’m no sunny flower and I love hot drinks too much. 60 degrees and a fine mist is the very definition of a happy Adam.
But who wants to read about the weather? Not this guy. I write about it enough, along with murders, mangled cars and burning houses most mornings at the Journal Star. I’ve come up with a new slogan for my news brief expertise:
Just give me the facts
and I’ll shit out 4 graphs.
I can no longer write casually. This is the literary equivalent of blowing your nose and hoping something becomes dislodged.
6/7/11 – notes from a walk through my neighborhood (written in sloppy pencil)
The veiled moon overhead, neighbors blasting Ben Harper in their backyard, majestic Moss Ave porches ablaze with Django Reinhart drifting from interior safety, runners breathless, bicyclists with lone headlamps mingling dangerously, cherries in my hand, a strange smell of burning house makes me nervous. The first timid fireflies trying their on/off switches for the first time, the stillness of air does nothing for my damp shirt, and yet few mosquitoes exist.
A young guy is out on a Saturday night in his best shoes, talking to a girl he’s met in a bar. She’s nice, he likes her. But he’s got this sort of confession, see. There’s something she ought to know about him. And he’s never told this to anybody. You see, on the inside, deep on the inside, he isn’t really a guy at all. He’s an Olivetti electric self-correcting typewriter. And he can’t even type!
“It’s like this — your family, your wife, won’t let you go out and pick up girls. But you went out and did it anyway,” Mr. Guan said. “Secret flying is like secret love. You do it, you don’t tell people about it.”
EAAAAAGH. I’m sipping on something resembling the unholy union of motor oil and maple syrup.
This is espresso. Or that’s what I ordered. I’ve given up on coffee; too acidic and just too… caffeinated. Yes, espresso has less caffeine in an average serving than a small cup of drip coffee.
Due to the convenient walk from my apartment, Starbucks is where I intake this concoction. I don’t usually mess with the burnt roasts of their classic coffees, but I’ve found no fault with their espresso. Until now.
My mind is being pulled like taffy, Gumby tortured on a rack, then left rotting in a Dali painting. I’m at Copper River Coffee & Tea in Peoria and this espresso is decidedly different. Thick crema and surprisingly little water pours from a La Marzocco beast, with an aftertaste that mows through nerves on the back of my tongue. What the hell have I been mucking around with until now? Watered-down Bud Light?
This is shocking and will require adjustments. I’m not alone. Have you had a similar experience?
