tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46592821571959700792024-03-13T03:00:03.489-07:00The Dark CorridorA bit of the writing of Les Wiseman. First blog: All Cats Love Batman (That's Why They Wear Those Hats) a prose poem for children and cat lovers. Next: Serialization of the novel Jayne & the Satanists, a tale of Jayne Mansfield, her relationship with the head of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, a hapless tabloid reporter, a cat named Lex and the man who cannot die the Comte Ste. Germaine. Then, we have Memoirs of Boyhood and links to scans of articles from my career as a journalist.Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-81457421455089721662021-02-20T15:51:00.003-08:002021-02-20T15:53:07.639-08:00<p> </p><div align="left"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 551px;"><tbody><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b006.gif" width="30" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b007.gif" width="17" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/titles/t0000259.gif" width="70" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b009.gif" width="402" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b012.gif" width="30" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="10" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div align="left"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 553px;"><tbody><tr><td align="left"><div align="left"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="6" /><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 552px;"><tbody><tr><td><img border="0" height="114" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/pix/mags/00103-00.gif" width="84" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="6" /></td><td><img border="0" height="114" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/pix/mags/00103-01.gif" width="84" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="6" /></td><td><img border="0" height="114" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/pix/mags/00103-02.gif" width="84" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="6" /></td><td><img border="0" height="114" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/pix/mags/00103-03.gif" width="84" /></td><td></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="84" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="6" /></td><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="84" /></td></tr></tbody></table></div></td></tr><tr><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr></tr><tr><td><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div align="left"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" style="height: 174px; width: 554px;"><tbody><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span style="color: white;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Date and Issue:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> Volume 15, Number 42, Issue 772. October 19, 1991.</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><b><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></b></span></td></tr><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Pages:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> 3 pages.</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><b><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></b></span></td></tr><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Pictures:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> 2 color photos.</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><b><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></b></span></td></tr><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Article:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> Article about Lynda Carter starring in "Danielle Steel's Daddy".</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><b><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></b></span></td></tr><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Author:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> Les Wiseman.</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><b><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></b></span></td></tr><tr><td height="13" width="551"><span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><u>Country:</u></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> Canada.</span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td height="14" width="551"><img border="0" height="14" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td height="24" width="551"><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b006.gif" width="30" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b007.gif" width="17" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/titles/t0000638a.gif" width="79" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b009.gif" width="395" /><img border="0" height="25" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/bars/b012.gif" width="30" /></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="551"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></td></tr><tr><td height="7" width="551"><img border="0" height="7" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellspacing="0" id="AutoNumber5" style="border-collapse: collapse; height: 825px; width: 554px;"><tbody><tr><td height="171" rowspan="7" width="148"><p class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/pix/mags/00103-04.gif" style="border-color: rgb(255, 204, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;" width="170" /></span></b></p></td><td height="12" width="402"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow2.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b><u><span style="font-size: xx-small;">LYNDA CARTER REVELS IN THE LOOK AND FEEL OF DANIELLE STEEL'S 'DADDY'" by Les Wiseman</span></u></span></p></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="402"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="60" width="402"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="11" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/arrow.gif" style="margin-right: 4px;" width="6" /></span></b><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Wondrous, womanly Lynda Carter is out on the hotel balcony, when suddenly she shrieks. The cast and crew of CBS's "Posing" come running. Carter is discovered chuckling, holding her narrow ribs and pointing. A male resident of the hotel across the street has flashed her. A female crew member whispers in Carter's ear, and Carter pulls back, eyebrows elevated, aghast: "I don't know. I didn't look that closely!"</span></b></span></p></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="402"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="48" width="402"><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Carter does a titch of flashing herself in "Posing," a Vancouver-lensed TV-movie based on the true-life stories of three women who posed for Playboy, scheduled for Oct. 29. This week, she's mostly flash, starring opposite Patrick Duffy in the adaptation of "Danielle Steel's 'Daddy"' (NBC, Oct. 23).</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td height="1" width="402"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></b></td></tr><tr><td height="48" width="402"><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Sitting in an alcove of her Vancouver hotel, Carter is draped in a ponchoish affair over a high-collared sweater and slacks. Her shoulder-length, highlighted brunette hair is pulled back, accenting the classic face with its famous hooded grey-blue eyes, Renoirperfect upturned nose and Cupid’s bow pout. Glamor is her turf.</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="72" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> "Danielle Steel-who I love, I've read all her novels-strikes a certain chord," she says over sips of iced tea. And "Daddy" has a chord of harmonic resonance that true love will out-at least this time. Patrick Duffy plays a man with three children (not unlike his current Step by Step character) whose wife (Kate Mulgrew) leaves him to find herself, finds someone else and then dumps Duffy. On to the scene comes a TV star (Carter) from a prime-time law drama in which she plays a public defender.</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="48" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> "It's one of the few Danielle Steel stories where the man is the central character," says Carter. "It's about the way people put expectations on each other and are disappointed. But it's a Danielle Steel story, so it's a romance. The woman I play is down to earth; you want her to be your best friend. She's very famous, but doesn't take the fame stuff seriously. And neither do I"</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="48" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> It's this latter that now makes Lynda Carter the creature she always wanted to be, not the 24-year-old who was cast for Wonder Woman (1976-79). The series shot Carter to fame and riches, though her acting was often ancillary to a superstructure revealed by a scanty costume that by today's standards looks positively clunky and safety padded.</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="72" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Carter, a former pizzeria chanteuse, expanded her horizons into a million selling poster, Vegas shows, an album and a series of musical TV specials. TV-movies like "Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess" followed and did well. Then a series, 1984's Partners in Crime -with Carter and Loni Anderson playing the ex-wives of a deceased cad detective who inherit his PI biz-failed miserably. Says Carter, "The only good thing about it was that Loni and I have remained friends."</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="72" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Between then and now, Carter went on to her second marriage-to Washington attorney Robert Altman (who at the moment is entangled in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International mess)-and had two children Jamie, 3, and Jessica, 1. She was disillusioned with a career that treated her as "a commodity"; she wanted to ditch acting, and credits her husband with advising her not to give up all she'd worked for. To that end, she took acting lessons and allows that that process now makes producers think of her as more than a physical presence.</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="144" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Still, with "Posing" there's no denying her physical being was a first-order demand. And while she does not deny the salacious appeal of bathtub and lingerie scenes, she says that "the opportunity to see me in Playboy-type things is only the drawing card. The story is really why this woman is doing it. There are scenes that every woman in North America will identify with. There's this inner struggle in her marriage. Her husband is not a bad guy. She's just part of the scenery that belongs to him. They've been married 17 years, and now she's a mother and he doesn't think of her as a sexy woman and she's just starting her prime. She doesn't want a divorce, doesn't want an affair, doesn't want to leave her family. So when they ask her to pose, she sees it as a lark. She's having such a blast-she's dressed in great things, and people are fussing over her-that she sort of loses her head and bares all and doesn't really consider the consequences until this very private photo session gets published. And when it does, she's ostracized in her community and her husband leaves her."</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="72" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Carter can relate to the ramifications of baring it all. In 1976, she appeared topless in a low-budget movie, "Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw," and when she became famous, men's magazines published stop frames of her chest. "I was a baby," sighs Carter. "I hadn't worked in a year, and it was the lead in a movie. I don't want to apologize for doing it, because I didn't do anything that was so outrageous, but it was a terrible movie that has not died simply because I'm topless in it."</span></b></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="1" width="550"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></span></b></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="72" width="550"><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"> Carter doesn't think about that part of her past much now. She credits motherhood with giving her life a new perspective: "It gives you new depth to what you feel, and you can pull up from that and put it on the screen into any situation. But people think you're dead if you're not on TV for a year or two. I'm hoping the public will welcome me back, that they can still watch me. But I'm beyond all the ego stuff now. I have substance in my personal life, and now I want that in my professional life. The fame and the money don't matter any more."</span></b></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div align="left"><table border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellspacing="0" id="AutoNumber4" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 554px;"><tbody><tr><td width="550"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></b></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div align="left"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: justify; width: 552px;"><tbody><tr><td width="549"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/line.gif" width="549" /></span></td></tr><tr><td width="549"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="7" src="http://www.wonderland-site.com/fijos/pixels.gif" width="1" /></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-5020182040230773662021-02-20T15:37:00.000-08:002021-02-20T15:37:14.926-08:00<p>https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/feature/vanc/870200</p><div class="row" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a5a5a; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: "Jost* Book"; font-size: 16px; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-sm-5 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center mb-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 25%; margin-bottom: 1rem !important; max-width: 25%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; text-align: center !important; width: 379.8px;"><div class="shadow-sm art-info" style="border-radius: 0.25rem; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.125); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.075) 0px 0.125rem 0.25rem !important; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 15px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><img class="img-fluid" src="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/large/Vancouver_1987-02_001.jpg" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-height: 400px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><a href="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/browse/v/vanc" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #007bff; text-decoration-line: none;">Vancouver</a></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />February 1987</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;">Author:</span> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Les Wiseman</em></p></div></div><div class="col-sm-7 col-md-8 col-lg-9 feature" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 75%; max-width: 75%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 1139.4px;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 4rem; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; padding: 1rem 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">COOPER AMONG CHICKENS</h2><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 3rem; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1rem; text-transform: uppercase;">THE MAN WHO SHOWED THE METAL GENERATION HOW TO DO IT IS SHOWING THEM AGAIN.</h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">He was the Yankee-Doodle dandy in a gold Rolls-Royce. He wore lace and he wore black leather. He was the all-American transvestite returned from the dead. And Alice Cooper was my hero during the early and mid-1970s. When he faded from the limelight, about two dozen of us kept buying those great funny albums like <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">From The Inside, Zipper Catches Skin, Lace And Whiskey, Special Forces</i> and <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">DaDa</i>. The Coop was washed up, his glimmer in the footlights was over.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">In 1985, Mr. <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">American Beat</i>, Bob Greene, wrote in <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Esquire</i> the article <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Alice Doesn't Live There Anymore</i>, in which he followed up on his 1975, height-of-the-hysteria bio, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Billion Dollar Baby</i>. In the later dispatch, he painted Cooper as a mild-mannered, reformed-alcoholic house husband who moved to Chicago to protect his children and wife, Sheryl, from the deviates of L.A. and who spent his time bemoaning lost celebrity status, watching videos of his heyday and asserting that daddy was once a rock star.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">I had long wanted to guzzle a Budweiser with Alice. I knew that was no longer to be, but just to gab with the dude for a few minutes would be great. He was always cool; I knew he always would be. So when Jason, the Camp Blood machete mangier came back in Friday The 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives, soundtracked by Auntie Alice, I got on the phone to MCA Records and blathered, "He's back; I've gotta talk to him; my life is not complete. . ." Gulp¬ing coffee at 6:30 a.m. soon after, I was waiting for The Coop to call from Boston where his first tour in nigh on a decade was gathering steam.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">D-r-ring!</i></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"Mr. Cooper?"</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"Les, Howya doin?"</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">I dithered for almost a minute, expounding on the significance of this conversation. To Cooper's bashful thanks, we got down to work, starting with the Greene piece. Cooper took umbrage at the column's accuracy: "He [Greene] wanted me to be the reformed rock star, which is very untrue. I stopped drinking, but I didn't stop thinking. Alice is absolutely more dis¬turbing now than he ever was. This new show is totally over the top. There's so much blood and guts in this new show that it's ridiculous.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"I wasn't depressed like Greene wanted me to be, I was just waiting to figure out what I was going to do next. I knew I was going to do another album, but I didn't know I was going to tour until I met Kane Roberts, my guitarist, who is a total metalhead. This album, Constrictor, was the hardest rock album I'd ever done, and I figured it needed to be onstage. That was all the nudge in the direction of the stage that I needed."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">For the current show, Cooper avoided new concepts and returned to gimmicks that had served well at his Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome To My Nightmare peak. "We're doing some of the classic theater pieces from that period," he said. "We're doing the guillotine. In 1975 that was scary, now it's anatomically correct, so when the head comes off, it has a little pulse to it, and it spits blood. It's very splatteresque.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"The show is definitely steeped in a black sense of humor. You'll never get rid of that from me. I have a woman executioner who's seven-foot-two, and when she cuts the head off, she holds it out to the audience, then she kisses it and it spits blood all over her face as one last act of defiance. People laugh and yet they're horrified at the same time. And that's exactly the reaction I want. I love scaring people, but at the same time I want them to know that what Alice does is produced show business, and it came out of somebody's brain. What I'd be worried about is whose brain."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Cooper's alcohol problems have been well documented. His 1978 masterpiece, From The Inside, pro¬duced by local shlockmeister David Foster, documented his first attempt at wrestling John Barleycorn and included the throat-lumping ballad, How You Gonna See Me Now? "I really hadn't decided to stop drinking then," said Cooper. "I was just taking a vacation."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">He stopped imbibing four years ago and likes to brag that, at his current "fighting weight" of 135 pounds, he is in better shape than a decade ago. Of his ordeal with the flask, "I had a choice: either stop or die. Before I could go to a place to really quit, I had to go to a regular hospital. I had drank myself into bed. I had gastritis and I hadn't eaten in 20 days. It wasn't fun; it wasn't hip; it wasn't anything other than an addiction I couldn't cope with.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"I don't miss it at all. I've got a totally addictive personality. Now I've addicted myself to being straight and I've addicted myself to NutraSweet and splatter movies. So I don't know which is worse; I might have been better off watching Mary Tyler Moore and drinking whisky."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Today's perversities? "I'm very big into [the TV show] <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Divorce Court</i>; it's on about six times a day around here. That and splatter movies. I go to video stores in every town. Every once in a while you run into three or four you've never seen before, and if you're really lucky they're Filipino or really bad ones from Mexico.'' Cooper recently starred in his own slice'n'dice epic, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Monster Dog</i>. "I always wanted to do a really cheap splatter movie - one that would make me really big in somewhere like Pakistan. Then five years from now I'd like to be able to rent this movie for 79 cents. That's the level I wanted this to be on.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"They gave me a lot of money for it - it must have been half the budget - and we did it in Spain. A lot of the people who worked on it were people who worked on the original Alien, and I was going, 'Gee, I hope this isn't too good.' But it ended up being just as bad as I thought. I get to kill like eight people in it, and I turn into a giant dog... so it's good."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">With so many projects ongoing, was The Coop still hitting the links, I wondered. After all, here was the depraved rock star who had golfed along with Gerald Ford, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Characteristically schizophrenic, he replied, "I made a deal with Alice. Alice said, 'If you go back on tour you gotta promise me you won't do no more golf. It's much too straight - unless you can drive a golf ball through an old lady's head or something.' I said, 'Okay'."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">For all his pretense of depravity, Alice Cooper is foremost a creation of Vincent Furnier, master showman, father of daughter Calico, five, and son Dashiell, one. He is the son and son-in-law of church ministers. "Just because Alice is into horror and rock doesn't mean we're into this Satanism thing. Never have been; never will be. To me that's just a cheap catchall vehicle for every heavy band that wants to be controversial. That's the last thing I want to be in-volved in. Alice Cooper is Halloween. I want Alice to be every great nightmare you've ever had and had fun with."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Such talk naturally led to the Parents Music Resource Center. "They wanted me to put my lyrics on the cover of the album, and I insisted on it. I think the PMRC did a great service to rock'n'roll. They gave rock'n'roll back its outlaw image; for a long while it was very respectable. I like the idea that we're dangerous again; we're not supposed to be accountants."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">So he back and he b-a-a-a-d, right into a territory where the heavy metal bands that borrowed so much from the original Cooper rule the arenas. There would be no Twisted Sister, Motley Crue or W.A.S.P. had The Coop not blazed the trail. Asked how the older, wiser and rustier pappy of them all would cope with the competition, he chuckled deviously, "I'm throwing down a gauntlet in front of them, putting on a stage show that they couldn't do.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">"The kid is back in town, and my idea is to blow them all off the stage. They know how to play- kind of - and they know how to look good. Their attitude is good, but they don't know how to take a song and dissect it and put it on stage and make it all work. That's Alice's power. The stage show is deadly serious with me, and the idea is to make the audience forget they've ever seen anyone else."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Just then Alice's goons told him he had to go create carnage on a Boston stage. Signing off, he rationalized it all: "I'm doing exactly what Edgar Allan Poe would be doing if he were alive today. Just because it's rock'n'roll doesn't mean it isn't a classical piece of theater."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.125rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Now a hero to a whole new generation, The Coop remains an American classic to me.</p></div></div><h3 class="img-header" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Jost* Book"; font-size: 3rem; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5rem 0.5rem; text-transform: uppercase;">IMAGES</h3><div class="row image-section" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a5a5a; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: "Jost* Book"; font-size: 16px; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-md-3 col-lg-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 25%; max-width: 25%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 379.8px;"><img class="img-fluid d-none d-sm-none d-md-block d-lg-block" src="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/img-pointer.png" style="border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.125); box-sizing: border-box; display: block !important; height: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" /></div><div class="col-md-9 col-lg-9" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 75%; max-width: 75%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 1139.4px;"><div class="row" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-6 col-lg-3 mb-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 25%; margin-bottom: 0.5rem !important; max-width: 25%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 284.85px;"><a href="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/large/Vancouver_1987-02_001.jpg" rel="lightbox[article]" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #007bff; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Vancouver - February 1987"><img alt="Vancouver - February 1987 - Page 1" class="img-fluid" src="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/large/Vancouver_1987-02_001.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.125); box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" /></a></div><div class="col-6 col-lg-3 mb-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 25%; margin-bottom: 0.5rem !important; max-width: 25%; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 284.85px;"><a href="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/large/Vancouver_1987-02_002.jpg" rel="lightbox[article]" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #007bff; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Vancouver - February 1987"><img alt="Vancouver - February 1987 - Page 2" class="img-fluid" src="https://www.alicecooperechive.com/articles/images/large/Vancouver_1987-02_002.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.125); box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" /></a></div></div></div></div>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-39468915831927560782021-01-08T13:52:00.001-08:002021-01-08T13:52:40.871-08:00Frank Zappa and Me<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBtX4AcjK78amA6_S9xQxr8sUkNX8JosSMOCfyMxdRAtbMkU2RX7_37d255hFKHs9JFaTVXpmsKbLF7HyDCDuy7GL1pQYO_rdji_2lSpOZm9LfWRcVv1Q45cmkZi837D7DjrsOIfwvk8/s1600/Frank+Essay+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1207" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBtX4AcjK78amA6_S9xQxr8sUkNX8JosSMOCfyMxdRAtbMkU2RX7_37d255hFKHs9JFaTVXpmsKbLF7HyDCDuy7GL1pQYO_rdji_2lSpOZm9LfWRcVv1Q45cmkZi837D7DjrsOIfwvk8/s320/Frank+Essay+01.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiankFrz_QhuG92ylm9BYaba7TioQ0IPQp4JwI3DH1xQs3T5leU_YCerYwSuC_lh_kd7_MFyIw2Q7mkXVzKzzCeWEJWy1jLVcRuGkg4Q-x-EoQn0I_6692SYsUlrwqi9W4U4HASM3gjrB4/s1600/Frank+Essay+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1199" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiankFrz_QhuG92ylm9BYaba7TioQ0IPQp4JwI3DH1xQs3T5leU_YCerYwSuC_lh_kd7_MFyIw2Q7mkXVzKzzCeWEJWy1jLVcRuGkg4Q-x-EoQn0I_6692SYsUlrwqi9W4U4HASM3gjrB4/s320/Frank+Essay+02.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwkQogwXy5DB9_0MJGimRP-AhLiU9Y1TEU_wur6-hbOoKZLjTgXN7X12acIeYhXMuePdqLk0VdrNyrSV4DD4KzJACwMn-5I__lmAZfANieLcl7ncPaY9LOKM9Z0391PbbefJhP9VXMi-Y/s640/Frank+Essay+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwkQogwXy5DB9_0MJGimRP-AhLiU9Y1TEU_wur6-hbOoKZLjTgXN7X12acIeYhXMuePdqLk0VdrNyrSV4DD4KzJACwMn-5I__lmAZfANieLcl7ncPaY9LOKM9Z0391PbbefJhP9VXMi-Y/s320/Frank+Essay+03.jpg" /></a></div><br /> <br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><br /><p></p>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-56370435833663114492018-10-17T15:55:00.000-07:002018-10-17T15:56:48.262-07:00Quod me nutrit me destrui --new horror fiction from L. Wiseman<br />
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<em><span style="color: #26323e; font-family: "courier new"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Quod me nutrit me destrui </b></span></em><o:p></o:p></div>
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Days beyond count had passed since the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HMS McKenna</i> had hit the reef and broken up. Of the men who made it
to shore, all had died but he. Some had grasped their chests, some their heads,
and dropped. Others had taken the black piss or wasted from dysentery. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The ones who had lasted longest had enjoyed what the island
provided in abundance. Clams were found in lava pools. Oysters could be harvested
at low tide. There were small thistles to be eaten with care. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Early on, the priest had found a secluded patch of mushrooms.
They were sparse, but the meaty taste was so satisfying that he kept the discovery
to himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There seemed to be different
varieties surrounding a rotting ancient tree. These fungi sprung from it and from
its roots still trailing in the ground. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The mushrooms seemed to be why he survived and the others did
not. He knew some could be poisonous and so had eaten only small nibbles and
waited to see if they were fine. There were times he thought he would die.
Lying puking on the ground, the world whirled around him with horrifying
visions that seemed to be glimpses of another world. But, there were other
mushrooms that were fit for a king.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That he alone survived the island for ages set his mind
wandering far. For it was he, the priest, who was responsible for ringleading
the mutineers. Twas he, the man of God, standing on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McKenna</i>’s foredeck beside the captain as the men were admonished. He
who pulled the cutlass from under his robes and slashed the captain’s throat
and laughed as he fell to his knees. Again the priest had swung the blade, this
time into the center of the captain’s skull rending his face in two in a
splatter of blood and brains. The captain did not tolerate the ways of the sea,
or understand that the cabin boy was the priest’s own to do with what he would.
While the bunks creaked with sodomy at night, no moralizing officer was going
to put a stop to the tradition of sailors. The captain had ruined the cabin boy,
and the lad fell second to the priest’s blade. Then, with the rum kegs uncorked
and the crew reveling, the helmsman passed out at the wheel and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McKenna</i> hit the reef at speed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Mere survival did not take much of the day. The temperature
was moderate and his hut served him well. Thus, he was left to ponder. He never
saw sign of another human.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nor any animals, nor birds, though
occasionally gulls would fly far out to sea. He would scatter oysters and clams
for them, but they would never come ashore, as if the land were poisoned. Flying
fish would skitter across the sea’s surface out past the reef. Only sharks
would venture inside the reef. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He became given to ruminations that
could last days. He began to enjoy the small dark-capped mushrooms. He would
dry a stockpile and then make tea with collected rainwater from the tropical
showers. With this drink, he would become soul drunken. Stumbling around the
beach and the forest, he would babble madly in tongues for hours before coming
to his senses. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He came to accept that he would
never get off this island, that God in His wisdom had delivered him over to a
lifetime of solitary contemplation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Out of boredom, he became addicted
to his mushroom fever dreams. He increased the dosage. He became slovenly and
filthy. He lay in the mushroom patch, the rotting tree as his pillow. He was
used to tremors, fits and even paralysis, but none deterred him. He lived with
his Lord in his visions, lying transfixed on nights when the rains came and the
lightning pierced the sky. He felt the wonder and the magnificence of nature’s
violence. He drifted away on dreams into the night, riding the lightning bolts
as if they were God’s steeds and the thunderclaps were his own shouts of
ecstasy. He became one with God.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He woke to find he could blink his
eyes, but as he looked over himself, he saw that his torso was covered in
toadstools. Great broad fungi covered his chest and among these grew the slim
tendrils of the dream mushrooms. He checked his nethers and from amidst his hairs
sprouted thick-stalked, bulb-headed mushrooms. He shrieked and made to pull himself
upright, but his arms and back seemed attached to the earth, and he saw his
arms were covered in slimy black inkcaps, their gills showering spores upon his
skin. As he watched, the spores sprouted into new tapered Chinese hats. He felt
the gelatinous stems run from the ground, through his body and burst through
his flesh. His vision dimmed as tendrils ran down his forehead and pushed his
eyelids shut. He screamed and felt mushrooms roiling up from his gut and out
through his mouth to clog his air and reach for the dim light above the grove. He
felt his jaw dislocate. Every hole was being raped by these fungi. He could
feel them prodding through his bowels, working their way through his bladder
and any space in his intestines. His body was clogged; his blood clotted with
spores and tendrils. With an anguished shudder, his stomach burst and peeled
back to release more of the malignant mushrooms squirming and slithering
through his guts making their way to the air.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He endured the tortures of the
damned; for damned, he realized, was what he was. He had born false witness and
misrepresented the Lord while indulging his seaman’s sins. His life had been an
abomination and now he would have eternity to repent. Forever growing and
bursting with spores that would bury him in the filth, slime and ever-prodding
tendrils.<o:p></o:p></div>
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-- 30 --<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-41704972377810889822018-07-22T17:39:00.002-07:002018-07-22T17:42:09.476-07:00<a href="http://googlebf71c2325af3c3e7.html/" target="_blank">google-site-verification: googlebf71c2325af3c3e7.html</a>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-69729616506682761172018-07-22T17:34:00.002-07:002018-07-22T17:34:27.917-07:00<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;">googlebf71c2325af3c3e7.html</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><br /></span>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-54737344914862949292018-03-16T15:50:00.000-07:002018-03-16T16:26:03.775-07:00<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Adventures of Blind One-Eyed Johnson: </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Part-Negro Blues </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shouter<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;"><b>by Les Wiseman, with</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif;"><b>Zaf Georgilas</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZ-j9G72v3h_vf3iyhdbHLma9HHRq7wsWwtUHXahgia1h4x7rXNmN-RcKINUrD0hz9NgOafGys6PsiGikqCh7uQLMNbvBBWwwa9dkrcCrLRZH3RPMtxxD1JEV3IhsoJxpGh3TAJYhriY/s1600/countystore+NCarolina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="934" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZ-j9G72v3h_vf3iyhdbHLma9HHRq7wsWwtUHXahgia1h4x7rXNmN-RcKINUrD0hz9NgOafGys6PsiGikqCh7uQLMNbvBBWwwa9dkrcCrLRZH3RPMtxxD1JEV3IhsoJxpGh3TAJYhriY/s320/countystore+NCarolina.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
blues: "A panhandling gimmick for alcoholics." -H.C. Speir, talent
scout responsible for the recordings of many Delta blues artists.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How
I Got the Acquaintance o’ My Pig, Po’kchot<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Mississippi Delta is home to a lot of things, mud particularly. I cracked a
pained eyeball. I could see nothing. This was not unusual for a man of my
habits, a profligate drinker of strong spirits and a chaser of most any sweet
jellyroll that passed me by. It might be night. I might have eaten one of them
jimson roots. I hope I hadn’t drank any methyl alcohol, though I wouldn’t put
it past myself.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Seemed
only one thing to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I let loose with a
hellhound halloo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Az Gads,
I’</span><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">zzz bli-i-i-n- d,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">” I paused and
thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’azzz blind-ed. Az poor an’
give inta my sins an’ fell afoul o’ the Lord and now he’s taken my sight....” </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
thrashed my limbs about, hoping nothing was broken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My nostrils were hit by a noxious smell that
made me heave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, I felt something
nuzzling into my tallywacker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, it
wasn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’t
romantic and I feared for man rape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Nooo, ah Lordy, no!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah know az
pretty, but I’m a God-fearin’ man who don’t hold with the Sodomitic practices!”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
my efforts, I got a banshee scream in my left ear that sent all my sinews into
acting on their own and I shoved through some foul goo to see a fine little
porker staring at me, with the clear light of morning shining behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
was in shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pig shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had spent my repose in some mudhole that
was comprised of two percent soil mud and 98 percent animal mud --particularly
of the pig and poultry versions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I peered either way and sat up in a
wary crouch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tapped and found I still
had my lid, a man’s not a man without a hat, covered in feces or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my right, I spied my guit-box, still
wrapped in my duffle, it’s head seemingly still aligned with the bulk of its
body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I broke that guitar, I’d be
well and truly screwed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the
instrument of my survival, for I was an itinerant bluesman heading for
Clarksdale, Mississippi, the mecca of the blues.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fact
that I had only a passing knowledge of how to play the thing, that I didn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’t know
how to tune it, that I sang in a voice that only a mother could love and I
could never remember lyrics worth a shit added up to me being about the
sorriest bluesman managing to keep vertical a few hours of the day in the South
or anywhere else for that matter.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You
know that ol’ </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Walkin</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’ Blues</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Woke up this mornin’</span><span lang="DA" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, fumbled </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘round
for ma shoes....”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d learned, from my
profligate ways, that such behavior in an itinerant bluesman, was a good way to
end up in the dirt fulltime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bogged in
pigshit as I was, I saw light, a break of forest, my duffel, and the cutest
little mud-covered pork roast you ever seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Scrambling it all together, I grabbed my poke and the porker and knowing
that no one would ever be able to remove me from my shoes without a buck knife,
I lit into a shit-cakin’</span><span lang="NL" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, hog squealin</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’</span><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, guitar bashin</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’ run for the
forest.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
Lord be praised, if I didn</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’t make it well into the trees before I
heard the first shotgun boom.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Man
like me doesn’t spend much time wondering where he is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where ever I find myself, there I is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the peripherals make a magnitude of
difference.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’d
obviously tied one on last night and through direction or my own non-existent
navigation had spent the night in a pig flop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Worse had happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">No more shots followed me into the
woods, so I ran a crazy track for a good piece until I found some brush that I
could settle in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I took off my
jacket and rolled the quiet piglet into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was some pig, a little round baby, mostly belly, little screw tail
and wet snout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eyes that looked like
they’d been open just a few days.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
set my hat out to dry and started scraping the mud off my trousers with a
stick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I checked my throat and my Gammy</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’s hoodoo
poke was still there. I moved all my fingers and joints, cranked my neck,
popped my back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing was broken,
which was likely more as the result of my tender years, all 23 of them, than
any lack of trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my face was
scraped cleaner and the grit out of my teeth, I went into my duffle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My darling Bovrille, my prized six-string of
no perceivable brand, still gleamed and was unbroken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I praised Lord Jesus, for his mercies, to my
guitar, my fingers, my teeth and various other body parts as I felt around.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Best of all, I found my smoked black
lenses were still of a piece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those are
very important to my sting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Took ’em off
a blind man who no longer had any use for ‘em.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Fear a bit of a curse for that. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
checked my bandit places, little sewn-in pockets in my duffel and
pants-legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found a short-dog of some
evil-smelling liquor and that made me very happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found some scrap and some papers in my pant
cuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I rolled one and fired it
up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I made water with no noticeable pain
and got that fine warm feeling I always did when I felt the heft of my bad
black boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started thinking about
food, but not much, cause I always been skin and bone, a bit of muscle, too.
But eating always came last to me after wang-dang-doodle and John Barleycorn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
looked over at my coat and flung it open so that I could hang it over a branch
to dry out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poor little piglet
rolled out, gave a weird grunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked
at this cute little muck-covered girl, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and said, “Guess what Po’</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">kchot, I don</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’t want to eat you, cause I got this rotgut here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, you and me weez gonna be
friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you’s gonna make me a
wealthy itinerant bluesman.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
pig made that noise again and I uncapped my bottle, ready for the adventures of
a new day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
set myself up on a street corner in Clarksdale, Mississippi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d dusted myself off, put on my smoked
lenses and tapped my way over with my thin bamboo cane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found a wood box down an alley without
anyone really seeing what I was up to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
got comfy on my box and started banging on my guitar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a useless guitar player, but one kind
fellow, on hearing how hopeless I was, had tuned my guitar to an open-G
tuning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, laying a finger aside any
fret made a chord, and when I got out my pocket knife I could attempt to play a
little slide guitar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trick with the
latter was to keep the vibrato going, so you never really landed on any
particular note.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looked flashy and
over time I had developed a few simple, workable slide solos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had learned to tune my guitar from the top
string down, but only into open-G. Ask me to return it to conventional tuning
and I couldn’t do it on a bet.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
began plunking out a simple bass line with my thumb and used my fingers to get
a bit of a rhythm pattern going. Then, I laid my knife along the strings and a
metallic ring sung out of the box.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
remembered a fragment of a lyric I heard on a street corner of Helena, the
other blues town across the Mississippi. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I wring my hands
when you mistreat me, pretty mama.” Some sharp-dressed guitar picker, wearing a
pin-striped suit and fedora was singing that to the red hot mamas passin’ by. I
noticed the smile on their faces as he sang those words of lament mixed with lascivious
intent. Now, I can’t say that I would ever sing with his same sweet tone. My
voice had as much smoothness as a rooster crowing at the break of day, and my
playing could never be described as smooth, but the Spanish tuning covered up
what I lacked in technique the same way a few sips of Smokestack Lightnin’ made
a hefty woman look like the Venus of doodle. And so I played the song on my
trusty Bovrille, hoping to snare a few coins so I could wet my whistle tonight.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Within
a few bars of the song, like a possum that comes to feed on a pear that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’s fallen
off a tree, a striking lady with coffee-colored skin unleashed the pearlies at
me. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“How long
do you plan on staying on that corner?” she asked. I was astonished that my
plunking and thumping had got the attention of this fine mama. Still, I was a
dyed-in-the-wool con man since my brief stint as a snake-oil salesman with Dr.
Conqueroo’s Medicine Show.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“By the
end of the next verse, we could be in a room together.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Po</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’kchot
grunted. I guess she didn’t approve of the way I wanted to play that wang dang
doodle.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Is that cute
piglet the only audience you got? Because with the way you play and sing,
you’re gonna need to play on this corner for a week to pay for one meal. And
that money will come from the charity of some churchgoers who can’t stand to
see you starve.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Oh, sassy
woman,” I moaned. “How can you be so cruel to a blind man? Don’t you hear
something in my music that you moves you? Y’know, the history and blood of the
Mississippi Delta?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“If you
treat the ladies the way you treat that guitar, then I better move on. Because
you ain’t gonna be cookin’ in my kitchen. You hear? And the name’s not, Oh Sassy
Woman. It’s Miss Dinah Holmes. Besides how can you tell what I look like since
you wear those blind man’s glasses?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“My ears
can discern beauty. You know us blind folk got heightened senses.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Maybe
one day they’ll find it in your music.” </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Miss
Dinah was a feisty one. With her long dark curls, and green afternoon dress,
the way she swung her large hips surely captured all the passing men</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’s
eyeballs. But, I had her attention, though it was because of our banter and my
good looks, if I may say so, long as I don’t get struck down by the good Lord
for talking too pretty about myself. It weren’t for my music. But then again,
if you want to catch a catfish, it don’t matter what bug you attach to your
fly.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Well,
Miss Dinah, how about you stay a little longer and hear my next song? It will
move you so much that you'll forget your plans for tonight.” Truth be told, I
didn’t have another song. I could only play variations of the same song. I
wasn’t as skillful or imaginative as the players I heard up in Helena.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’ve
heard all I needed to hear, understan’? Besides, I’m on my way to get dinner
ready for tonight. But I’ll probably see you around … wha’s your name anyway?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Everybody
calls me One-Eye, but you can call me Hubert.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“And the
pig…”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Po’kchot.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Only
that pig make you any different than the other bluesmen round here. You goin’
to play to raise the change you need for a bottle and when that’s gone you’ll
be hoppin’ the next train. ’Sides, you ain’t blind. You just too lazy and no
account to get yo’sef a real job.” With that, Miss Dinah turned and left me
ogling the caboose.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>* </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The past stays in the past. But sometimes, you
hear it when your thoughts are interrupted by </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">the rhythm of that
lonesome train in the middle of the night. I knew more about real jobs and hard
labor than that Dinah gave me credit for. It was a decent life for a black boy
playin’ music on the street corners of Clarksdale. I got more time on my hands
now than I had in the past and more of a need to survive by my wits. But, back
at Choctaw Plantation, it was early to rise like the rooster, and work those
fields for long hours, especially during cotton harvesting. You knew where your
next meal was coming from, even it was nothin’ but corn and grits. Now, I have
to make my own daily bread, but at least I’m my own boss.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
guitbox player, Ennis McKinley, played so sweetly that it made you forget about
the grueling work. That</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’s when a seed was planted in my mind. Last
I heard of Ennis, he boarded a train for Chicago, and was playing his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Delta blues </i>at some clubs there. That
was funny to me that people would like the music from this muddy Delta. That
they would find something moving in the hollerin’ that came from the long,
tiring work in the fields. But then again, Ennis had a sweet voice, and the
ladies always fell for his music. I thought if he can do it, I can try.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since that white fella John Lomax and
his son, Alan, brought that big 300-pound recordin’ machine into the fields and
brought to the civilized world what we pickaninnies be doin’ for music down
here, the record companies been payin’ attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Got a lot of attention for Muddy and
Leadbelly. That was back in ’34. Songs they recorded got turned into 78-r.p.m.
disks. Folk in the city call ’em <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">race </i>records.
Well, if there’s a race, guess whitey be winnin’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How
I Lost the Acquaintance o’ My Pig, Po’kchot</span></u><u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I took off my hat and wiped my kerchief across
my brow, put down my guitar and stood to stretch my spine. I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> wondered
if there was better street corner I could play next. Where would be the place
that I could benefit from the generosity of some patrons who would throw some
money my way so I could have my daily dose of John Barleycorn?</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Po</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’kchot
started grunting like someone was fixin’ to turn her into grits.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Easy little
Po’kchot. Stay calm. Nobody be fixin’ to hurt you. You and me, we gonna find a
good corner of this city where we will build our fortune.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just
then, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">there
was a sharp tap on the back of my shoulder. An’ someone grabbed me by the ear,
all painful like.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You be
the lying darkie who sold me that potion.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
was staring up at a face angrier than the Devil</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’s. And his body had
a funk strong enough to knock a buzzard off a gut truck. His eyes were so red,
they could burn coal with their crazed stare. I tried to pull away, but he had
me good. “Son, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just a simple
guitbox player.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Only a
coon would deny my accusation. You that nigger snake-oil salesman from Dr.
Conqueroo’s Medicine Show that sold me that bottle of special-brewed tonic that
you said was going to stop me from losin’ my hair and grow back the rest.” He
had reason to be disgruntled. His skull was hairless as a cue ball ’cept for
some nasty greasy strands round his ears.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now
that hillbilly, smellin’ fouler than a decomposing skunk, started to ring a
bell in my memory. But as Dr. Conqueroo once told me, when someone accuses you
of something, even if you did it, always deny. That piece of wisdom helped me
to brush off the accusations of many an angry </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">mama’s husband.
“Lookie here. What do I know about medicine? In fact, the only medicine a
guitbox player like me cares about is what’s needed to make Smokestack Lightnin’.
You best go see a doctor to cure you of your ails.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
tell you,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
bad luck and trouble follows me like a leech on my ass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“How about we settle this in a fair
way? An eye for an eye,” the funky-smelling cracker said.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
laughed. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Ah
only gots one eye. And that one’s no ravin’ hell. You plannin’ on beatin’ on a
blind man?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“No. But
I’m gonna show you no one gets the better of Lucius Lawless.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With
that, he pulled on my ear until his filthy fingers slid off. He turned his
attention to Po</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’kchot and she squealed blue murder as he stepped toward
her. He shifted his skanky redneck body between me and Po’kchot. That’s when I
knew I had to take evasive action pronto and if I proved myself not to be an
enfeebled blind man, then so be it. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m
gonna show you what it’s like to live with nothing,” said the honkie. “I’m
going to take this piglet, raise it real nice, and slaughter it once it grows
real big.” And with that, he grabbed Po’kchot. “I think we’re as fair as fair
can be.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’ll never
forget that moment as he grabbed my pig and toppled me over with a quick
forearm to my throat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I felt where
his unseen sneaky–ass confederate was bent over behind me so that when I
toppled, he arched his back and launched me off my feet. Ass over teakettle. When
I landed, I couldn’t breathe. He had knocked the wind out of me. I was gaspin’,
but couldn’t get no air in my pipes. Bastard ran off with Po’kchot under his
arm squealing louder than a bayou banshee. If I didn’t catch him, and give him
a taste of my justice, bad luck would come flockin’ to me faster than chickens to
corn. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When my lungs started filling again, I headed
off in the general direction the villain had taken. Those boys had</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> looked like
the white-trash miscreants back at Choctaw Plantation who weren't too fond of
work, and were out on the bum. I looked around, wanting to find someone to help.
But there was nobody payin’ attention to a black boy hackin’ an’ wheezin’. No
Po’kchot, and not much from my playing to buy me a drink. I was a piss-poor
excuse for a black man, lettin’ that honkie throttle me. First rule of
engagement, protect your nards, second rule, protect your throat. I had truly
screwed up. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Still,
I could swear I could hear Po’kchot’s muffled squeals and the mutterings of the
thieves on the breeze. Must be my rattled mind playing tricks on me. Still,
there was hope if I dusted myself off and got a drink. Ah, I just need to find
myself some </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">jump
steady.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 11.45pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">* *<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While I was pullin’ myself together, checkin’
for broken parts and tryin’ to brush the dirt off my clothes, a fine gentleman
swaggered down the road comin’ in to town. I was feeling sorry for myself,
ridin’ out my own personal blues. Didn’t pay him much attention. Figured he
wasn’t gonna help my situation any. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“You a
musician?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“If I be
carryin’ this guitbox around, I sure to be one.” When somebody asks me a stupid
question, I usually like to give them a stupid answer. But now I had no choice
but to be pleasant. No Po’kchot to make the listeners give me sympathy money.
And I needed some rotgut to help me forget what happened.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Then
play us a song,” said the sharp-dressed man. He was sporting a grey trilby on
his crown.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Well, I
do like to get paid for my work. How do I know that you're not going to get free
entertainment for one song, and leave?” Truth to be told, I only had one song —which
I played variations of.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I reckon
there’s been enough guitbox players passing through Clarksdale lately so we
ain’t exactly starving for entertainment.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
pulled out my Case knife and started playing a variation of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walkin</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’
Blues</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
with different words. “I’m getting up soon in the morning, I believe I dust my
broom. I’m getting up soon in the morning, I believe I dust my broom….” I used
some lyrics I heard back up West Memphis. Somehow my playing and singing did
the trick.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Not
bad,” said the trilby sport. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m having
a party tonight in the back room of my store, ’bout a mile north of town, got a
big tin Dr. Pepper sign out front . Come by around nine, play your guitbox, and
sing. You’ll be paid, plus you’ll get food and drink.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was a fortunate development, but
the evening was still a few hours away. Long, nervous, dry hours. “I sure could
use a little downpayment,” I said. “Need to buy a new g-string, maybe a thumb
pick.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trilby looked me over. Then he pulled
his hand from his pocket and flipped me a quarter. “Don’t show up drunk,” he
said and walked away.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
had been down, but now things were looking up. I could nurse a couple beers through
the rest of the afternoon. Then, food, drink, and maybe some </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">diddy wah
diddy tonight. As my Gammy once told me, “Just because it’s a red sunrise,
doesn’t mean the sun won’t come out today.” I plucked out a happy run up the
neck.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I ambled off to the grocery and got a couple of
beers outta the ice. Beer’s good when you’re feeling poorly. It’s bubbly and
it’s kinda like food.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
went out on the veranda and joined the other losers hangin’ round. Opened my
beer with a smack of my hand on one of the upright posts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Little
wizened black man in a threadbare suit looked up from where he was warming a
bench. “Man opens a bottle like that means he’s drinking for a reason.” I
looked over. “Yep, can see it on your face. You look like you done lost your
best friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m
sorry, sir, to who do I have the pleasure of addressing? Blind man like me
likes to know.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“My
name is Zeke Holmes, but everyone just calls me Gramps,” he said holding out an
old rheumatiz’ gnarled mitt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
shook his hand. Sat down aside him and offered him a hit off my bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He shook his head. “No, son, you look like
you need that medicine more’n I ever will again. Long face like that, must have
somethin’ to do with a woman.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
shook my head and took another big pull off that cold beer that was goin’ down
fine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not
a woman. Well, something else then. Life’s</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> unfair when you
lose something that you value.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not
a woman</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">,
but somebody who was like a friend.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Did he
die?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“She got
stolen.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Thought
you said weren’t no woman. Who was she?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“A piglet
I call Po’kchot.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
ole man chuckled. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. I just have never
heard anybody refer to a piglet as a friend.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“She was
also a good luck charm, like my Gammy’s hoodoo poke. She brought lots of people
to come and listen to my music. I got to find her.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
happened?”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“A hobo
stole her over on the south end of Clarksdale.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Really.
I did see a greasy hobo with a piglet runnin’ across the street yesterday.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He motioned over to a pathway that ran into a thick
patch of woods.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What’s over there, Gramps?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Bush, and as you go deeper, there’s a
bit of a hobo jungle. You don’t want to go wanderin’ over there, son. No place
for decent folk. If your pig was over there, it’s already been spitted and
roasted. Sorry to say that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I topped my second beer and got to
plannin’.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My walk was slow and hesitant. My cane was
leading my way, but I wasn’t tappin’ it. I had to go across the big main road and
into that hobo camp to see if Po</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’kchot was still alive. I kept thinkin’ this
wasn’t the brightest thing I’d ever done, but I’d grown fond of that pig. Plus,
we had a partnership of sorts. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
walked across the street slowly with my Bovrille strapped tight to my back, and
my thin bamboo cane directing me. Of course, my eyes knew were I was going, but
when you play a blind man, you have stay one when you</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">’re out in public. Soon
as I was into the bush far enough, I put my cane under my arms, my specs in my
pocket, and started a slow cautious canter toward the hobo camp. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll tell you a thing or two about hobos.
First, the image of the wise old hobo is generally a crock of B.S. There might
be a couple somewhere, but most hobos are rejects from society. They’re simple
boys mostly. What’s they call retarded. They get neglected from their families
and just sort of drift off. Then there’s the jungle bosses, these are usually
ex cons or criminals runnin’ from the law. These cons run these boys and use
them for their own nefarious purposes. I’m sure some cornholin’ goes on, though
I can’t conceive of it. They say there’s a difference between ‘bos, tramps and
bums. ‘Bos bein’ itinerant laborers, tramps just lazy and work when they can’t
avoid it and bums who won’t work and just rob and steal, drink and pass out. A
hobo jungle generally holds some of all three with the organized hobos in the
centre and the complete fukups at the fringe. I was certain the pig stealer was
a stone bum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
Spanish steel was a beauty. A ten-inch blade on a five-inch handle. The handle
had been broken and was wrapped in black tape. It had a beat-up ol’ sheath of
tough leather. I’d shifted it around so I could pull it from under my left arm
with my right hand. Even with a guitar on my lap, I could pull it quick. I also
had a folding Case knife with a four-inch blade that I kept razor stropped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
trail started to peter out and I looked for hobo signs to tell me which way to
go. I saw a wavy line above an X carved on one tree to my left. That meant
water and camp that way. Then I saw three diagonal lines on a tree to my right.
That meant danger. I went that way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
new friend, Gramps, had staked me a dollar and I’d managed to buy a pint of the
cheapest rotgut I could find. I had to walk now, so I uncorked the whisky. Couldn’t
run in the underbrush. I could smell tobacco in the air and realized I was
close. I took a swig for courage. My plan was when I got close, I would find a
log to sit on, set the bottle up in plain sight, unpack my guit and start
plunkin’ away on a tune. I figured this would draw a bum or two to me and,
depending on who they were, I could play up my blindness, play the timid darkie
and offer them the booze. Then I’d try and find out where Po’kchot might be. If
it was the guys who took her and they would recognize me, I’d still try and buy
them off with the booze, however my fallback plan was to strike first. Knife
fights are usually decided by the loser having hesitated. I’d decided I didn’t
have any choice but to go for the kill. White trash, teach ’em to steal my pig.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
crept closer, the scent of smoke getting stronger, tobacco mixed with woodsmoke
now. I took my guitar off and leaned it against a tree. Then I heard a sound
that made my stomach sink. It was a piglet squeal, muffled, but recognizable as
coming from a swine of my acquaintance. It was further to my right than where
the smoke was coming from. Naturally, I tried to figure why. One answer flooded
my head with blood rage. The honkie was about to butcher my baby. All bets on
the plan panning out were now off. I hustled through the brush until I was
confronted by a sight I can’t hardly recount here. I drew the bowie and ran
full tilt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
bastard had his overalls bunched around his knees. My pig was muzzled with a
bandanna. The white trash was stroking his dick, trying to get a hardon. I was
sickened and something snapped in me. A part of my mind went back to my
heritage in Africa, to the tribal warriors that were my ancestors, fighting for
their lives, hacking and slashing against the white man who was trying to take
them away from their families. The white man only wanted the young strong bucks
and would rape the women and slaughter the children as poor business and to add
to the men’s confusion and terror. I was a warrior and what was mine was being
threatened by something so obscene as to be beyond conception. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
arm arched out to its full extent, the steel pulling it out. And then I swung
it down with all my strength, letting the bowie’s weight add to its power. The
redneck bum just stupidly turned his head, no clue what was goin’ down, set on gettin’
his ugly pecker wet. Though I’d been going for the neck, he turned to present
his face and my fine Spanish blade smashed through teeth and tendon and cartilage,
dislocated the jaw and cut through the joint until it was stopped short by the
spinal column. I gave a final thrust and twist and pulled my steel out of his
face. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
only sound he made was a whooshing of air like out of a severed hose, then he
toppled over, his hand still affixed to his organ. My throat had closed in the
silence of the bringer of death. No war cry came from this assassin. I was
cold, silent, a dealer of vengeance. I prayed to the Angel of Death. I made
human sacrifice in blood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
had happened in seconds, with no thought. I wiped the blade on the cracker’s
shirt and slipped it back into its sheath. I grabbed my pig and shoved her in
my coat. I could feel the grim set of my mouth and the flame in my eyes. My
tribal face was daring Death to present me with another cracker to kill. Somehow,
I backtracked, grabbed my guit and ran back through those woods faster than a
shithouse rat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By
the time I emerged from the trail, my lungs were afire. As I came to the road I
couldn’t believe my eyes. Gramps and Miss Dinah rushed toward me. Gramps had a
big raincoat that he threw over me. Dinah was crying and took my guitar as I
allowed them to hurriedly pull me along the road, ignoring any passersby. I
could feel the piggly warmth under my left arm. In a few minutes, we were
walking down an alley and through a doorway into refuge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“What
happened to you, One-Eye?” asked Miss Dinah as she pulled a chair underneath me
before I collapsed. “Actually, I don’t want to know.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Is that
you, Miss Dinah?” I wheezed, even though I could see her clearly through my
smoked black lenses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Cut the crap, One-Eye,” she said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We wuz ready to wait all night for
you to come outta dem woods,” said Gramps. His old raisin face was a mixture of
concern and relief.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was a spurt of squirmin’ under
my coat and I reached in and pulled out Po’kchot by her scruff. I handed her to
Dinah and she took the bandanna from the poor little pig’s snout. Po’kchot let
out a few snorts and a squeal. Dinah let her down onto the floor and the pig
stretched and snorted for a bit. Then she came and rested against my leg. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Get some warm water and a cloth,
Dinah,” said Gramps. “We got to get this boy cleaned up before anybody comes
round.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I licked my lips, thought I tasted
what might be blood. I thanked Gramps and Dinah and petted Po’kchot on the
head. She was gettin’ dozy. “That’s right, Dinah,” I said, “better get me
cleaned up. I got a gig tonight.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">—
30 —<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "tahoma" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Episode
2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-82065382179947507572017-01-21T17:15:00.001-08:002017-01-21T17:15:05.140-08:00Nice kitties (test)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-92086888164936263672016-07-25T17:38:00.002-07:002016-07-26T16:32:26.466-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/319286306/A-Cut-Above-PDF" target="_blank"></a>Les Wiseman's Western Magazine Award-winning Sports Story of the Year -- <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/319286306/A-Cut-Above-PDF" target="_blank">A Cut Above: A Tale of Women's Bodybuilding</a> </h3>
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<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/319286306/A-Cut-Above-PDF" target="_blank">https://www.scribd.com/document/319286306/A-Cut-Above-PDF</a></div>
Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-46803707574667678422016-02-28T18:53:00.003-08:002016-03-01T09:08:50.165-08:00Les Wiseman Encounters the Ramones 1985<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/301045633/Ramones-1985-Wiseman">http://www.scribd.com/doc/301045633/Ramones-1985-Wiseman</a>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-51615066630911578302016-01-08T17:29:00.000-08:002016-01-08T17:49:17.850-08:00Book review: Dennis E. Bolen's Kaspoit!Looking evil in the eye
Brilliantly disturbing novel echoes the Pickton murder case
By Les Wiseman, Canwest News Service January 10, 2010
Kaspoit!
By Dennis E. Bolen
Anvil Press, $20
How close can one get to look evil in the eye? When you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you, as Nietzsche wrote. When writers, through their craft, investigate evil, they go to places where the splatter gets on them, where doors are opened in the psyche that should have been left closed and can never be shut again.
So, while I admire Vancouver's Dennis E. Bolen for his strength in unleashing this unflinching fictional evocation of evil surrounding an infamous B.C. pig farm, I feel sorry that this writer feels compelled to dive so fully into the sewage of human sin to create his art.
Kaspoit! is either a sublime literary work of near genius or is one of the most wretched wallows in the dark mire of the soul ever published.
It took a lot of guts to write this book. It takes a lot of guts to read it.
Kaspoit! is the sound of a beer can opening, which punctuates many sections of this novel. The story is told strictly in dialogue and sound effects. The characters are white-trash criminals. The masterminds do well financially. The hands lead lives of cracker hedonism, beer, reefer, some E and skid-row hookers. In the compound of the swine ranch, they have a clubhouse, a sort of sub-gentlemen's hangout, where anything goes. And, if the prostitutes suffer some ill treatment, even death, well, there's a half-wit gofer named Friendly, who will dismember them and get rid of the parts.
Elmore Leonard most famously noted that criminals are not usually the sharpest knives in the Ginsu set. The sheer pig (and I use the term advisedly) ignorance of this coterie of creeps, their monstrous amorality, their casual cruelty and lack of any moral compass is enough to give readers a sick feeling.
Plus, that language -- savage, profane and merciless, all delivered in a fever-dream delirium of brief fragments of conversation. It is like James Ellroy's White Jazz made even speedier. The reader needs to learn a new language that hurtles through acts of depravity and dissolution. And when you put the book down, it is a relief. It is a Necronomicon of putrescence made all the more poignant in that it appears to be a speculation on what might have gone on at the famous pig farm and a thinly veiled revisioning of other recent western Canadian crimes.
Bolen grew up on Vancouver Island, studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, and taught creative writing at the latter. He was a federal parole officer in the Vancouver area for 23 years. His previous novels -- Stupid Crimes, Krekshuns and Toy Gun --feature parole officer Barry Delta. He has also published a historical novel about the Holocaust, Stand in Hell, and a book of short fiction, Gas Tank& Other Stories.
Reader beware, Kaspoit! is one rough book, not for the easily upset, a drop into a maelstrom of evil, a harrowing ride. Bolen makes the really rough writers, including Rex Miller, Derek Raymond and Mo Hayder, look tame. But, if you can handle it, you'll soon realize you're reading a work of stark brilliance.
Several elements make this book work. Its experimentation with new words is successful. Bolen has such a knack for creating believable dialogue that puts the reader in the scene. To write so well that it has a physical impact on the reader is rare.
The story itself is so compelling that the reader returns to the book, though repelled by it.
Les Wiseman is former associate editor of Vancouver magazine and western editor of TV Guide.
Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen--HO HO HO: TOTALLY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoroz13JaJTjzDTvbhukXM2UP5XGyY5S9LC1QUOddgQuwPoISCoOtI_FT4avT-0viDAehmtURIPmawoiemHGvkphBsy5zugv36JgGeAT0cqxFn0moVTfeyvZOmY7DHf6zKF8PAElIlgY/s1600/KASPOIT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoroz13JaJTjzDTvbhukXM2UP5XGyY5S9LC1QUOddgQuwPoISCoOtI_FT4avT-0viDAehmtURIPmawoiemHGvkphBsy5zugv36JgGeAT0cqxFn0moVTfeyvZOmY7DHf6zKF8PAElIlgY/s320/KASPOIT.jpg" /></a></div> UNTRUE
Source: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Looking+evil/2425613/story.html --PAY ME SOME MONEY! YOU LEECHES!Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-77097544001444652132012-02-06T15:24:00.000-08:002012-02-06T15:30:15.960-08:00Young, Sexy & Well Heeled --The Vancouver Strip Scene 1981 by Les WisemanIn 1981, I was considered something of an aficionado of ecdysiastic terpsichore. Here's my report from the front.<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/80706897/Young-Sexy-amp-Well-Heeled"><br /><br />http://www.scribd.com/doc/80706897/Young-Sexy-amp-Well-Heeled<br /></a><br />Photos by stalwart A. Waterhouse-Hayward.Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-67143529115364875462011-12-29T14:44:00.000-08:002013-03-19T09:52:20.836-07:00The Adventures of One-Eyed Johnson: Part Negro Blues HollererBlind One-Eyed Johnson 1 Wiseman<br /><br /><br /><br />The Adventures of Blind One-Eyed Johnson: <br />Part-Negro Blues Hollerer<br /><br />The blues: "a panhandling gimmick for alcoholics." -H.C. Speir, talent scout responsible for the recordings of many Delta blues artists.<br /><br /><br />How I Got the Acquaintance o’ My Pig, Po’kchot<br /><br /><br />The Mississippi Delta is home to a lot of things, mud particularly. I cracked a pained eyeball. I could see nothing. This was not unusual for a man of my habits, a profligate drinker of strong spirits and a chaser of most any sweet jellyroll that passed me by. It might be night. I might have eaten one of them jimson roots. I hope I hadn’t drank any methyl alcohol, though I wouldn’t put it past myself.<br /> Seemed only one thing to do. I let loose with a hellhound halloo. “Az Gads, I’zzz bli-i-i-n- d,” I paused and thought. I’azzz blind-ed. Az poor an’ give inta my sins an’ fell afoul o’ the Lord and now he’s taken my sight....” <br /> I thrashed my limbs about, hoping nothing was broken. My nostrils were hit by a noxious smell that made me heave. Then, I felt something nuzzling into my tallywacker. But, it wasn’t romantic and I feared for man rape. “Nooo, ah Lordy, no! Ah know az pretty, but I’m a God-fearin’ man who don’t hold with the Sodomitic practices!”<br /> For my efforts, I got a banshee scream in my left ear that sent all my sinews into acting on their own and I shoved through some foul goo to see a fine little porker staring at me, with the clear light of morning shining behind him.<br /> I was in shit. Pig shit. I had spent my repose in some mudhole that was comprised of two percent soil mud and 98 percent animal mud --particularly of the pig and poultry versions. <br />I peered either way and sat up in a wary crouch. I tapped and found I still had my lid, a man’s not a man without a hat, covered in feces or not. To my right, I spied my guit-box, still wrapped in my duffle, it’s head seemingly still aligned with the bulk of its body. If I broke that guitar, I’d be well and truly screwed. It was the instrument of my survival, for I was an itinerant bluesman heading for Clarksdale, Mississippi, the mecca of the blues.<br /> Fact that I had only a passing knowledge of how to play the thing, that I didn’t know how to tune it, that I sang in a voice that only a mother could love and I could never remember lyrics worth a shit added up to me being about the sorriest bluesman managing to keep vertical a few hours of the day in the South or anywhere else for that matter.<br /> You know that old Walkin’ Blues? “Woke up this mornin’, fumbled ‘round for ma shoes....” I’d learned, from my profligate ways, that such behavior in an itinerant bluesman, was a good way to end up in the dirt fulltime. Bogged in pigshit as I was, I saw light, a break of forest, my duffel, and the cutest little mud-covered pork roast you ever seen. Scrambling it all together, I grabbed my poke and the porker and knowing that no one would ever be able to remove me from my shoes without a buck knife, I lit into a shit-cakin’, hog squealin’, guitar bashin’ run for the forest.<br /> And Lord be praised, if I didn’t make it well into the trees before I heard the first shotgun boom.<br /><br />* * * <br /><br />Man like me doesn’t spend much time wondering where he is. Where ever I find myself, there I is. However the peripherals make a magnitude of difference.<br /> I’d obviously tied one on last night and through direction or my own non-existent navigation had spent the night in a pig flop. Worse had happened. <br />No more shots followed me into the woods, so I ran a crazy track for a good piece until I found some brush that I could settle in. Then I took off my jacket and rolled the quiet piglet into it. This was some pig, a little round baby, mostly belly, little screw tail and wet snout. Eyes that looked like they’d been open just a few days.<br /> I set my hat out to dry and started scraping the mud off my trousers with a stick. I checked my neck and my Gammy’s hoodoo poke was still there. I moved all my fingers and joints, cranked my neck, popped my back. Nothing was broken, which was likely more as the result of my tender years, all 23 of them, than any lack of trying. When my face was scraped cleaner and the grit out of my teeth, I went into my duffle. My darling Bovrille, my prized six-string of no perceivable brand, still gleamed and was of a piece. I praised Lord Jesus, for his mercies, to my guitar, my fingers, my teeth and various other body parts as I felt around.<br />Best of all, I found my smoked black lenses were still of a piece. Those are very important to my sting. Took ’em off a blind man who no longer had any use for ‘em. Fear a bit of a curse for that. <br /> I checked my bandit places, little sewn-in pockets in my duffel and pants-legs. I found a short dog of some evil-smelling liquor and that made me very happy. I found some scrap and some papers in my pant-cuff. So I rolled one and fired it up. I made water with no noticeable pain and got that fine warm feeling I always did when I felt the heft of my bad black boy. I started thinking about food, but not much, cause I always been skin and bone, a bit of muscle, too. But eating always came last to me after wang-dang-doodle and John Barleycorn.<br /> I looked over at my coat and flung it open so that I could hang it over a branch to dry out. The poor little piglet rolled out, gave a weird grunt. I looked at this cute little muck-covered guy, or girl, I didn’t know which, and said, “Guess what Po’kchot, I don’t want to eat you, cause I got this rotgut here. Instead, you and me weez gonna be friends. And you’s gonna make me a wealthy itinerant bluesman.”<br /> The pig made that noise again and I uncapped my bottle, ready for the adventures of a new day.<br /><br />* * * <br /><br />I set myself up on a street corner in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I’d dusted myself off, put on my smoked lenses and tapped my way over with my thin bamboo cane. I found a wood box down an alley without anyone really seeing what I was up to. I got comfy on my box and started banging on my guitar. I was a useless guitar player, but one kind fellow, on hearing how hopeless I was, had tuned my guitar to an open-G tuning. Thus, laying a finger aside any fret made a chord, and when I got out my pocket knife I could attempt to play a little slide guitar. The trick with the latter was to keep the vibrato going, so you never really landed on any particular note. It looked flashy and over time I had developed a few simple, workable slide solos. I had learned to tune my guitar from the top string down, but only into open-G. Ask me to return it to conventional tuning and I couldn’t do it on a bet.<br /> I began plunking out a simple bass line with my thumb and used my fingers to get a bit of a rhythm pattern going. Then, I laid my knife along the strings and a metallic ring sung out of the box. <br /><br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />Christmas in Clarksdale —1938<br /><br />I’d pulled my coat collar up and pulled my hat down. Po’kchot, my piglet, was huddled in a blue flannel blanket in a wood box beside my bench. I’m a guitar player, but the cuteness of that pig makes us more money than my blues. So. I figure we’re business partners and I never scrimp when it comes to keepin’ her comfy or well fed. She’s been puttin’ on a few, too. Must be about 20 pounds now. I’ll never eat her. She’s my sweetie-pie. Kept each other warm during the autumn nights when I’d just wander into the woods after a day beatin’ the strings and settle down under a tree. <br /><br />But, tonight was lookin’ to be a cold one. Couldn’t keep my strings in tune as the cold shortened them. Even when I lay the back of my knife on the strings they felt harder and there was a crisp raspiness to the friction and my notes had a certain eerie zing that I found appealing, even though when I played chords they sounded like a train wreck. <br /><br />“Well, Po’kchot, looks like we’re gonna have to dip into the winter savings and get us a room for the night.” Here in Clarksdale there was the white-folks hotel, The Taft, the upper-class blacks hotel, The Lansing, and there was the Black Cat, a fine establishment if you woke up alive in the morn, but most of my fellow bluesmen stayed over at Jemima Belle’s rooming house. It was clean enough and sometime, when the weather was bad, a little jam session would get going in the back parlour. Trouble was, I’d never heard a policy on livestock. I didn’t know if Po’kchot would be a problem securing accommodation. <br /><br />That I was sighted, though only in my right eye, was common knowledge among the bluesmen who populated the street corners of the town. Still, I wore my dark glasses hoping for a few sympathy pennies from the civilians. I’d walk around with my guitar slung across my back and my cane tapping out in front of me. I’d stuff Po’kchot in her warm blue blankie into my sailor’s rucksack and we could travel anywhere. She seemed to find it soothing and sleep-making to lay in the sack while I travelled. She’d been thrown into rail cars many a time and seem to roll with the impact. Hell, sometime I’d thrown her in before I got a good handhold and I’d be running fast alongside her car, grasping for a rung to pull myself in. I’d only lost her by a couple cars once. But I made the train and had to scramble across a few linkages to get to where I’d thrown her sack and my guitar. I found a white hobo feeling around her, when I walked in. So, I pulled out my signature Spanish Bowie —14 inches of blade and five of handle. Put the fear of the Almighty in the hobo rummaging through my stuff. As well it should. I’ve slashed a few bad men with that blade and stick it in to the hilt in a couple more. Lotta guys have guns now, stolen mostly from guys that didn’t know if a man is runnin’ toward you, you better shoot fast, because guys who are running at you are holding a blade and, in close quarters, I’ll take blade rather than a pistol any day. Quieter, deadler, less chance for a screw up. I got a gun, a beat-up derringer .25, handles shattered off it, just a barrel a firing pin and an trigger more or less. It’s in my sock and I know it might save me one day, but when all the chips are down, I’ll stay with the Spanish steel for getting the job done. Has a certain intimidation authority that is hard to beat, too. <br /><br />I felt the cold wet slipping into my worn-out broguns. Newspapers had long been of use to me as insoles. I never read them much, but they folded up well and kept the rocks out of my shoes. <br /><br />I saw the old harp player, Blind Boy Johnson, fumbling around on his corner. Sticking his tongue out to taste the snowflakes. A lot of us bluesmen are named Johnson. Robert, Tommy, Blind Willie, and so on. It ain’t no mistake. Some of us take the name to enhance our appeal, others just were inseminated by a lot of Johnsons. Others, like me, got the name from the ladies we bedded. Yes, I’m known for my skill with my knife, my fretboard and with the ladies. Been know to drink a few jars and remain standing and playing when others fell to the side, as well. <br /><br />“B.B.,” I shouted. “It’s One Eye here. Wonderin’ if you could answer a question.”<br /><br />Blind Boy stopped his fumbling about. “Well, I wish to tarnation that it would be any other brother than you, One Eye, but I’m not doing so well and I’m tired and wasted and can’t find my way home.”<br /><br />This was heartening news. “So, I’ll help you back to Jemima Belle’s, sure enough. But I has the question.”<br /><br />“No, I don’t has any whisky. I drank it all myself. No I don’t have any ’baccy. I need what I got to relax my frickin’ nerves. And, no, I don’t has any spare change cuz I never had any go flat. I need my hard-earned dough. But if you can get me back to Belle’s I would appreciate enough to give you a nickel for a beer.”<br /><br />“Done,” I said. “Now, let’s get you straightened out here.” I took him by the shoulders and put him to sit on his barrel. I took the harp from his hand, a C# Hohner, I believe, and put it in his breast pocket among many others. “Okay, now you’ve got your instruments. Let’s see what else you need to take with you. His tin cup for offerings was at his feet and I warned him. “Keep those feet still, otherwise you’ll knock over your cup and all your day’s earnings will fall in the cracks of the boardwalk and we’ll never be able to get ’em.” I saw a sparkling dime in his cup and quiet as all heck I slipped it out without letting it rasp against the cup.<br /><br />“What was that?” said the canny old buzzard. <br /><br />“Nothing, I’m just getting you your day’s earnings, you old codger. Here it is in your favorite tobacco can, ya old poop. Now you’re squared away and I’ve gotta ask you a question.<br /><br />He hustled the top of his ’baccy can on and gave it a stern twist then held it to his heart as if it were the Bible. “You sure you didn’t slip a few coins out of there?” He shook the can. “Seems like it might be a dime or a nickel light.”<br /><br />“Look you old buzzard, I didn’t take a few of your coins. Now answer my question.”<br /><br />“You can see.... You’ll take advantage of a blind man like me....”<br /><br />“Look... well actually that’s not a good term, but I got one eye, scarred across the eyeball, the world looks like it’s got a piece of lumber in the middle of it, so don’t give me your abuse, you old hunk of lkeather. Looks like you got about ten bucks in your ’baccy can, so you can afford another bottle and some rent if you don’t get lost and robbed. I’m here to keep you from getting lost and robbed you dumb galoot.”<br /><br />“Blind leading the blind....”<br /><br />“Yeah sure, that’s sparklin’ witty, but what I have here is, y’know, my piglet Po’kchot?<br /><br />“Mmm, that one’ll look good on a spit some day....<br /><br />“Look you drunken coot, that piglet ain’t nobody’s meal, but she is my meal ticket. She’s what gives me the sympathy that you and your damned blind eyes got.” I gathered my breath for another barrage. “And if you weren’t too stupid to drink methyl alcohol, you would still have your eyesight. Ya dumbo tosspot. <br /><br />“What I want is to get this piglet into Miss Belle’s But piglets need to shit and piss in the middle of the night, when you’ll be wrestlin’ with the devil taking your soul and I’ll be sleeping the sleep of the righteous.<br /><br />“Now, how can I get this piglet in and get some kinda smell-proof accommodation made up?” I grabbed him by the throat and pulled his round brim down his nose<br /><br />“Well po’k smells like po’k, no matter what you do. You can’t put that little one in with the big ones in a pen, they’d eat her within a minute”.Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-58972150852031455622010-06-25T13:51:00.000-07:002010-06-25T16:15:26.474-07:00Vancouver Punk 1978 by Les WisemanDue to the revival of interest in all things Vancouver Punk engendered by the showings of Susanne Tabata's feature-length documentary <span style="font-style:italic;">Bloodied But Unbowed</span>, there has been unprecedented public demand for access to <span style="font-weight:bold;">Les Wiseman's ephochal and earth-scorching article Punks on Parade</span>, which first appeared in <span style="font-style:italic;">Vancouver</span> magazine's September 1978 issue. Herewith, a link to that fabled document provided by El Dub himself. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/33565094/Vancouver-Punk-1978">http://www.scribd.com/doc/33565094/Vancouver-Punk-1978</a><br /><br />Excelsior,<br /><br />Les. WisemanCorridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-57279273586592914272010-03-22T16:34:00.000-07:002010-03-22T16:35:46.470-07:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 6King Tut’s Mummy<br /><br />(for Chris Sherwood)<br /><br /><br /><br />I remember a time, so long ago, that affected me for the rest of my life. I was about nine years old. The Tutankhamun exhibit came to Vancouver. We lived in Squamish. I was this beautiful blond lad with a brylcreem flick at the front of his hair, large front teeth, the future world my oyster. I was going to become an archaeologist. (There’s a bright idea --actually no dumber than what I ended up doing with my life, truth be told.) My parents always being supportive, said, we had to go to the exhibit of the treasures of the boy pharaoh’s tomb.<br /><br />It was in downtown Vancouver, what is now Skid Row, but was then the home of Woodward’s, the town’s biggest department store, which also had a major food floor and hence was a very decent area. My dad, Charlie Wiseman, only went to Pierre Paris on Hastings Street for his shoes and I believe he ordered the caulked boots for the M&B logging camps and was thus a somewhat important fellow to Mr. Paris.<br /><br />In those days, there were no more drunks than a usual downtown, a few junkies, but they were quiet and sophisticated and hung to clubs like the Smilin’ Buddha. Most of all, there was no crack and what that causes, and no crystal methedrine.<br /><br />Every Christmas, we’d drive Highway 99 to Hastings Street and park the green Mercury Montclair in the fabled Woodward’s parking lot (on the enclosed downward spiral Dad used to like to lay on the horn and delight me with the echoes, while my mother gave him the evil eye) and go visit Woodward’s proscenium. This was the seasonal stroll of young Vancouver and by young, I mean children. Woodwards had a walk-through that had huge Christmas displays behind glass. Fake snow, big sleighs, polar bears, penguins and reindeer - plus a Santa - that moved. In these days of CGI, that might not seem like much, but robotic marionettism in 1961 was quite the crowd puller.<br /><br />Mom, in her gloves and fur coat, that I nestled in to sleep on so many car rides, would move me awestricken from giant window to giant window along with most of Vancouver and its whelps. Dad, with his fedora and pipe smoking, sportjacket and open collar, would stride along -in Pierre Paris shoes, no doubt. I felt so secure. (I recall that 20 years later I told my mother that I had a perfect life as a child, “And it wasn’t until I moved out on my own that my life went for a total shit.” Language aside, it was an anecdote my mother would often bring up, vindicating her upbringing skills.)<br /><br />Another sidebar: At Krak-A-Joke, purveyors of fine plastic dog doodie and vomit, in the 500-block Seymour Street, my dad, brother and I had found a plastic pipe -black stem and brown bowl, just like Dad’s.<br /><br />While we would walk the street, I’d ask Dad to fill up my pipe with smoke. Which he would do, covering the bowl to not allow the smoke to escape and handed it back to me. Then, two roués on the town we would walk the street. I was always heartily pleased when proper ladies would look shocked and lift their gloved hands to their lips in shock as this insouciant youngster puffed his old briar while perambulating with his obvious corrupter. Dad enjoyed it, too. All ladies wore gloves in those days.<br /><br />But, back to the point. On one of our trips to Vancouver, we went to see the Treasures of Tutankhamun exibit, which was housed in the Carnegie Centre. Through high-ceilinged corridors cordoned with scarlet velvet ropes, we walked and peered at gold and stone sarcophagi, hammered gold necklaces and bracelets and all manner of Egyptiana. Yessir, this was to be my destiny, to roam the sands of Egypt, to enter the chambers of the pyramids that no one had entered for thousands of years. My destiny, face to face. <br /><br />We came to the mummies and they really looked like hell, all wrapped or partially unbound to reveal sepia and black leathered skin. Their eyeless, noseless faces grinned in a dehydrated rictus, their teeth charred stumps. I knew what I was getting into; one day I would be unwrapping these guys myself.<br /><br />Then we saw the mummified remains of a baby laying in a rotted wooden coffin. I remained cool, but something inside me snapped quietly. Oh God, the poor little thing was all wizened with a bald head barely the size of a hardball. Small shreds were torn out of the scalp revealing the bone beneath and little whisps of reddish hair sprouted haphazardly from its head. The same leathery smile as all the others on its black, torn lips.<br /><br />I was quiet on the drive home. Just snuggled into Mom’s fur coat and watched the raindrops on the windshield race and merge.<br /><br />That night, snug in my bed, my faithful stuffed lion, Lambert, and his best friend an ocelot named Simba, tucked in my arms I drifted off to a place that would never be the same again.<br /><br />I was running along the twisting corridors of Carnegie Centre. I was alone and it was dark. Behind me came the click clop of something following. That dead leathery baby, its arms unswaddled and reaching out for me. The coffin clomping along the floor, swaying from side to side as one would presume the standard form of locomotion for vertical square-bottomed coffins in a hurry. I knew its touch would instantly tranform me into something similar, tight, black, knotted skin tugging at my bones. I could feel the tension of my skin pulling tighter into strands and blackening, dying. No moisture, only eternal darkness, trapped within that little immobile body, stuffed under thousand of tons of stone for millennia. Shoved in a slot, stone on all sides, tight as a bullet in a barrel, there to hear my mind scream for all eternity. Urgently, that little child was trying to catch up with someone to be its friend, to keep it company in the dark where it was trapped, afraid, desperate.<br /><br />Night after night, though I’d struggle to stay awake, that child would chase me down those darkened halls wanting me to join it in its forever damned fate.<br /><br />I overheard my mother once recounting to a friend about the exhibit, “The mummy of the baby quite disturbed Leslie.” <br /><br />And it still does, it still does. To this day, I can hardly look at that page in the souvenir book that we bought at the exhibit. Like the mummified child, that book lies packed deep in boxes, surrounded by masses of other books, pounds and pounds of books, paper, screaming to get out, wanting me to open it to its page and share its horrible fate. It waits in terror and desperation. Waiting for me.<br /><br />Epilogue: A few years back, I was recounting this tale to some of the ladies in the art department where I worked. My friend Chris Sherwood listened intently and with brow furled, said, “You know that mummy from the Tutankhamun exhibit is at the Museum of Man at UBC. It stayed here. If you wanted to go out and see it....”<br /><br />Truly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt dank, entombing blackness pour into my skull. It hadn’t left. It was waiting still.<br /><br />-- 30 --Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-81431249498359783582009-11-26T19:03:00.000-08:002009-11-26T19:14:43.640-08:00The Great 1971 or 1972 Pink Floyd CaperThe Great Pink Floyd Caper<br /><br />[This is dedicated to Randy Dahlquist, who also snuck in and was dealing with his own set of circumstances.]<br /><br />I was in first-year university. Age 17 or 18. Didn’t have tickets for a band we loved called Pink Floyd, who were playing at the PNE Gardens auditorium. Creedance Clearwater Revival was filling the Pacific Coliseum with soon-to-be rednecks that night. So, I went in the back door of the Gardens about 3 p.m., said I was with the band. Had long hair, got waved through (just like an Obama event). I sat -zen like- onstage, under the piano, until a roadie asked me to help set up the gong --yes, the gong (that launched a thousand trips) on the back of Umma Gumma. Helped the guys out with various things, finding groupies to mend their trousers, which were those thin things Brits called loons. Roger Waters came out and nodded to me and sound checked One of These Days. When I nodded that it was cool, he nodded back and walked off. <br />Then they let the crowd in and I was standing centre stage and in walked the most beautiful hippie princess I loved from UBC. <br /><br />She saw me. <br /><br />It was awesome.<br /><br />Finally, someone said, get off the stage and I went down and saw the Meddle show, with speakers 360 degrees (unheard of at the time) at the Vancouver Gardens. Mindblower. Floyd had strippers for the encore. I was about 18; I didn’t know that a large part of my life would eventually revolve around naked women. (It was a different time, you laughing fkrs.) <br /><br />Couple nights later, the hippie princess is working the commisary in residence. I buy a chocolate bar and she says, "Hey, I saw you onstage with Pink Floyd the other night." <br /><br />My chest and other parts grew large. "What did you think," I asked, referring to both the Floyd and myself. "I fkn hate Pink Floyd," she said. "I only went because my boyfriend said he'd cut me off if I didn't go." <br /><br />I went back to my small Place Vanier room and thought a lot. There was a great lesson to be learned there. And oh how I learned it year after year after year....<br /><br />--30 --Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-10288490021269946782009-08-14T18:53:00.000-07:002009-08-14T18:57:26.033-07:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 5The Beatles Come to Stillwater:<br /><br />I remember a summer game of tag on a big lawn beside a house that overlooked Stillwater’s main industrial area. Below where we played, a tiered set of sun-faded,grey, wooden stairs led down to what was essentially a marshalling yard. The big old building where my Dad worked as a personnel man and timekeeper was on the left side as you looked down. Logging trucks were parked on the right by a huge airplane hangar-like corrugated-aluminum machine shop like the top half of a giant culvert. Arc-welding constantly flashed through the doors. The rest of the land was dust, bordered by tall alders. An ancient wooden dock stuck into Stillwater Bay and, from about forty feet out, it was all log booms from one side of the bay to the other. Boom boats, those stubby little cartoon ships, bumped and rocked and shoved the booms around into some sort of order. Men in caulked boots ran along them with pike poles and pickaroons. Dust roads ran off to tattered residences converted from old bunkhouses along the shoreline.<br /> <br />There was a sort of gravel pit along one of these roads and it was full of trimmings from the alder trees that had overgrown the logging roads. It was a massive pile of small-cut branches and leaves maybe twenty feet tall. We could climb up the shell of this sort of amphitheatre and, huffing and puffing at the effort, could stand at the top of the precipice and with a hop, skip and jump go soaring through the air to land on our bottoms twenty-five-feet below on a soft cushion of flora. Today, the very idea makes me sick to my stomach. The potential for a stick prodding through somebody was there, but no one got hurt. Despite repeated attempts. It was one of those mystical, blessed summers.<br /><br />Anyway, safe on the lawn of the foreman’s white picketed yard, overlooking the dustbowl and the bay, we were in a tizzy. All week, the TV was promoting the appearance of this group that all the bigger kids were listening to on their radios. They were called The Beatles and at The Hudson’s Bay in downtown Powell River, you could buy grey Beatles sportsjackets with black velour collars and even Beatle wigs. It was rumored that one of the big kids who went to high school in Powell River was actually sighted buying one of these toupees.<br /><br />And this musical combo was to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, this night, Sunday. We were all crazy for it, especially the girls. We constantly quizzed each other on the four bandmembers’ names. Ringo was the flat-out favorite throughout North America and so he was with the girls in our crowd. He shook his hair a lot, girls screamed and gave those of us who would grow to be big-beaked a lot of hope. (Especially years later when he married the luscious Barbara Bach.)<br /><br />As the appointed hour neared, we spun madly around on the lawn, even the simple rules of tag forgotten in our excitement. I would yell out the word, “Ringo!” and Mousie and Penny would scream. Then they’d regroup and tell us how they were going to do exactly that when they watched in their living rooms tonight. We -me and my buddy Kimbo- in no way thought that was excessive. With the small bit of testosterone that a nine-year-old lad has, I felt I might make a peep myself.<br /><br />Eight o’clock and we were all ushered into the living room of the foreman’s big house. Stilted Ed murmured a few things about having met these “fine young men.” He’d been around the entertainment scene as the Talk of the Town columnist for eons before he unexpectedly became the biggest thing on television. He knew that long hair and loud music was to be tolerated and that, if it drew in an audience, he only stood to win.<br /><br />Looking back on those performances of She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I can see how much appeal that band had. I can’t really listen to them anymore as I’ve heard all the songs ad nauseum. But when I was researching this piece and watching that performance on YouTube, there was definitely some great music and incredible charisma and magnetism. The New York audience screamed themselves silly, as did Mousie and Penny. I was charmed by the lads, never realizing their later songs Revolution #9 and Good Night would be the only songs of theirs I could tolerate, some forty-five years later.<br /><br />A few weeks later on the Sullivan show, I saw a band that I knew would make everyone forget about The Beatles, they were just so much better: The Dave Clark Five.Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-75394106946237911382009-08-07T16:42:00.000-07:002009-08-07T16:43:47.475-07:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 4The over-rated science-fiction author Harlan Ellison has always had some pretty good things to say. One of them was: “Mothers are meant to do three things: love you; feed you and give away your comic book collection.”<br />This is my tale of that.<br />I had ‘em all: Avengers #1, X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #4, Daredevil #1, Marvel Tales #1, The Hulk when the Hulk was grey, Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man, Journey into Mystery with that early Kirby or Ditko Thor.<br />And, lo, there came to be a thing called a rummage sale at Stillwater Community Hall. My mother, though I had proved to her that reading comic books gave me superheroic grades in reading in school, decided that my comic book collection was a waste of space. And, after all, you’ve read them, they’re finished. My mother, one of the great readers of all time, could not understand the joy of rereading or collecting. Not getting collecting, I sort of understand. We were always surrounded by what would now be called tchotckes -beautiful figurines of birds and courtly ladies and gents. Mom presents. I’ll never forget, one time, breaking something and my Mom just sitting down and holding her head and saying, “I’ll never have one good thing, kids keep breaking them. Everything I’ve got has been glued together.” It was a horrible moment. Certainly I didn’t break much. I remember years later when I broke something and she said, “Don’t worry about it.” And years later when she broke a Persian glass goblet, one of a pair I had given her with a bottle of Kahlua for us to toast a lonely Christmas, alone together, I remember telling her, “I didn’t give you those to cause you any pain. It’s gone, let’s just be happy we have each other and don’t have to worry about it.” A few years later she knocked over a brand-new television, but that wasn’t her fault. She had her routine for going to bed and drawing the curtains around the house and suddenly this new thing was in her way, not on a proper stand. Ah breakage, it all comes down to it doesn’t it? Breakage of spirits, of bodies, of lives. Such loss. Life, it isn’t for the faint of heart. Life, it doesn’t end well.<br />Mom’s favorite book was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. If you’ve read it that explains much.<br />Anyhow, the comics were donated under much duress and, likely, tears. That night, at the same hall incidentally as the unfolding of the Tale of Hot Dog Suit (see further back in this blog), my friends swarmed me. It was a wilding of sorts. “Man, get over there, there’s all these great comics and they’re all in PERFECT CONDITION. And, the lady there is selling them for A NICKEL EACH OR THREE FOR A DIME!”<br />My stomach and nuts descended that night to levels that I’m not sure they’ve ever recovered from.<br />While my Mom was compis mentis, I would recount this tale to her. She would always look guilty and say, “I didn’t know!” <br />“Those comics are worth $200,000 each now, Mom! I could’ve been a millionaire.” <br />When she had lost her mind, I still occasionally muttered it to her.<br />Now, I’m a semi-pro comic dealer. I’m not a millionaire. Though, Mom, I could’ve been.<br />And, yes, she loved me and fed me. She gave away my comic collection. She was a great Mom.Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-30977933890196448542009-07-22T18:32:00.000-07:002009-07-22T18:37:15.673-07:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 3My Mom and I were sitting in the Westview Mall at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they had that awesome grape pop bubbling away in some plastic vat and fairly palatable burgers. She said to me, “What do you want to go as for Hallowe’en.” Ever the freak, I looked around me and said, “A hotdog.” Never one to be daunted, Mom said, “OK.” <br />So, my dad, my brother, and my Mom got some chicken wire and formed a hotdog bun, my size from knee to neck. Then my Mom got some vinyl of a hot-doggish brown color. From this, she made a semi-elliptical skirt to my knees and a helmet, with eyes, of course. She covered the chicken wire with an old sheet that she died bun brown, and to make the edges authentic, she couldn’t spring for yellow paint, so we used French’s mustard. Nobody in our staid British family ate anything as spicy as French’s mustard except my bro, so he was SOL and Mom used up the jar. Right before we had to go to the town hall for the Halloween, she slathered my sides with French’s. Naturally, with any sort of mask, you lose a certain portion of your vision and with this mask a major portion. Also, because of the vinyl hood, hearing was highly impaired as well. Still, Mom, God bless her, had given me what I wanted, despite the patent absurdity of the concept. <br /> Proud as Punch, I waddled out to the car and everyone got in. But me. This was a problem we had not considered. I could not bend, plus I was massive. I believe, because of the masses of French’s mustard that I was wearing, someone fetched a tarpaulin and covered the back seat. Then my brother and father tipped me over and, getting French’s mustard all over their shirts, loaded me horizontally in the back of the 1960 green Ford Mercury Montclair.<br /> The ride to the town hall was reminiscent of Edgar Poe’s Premature Burial. I couldn’t see, hear or move. And I was particularly concerned that my chicken wire exoskeleton was denting out of bun perfection. <br /> Eventually, we got there and I was unloaded in complete indignity, rather like a log being pulled off the greenchain. So, thus discombobulated, with only the most rudimentary vision and virtually no hearing, I went in to the gala event.<br /> Of course nobody recognized me and I couldn’t eat or drink anything, so I just wobbled around. Some girl kept coming up and trying to be lovey-dovey to me and I kept telling her to leave me alone. It was the next day that my parents told me that the girl was my friend Reg. I don’t know if Reg carried on with his cross-dressing practice in later life, but he certainly had talent.<br /> Then there was the judging of the costumes. I couldn’t tell this was going on as I was deaf and half blind, but someone shoved me in a ring and I shambled around in circles. The system was that they would call you out as you were eliminated, but since I was effectively removed from communication with the rest of the world, someone eventually had to grab me by the shoulders and lead me away from the competition. I hope the fkr still smells of French’s mustard to this day.<br /> To say that the hot dog-costume episode was a disaster would be understatement. I eventually got removed from the iron-lung-like apparatus so I could enjoy the party. But, I was one tuckered little cowboy by then and all I wanted to do was go home to bed and take comfort with Lambert my lion.<br /><br />* * * *Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-7873399007143570322009-07-22T09:44:00.000-07:002009-09-02T08:48:09.580-07:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood Part 2I remember the day John Kennedy died. (And I love the Lou Reed song of the same name) November 22, 1963. I was in fourth grade. The teachers were called to an emergency conference. Me, being a little keener (<span style="font-style:italic;">suck</span> was the term used in those days) was told to look after the class of mixed grade fours and fives. When Mr. Cooper, our teacher, came back to the room I immediately started launching in to various indiscretions committed by my classmates. He told me that wasn’t important right now. That the president of the the United States had been fatally shot. And we were going to get the afternoon off. Parents were being called and anyone who couldn’t be picked up could be billeted for the afternoon with friends. They were working the phones. <br /> My brother, being in the Canadian Navy, had instilled in me a hatred for everything Yank. I was cavalier, came home to Mom and told her that I was glad we got the day off and didn’t care about John Kennedy whatsoever. Realizing she would be talking to an idiot, she told me he was a good man, that nobody deserved to be assassinated and to be a bit respectful.<br /> When my brother came home from working at the Powell River pulp mill, I laughed about Kennedy being shot. He just looked at me strange and said it was no laughing matter. So, I stayed quiet the rest of the day and spent it reading The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals, one of my favorite books, which I still have in the bookcase beside where I write, today.<br /> Maturity gave me some perspective on the Kennedy tragedy, as did the Lou Reed song. Twenty five years later, noir novelist James Ellroy also made me realize I wasn’t a hundred percent off track with my feelings. Jack the Haircut.<br /> They say everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot and that’s my recollection. I’m not proud of it, but I was a kid. <br /> In the early 1980s, I visited Jack Kennedy’s gravesite and leaped over the chain fence to light my Kool 100, just so I could say I did it. Pretty near lost the front of my hair and the guards at Arlington were not impressed. Neither were the United States Travel Service when I recounted the incident in a Vancouver magazine article called Bell, Book & Scandal. To his credit, my editor, Mac Parry defended the onslaught of letters by saying that many readers had written in to observe that my article was “brilliant.” Whether they did or not, I dunno. But I owe Mac for that one --and many others, but those are different tales.<br /><br /><br />* * * *Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-17075428218144987192009-07-21T14:42:00.000-07:002016-12-04T10:58:06.440-08:00Stillwater: A Memoir of Boyhood<span style="font-style: italic;">In many meditation techniques you are told to remember a place where you were happy. This always leaves me pondering and ignoring any further instruction. One day, after hundred of hours of thought, I finally realized the one place I was truly happy. What follows are my memories of those days when I was nine or 10, and lived in Stillwater, B.C., near Powell River. It should be considered a meditative blog. I hope it takes you away from your problems for a moment and that it will conjure up your own special place/time in spacetime.</span><br />
<br />
Stillwater: A Memoir of a Boyhood<br />
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I remember back when I entered fourth grade. I would have been eight years old, nine in October. The year 1962.<br />
My father worked for MacMillan Bloedel and we were used to being transferred around the province. This would be my fourth school in four years. The House the Company provided us was, in a word, spectacular. And it was there, in Stillwater, seventeen miles south of Powell River, that I had some of the happiest times of my life.<br />
The house itself was really something. It seemed huge and antebellum to me. It was white frame or shiplap, had two stories and a veranda. One entered via a boardwalk through arbors covered in hops vines. Immediately one was in the living room and, oddly, off the living room there was a paneled door to the master bedroom. To the right through a coved archway was the dining room with a bay window facing the front yard and again, oddly, there was the door to the smaller bedroom which was to be mine --occasionally to be shared with my brother, Stan, when he returned from the sea. <br />
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<br />
This house would be responsible for some major obsessions in my life that would result in --with all due modesty-- a mind obsessed with the bizarre, macabre and morbid.<br />
My parents were older. In 1962, my dad would have been 61, my mother, 51. I recall being obsessively afraid that they would die. I once horribly startled my mother by awakening her by placing a hand over her nose to see if she was still breathing. Man, was she freaked out and who could blame her, she probably thought I was trying to smother her. But, I was totally terrified that IT had happened and here I was left alone in this scary house. And it was a scary house. But to that later.<br />
My fear of my parents demise instilled in me a fear that I could only take to God, and so each night I would pray: “Please God and Jesus: Please let my parents live to be well over 100 years old and at least please don’t let them pass away until I’m at least 21 years old.” At 21, you were supposed to be a grown-up and be able to handle whatever life handed you.<br />
I was also plagued by nightmares and I would pray myself to sleep each night asking the Lord and His Son, to allow me not to dream. And I could not recall any of my dreams again until I was in my mid teens.<br />
The house was stone scary. It seemed to me to be the archetypal haunted house. Prayer and my faithful, strong and true, stuffed lion, Lambert, were my protectors. Thirty-eight years later, I am still plagued by nightmares of haunted houses. I was afraid to get out of the sheets at night to use the toilet. However, I was able to hold on through the night until someone got up in the morning. Then, I really had to go. However, if someone was in the bathroom I was at my wits end. My mother would direct me outside. But, being a proper little boy, I would not just go in the wilderness. No, I had to have a wide-mouth Mason jar in which to micturate and then bring the product back into the house to be flushed down the toilet. A couple of times, I recall having to use the same method when I had to move my bowels. This did not particularly please my mother, who would just be handed the jar to dispense with.<br />
When my brother stayed with us and he slept in the bottom bunk, I rested much easier.<br />
My brother would have been 22 or so in 1962 or 1963. While sharing a bedroom was fine for visits, he required his own room when his term in the Navy was complete and he reentered civilian life. He took the second floor, which was accessed by a weathered, grey, wooden staircase at the rear of the house. There was a doorless doorway dividing the space under the peak of the roof in half. His room was at the front of the house and on the otherside of the doorway was a storage area with two beds covered in toys and camping equipment under the angled ceiling flanking the passageway to his room. In that half, I could play quietly, protected, as he slumbered in the next room, resting from the young man’s excesses that would see him join a twelve-step program twenty years later.<br />
My parents had instilled in me a prodigious ego. I was generally the top student in my grade and they always assured me that I was incredibly intelligent. This, combined with an obsessive reading of super-hero comic books conspired to give me a sense that one day, I might become super-intelligent, like many super heroes, including Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic of Marvel Publishing’s Fantastic Four. <br />
I used to perform experiments. One of these involved a dart gun game, I had been given. In those rougher days, a dart gun was a metal pistol with an incredibly strong steel spring. You inserted a dart with a suction cup on its end down the barrel until it locked. Then you had a fully loaded weapon that could actually put someone’s eye out. If you took the suction cup off the dart, you were essentially in possession of deadly force. As a paranoid kid, I usually went around armed, with a loaded dart gun, no suction cup, or a sword. Anyhow, the other component of this dart game was a target that featured a cardboard stand-up of an airforce commander urging me to shoot and a circular piece of cardboard featuring a UFO that was supported on a piece of spring steel. You set it in motion and it swung back and forth. If you hit the UFO, it fell over backward and the lever action pulled up a sign on the stand-up that said you had scored 100 points for the good guys. <br />
Okay, so I had this disk that would swing back and forward. Hypnotically. Given my assumptions about my ability to become a mad scientist and rule the world, I covered the disk with shiny aluminum foil. Then I set the device on the table in front of my brother’s window so that it would catch the sunlight. Then I woulld set the amazing hypno-machine in motion, emanating its mesmerising, mind-crippling rays on the populace of Stillwater, B.C. I thoroughly expected that I would soon see the populace, blank eyed and drooling lumbering up the dirt road to converge on our front lawn to await instruction from their master --me. <br />
I spent a lot of time keeping that disk waving back and forth and waiting to no avail. I also often tried a more close up application for the amazing Hypno-machine. I tried to hypnotize all my friends, Kim, Mousie and Penny, to bend them to my will. Sometimes they reported feeling somewhat odd after staring at the disk for five minutes or more. Kim had some vague idea that if we could hypnotize the girls, we could get them to take their clothes off. But, that was a bit advanced for one such as I who simply wanted to rule the world.<br />
What a maroon!<br />
<br />
Anyhow, on either side of the upstairs rooms, there were hatchways leading into... I never new what. But it was dark and dusty. My brother would terrify me with speculation that there might be rats or bats in there. I more favoured arcane trunks filled with evil and possibly small homunculuses, warped and malevolent. As you can see, I was like one of H.P. Lovecraft’s characters trapped in an ancient New England house while other worlds swirled about my perceptions full of forces and creatures out of space and time.<br />
Now, I see that this fear of alternate dimensions coexisting with our reality is the primary theme in my fiction writing. Stillwater is certainly where some of it came from. Certainly my Christian upbringing was another source. And also at that time a show came on television that seemed directly for me. Its name was The Outer Limits.<br />
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* * * *<br />
<br />
Out back there was an old ramshackle double car garage and workshop. The garage had a dirt floor. The shop was a place where my brother made cannons. He would take old pipes or rifle barrels and cut them off, put them in a handmade caisson, put in gunpower and wadding and a ball bearing and then he would call me in for the ignition. He would have drilled a fuse hole and then he would light it. Fkn thing would go off like an atomic bomb and blow a hole right through the walls of the old shop. The kickback would also blow the caisson back through another wall. We would stand there and stare at each other. I think that may be where I first hear the phrases, Holy s***, Holy fk, Fk me, and other such epithets. Shortly, Stan realized that if he put the barrel of the cannons in the workbench vice, it would make for less mayhem and he began blowing out the other wall of the shop. Serious chunks blew out of those walls, but behind us was only a compost heap and then acres of forest. Lord knows, there are probably a few alder trees still there with ball bearings deeply embedded in their trunks.<br />
My brother was also notable for several other matters that are indelibly scorched into my brain. First, I have to say that my family was not into hockey or football. We watched All-Star Wrestling, which originated from CHEK studios in Burnaby, with congenial host Ron Morrier, ads done live with “your haberdasher, Fred Asher.” Thus, we were all conversant with the figure-four suplex, the flying dropkick, the claw, the sleeper hold and such. So, once when we were playfighting in the front yard, I, thinking I pretty much had the same fighting skills as Batman, Spider-Man or Thor, at very least Gene Kiniski, Whipper Billy Watson or “The Mormon Giant” Don Leo Jonathan, assaulted my brother with the aforementioned flying dropkick. Now, I was not a particularly long legged nine-year-old, so when I launched both my feet in the air with all my might, I became a horizontal missile aimed at my brother’s chest just as I had seen dozens of time in the squared circle. However, I had underestimated those fine grapplers and their strength. Thus, I became about a 90-pound missile vectoring right to my bro’s nards. I had launched myself full out and he went down like a stone. And he didn’t move. I freaked and tried to get him to speak. He didn’t speak. And he lay there like silent death for the longest time. I had killed my brother. How would I tell Mom and Dad this? <br />
My brother lay there in a fetal position. I sweated, as far as that is possible for a nine-year-old. I cursed having spent so much time reading Bruce Tegner Teach Yourself Karate books. Eventually, I think my brother managed to croak out, “Go away.” Which I did -with dispatch.<br />
I’ve never really found out what happened that day. I believe I was too afraid to ask him about it until another 15 years had passed. By that time he couldn’t even recall the incident. Thank God for small infirmities.<br />
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* * * *<br />
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Another time I was annoying my brother somehow and he suggested I go fishing. Sounded good, so off I went with a chunk of wood with some fishing line around it and a hook. I put a few worms from the compost heap in an Old Chum tobacco can. My dad was a pipe smoker and hence we always had tons of tobacco cans around. As a consequence, everything was much better organized in those days: checkers, marbles, bolts, screws, worms.<br />
It can hardly be overstated how idyllic our setting was in Stillwater. Facing the house, the lot to the right had an old abandoned house on the back of the lot. The yard was essentially chest-high hay with a few massive blackberry brambles around the edges. A pipe had broken in the yard somewhere, so there was always a puddle like a small pond in the middle of the yard. No one would have ever thought of fixing it. It was only water in those days. I believe there was some sort of wire fence that was easily vaulted and the house stood unlocked and we kids would play there all the time. A real house for a playhouse. <br />
Past that yard was woods. Just raw, untamed forest, primarily alder and bracken and sawtooth ferns. In those days, you would just tell your Mom, or whatever adult, that you were going to play in the woods. You would plunge into the forest and resurface for lunch and dinner. The rest of you time you were on your own and no one was ever afraid. There were cougars and bears in those woods, but we never saw one. One kid did see a bear when he was walking to school, but he just abruptly turned aboutface and walked home. The bear was never seen again. Though we were all warned that if we saw a bear cub that it’s mother was surely around somewhere and that we should get away. Scientists said to back quickly away while trying to make some loud noise. Loggers told us just back away and then run like hell. We figured the loggers had the more practical method.<br />
And no one was worried about tramps or sex perverts in the woods. If we came across where someone had made a fire or a camp, we just gave them their privacy; there was lots of woods to go around. As for us being out there and our parents concerned about perverts or kidnapping, I think those things were just never even considered in 1962. We didn’t have the media coverage in those days. TV was Fun-O-Rama and bolo-bat championships. If you could hit the ball with you bolo bat 30 times you signed an affadavit to that effect and sent it on to KVOS-12 and in about six weeks you got a badge that said, “Bolo Bat Champion,” which you could wear proudly to all occasions but church.<br />
So, off in the woods, there was an underground creek. Now, someone had dug a hole to reveal the creek and they had handily built a square frame from sticks to hold the hole open and you could lie on the forest floor and watch little trout from minnows to nine-inchers swimming down the creek. I dislike killing things, but in those days I toed the line and fishing was allegedly cool. So, I wormed the bait on the hook dropped it into the water and watched a nice little trout take it. Pulled him out and, as I was taught by my mother, I grabbed a stick and clubbed him on the head until dead. I did this twice more and walked back home. I brought the three fish up to my brother, who was working on his 57 Chevy. “Here,” I said. “I’ve been fishing. Now what should I do?”<br />
I had been gone ten minutes.<br />
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* * * *<br />
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As you faced the house, to the left was an orchard of cherry trees, then a wall of blackberry brambles completely isolating us from the next door neighbors. At the very back of the yard, bordered again by interminable forest, was an old chicken coop. My father and brother cleaned it out and it became my fort. It had big doors that opened out, so it was a rather welcoming fort and soon it was coopted by my friends, the sisters Penny and Mouse. I can no longer remember their family names, but they lived up at the top of a big gravel-roaded hill. They were such good friends, that I used to knock on their door after dinner to ask if they could come out to play. Being an incredibly shy child this was some measure of how much I liked them. Penny was large-boned, round jawed with dusty-colored wavy hair kept close to her face. She always had a bit of a double chin and this may have contributed to her somewhat grumpy disposition. Mouse, whose real name may have been Joanne, however was a stone beauty. In those happy days, before puberty threw a spanner into the works, one could acknowledge the beauty of another kid without even conceiving of jumping their bones. She was thin and had long blonde hair, seemingly always tanned and was a tomboy. In other words, you could hang out with a sylphen beauty, a wood nymph if you will, and in the forest there was never the slightest brainflicker of impropriety. While you gain so much with the onset of sexuality, you also lose much -and looking back fondly from having passed the lion’s share of my allotted four score and 10, I wonder which was the happier state. I seem to be writing about this one.<br />
I remember once climbing the hill and going to the door and asking for Mousie. She came to the door and said, she’d be a few minutes. They were just having dessert. “Minute Rice,” she said, “and you know how that only takes a minute to eat.” She was so pretty, so fun, that such a little joke as that has stuck to me throughout my life. It should be noted as well that dietary habits were much different in the early 1960s. White rice was often served as a dessert, topped with white sugar and milk. Maybe a few raisins. As an entrée or sidedish, it would not catch on for a few years. Fried rice was available at Chinese restaurants, but was frowned on as a bit of a waste of money. After all, it was only rice.<br />
Anyhow, Penny soon commandeered my fort into a tea room. Little plastic cups and saucers started appearing, an old beat-up tablecloth, some comics. <br />
What to serve though? We never for an instant considered real tea. And the idea of kids with kettles of boiling water was unsound. What we did have was a vast resource of blackberries. Great roiling walls, eight feet high of blackberries. Enough for our parents to make jams, jellies, pies and tarts to circle the world if laid end to end. And there were still more, great heavy vines, more like boughs, laden with the blue-black fruit. <br />
Penny, being the practical one, got some clean cloth and we squeezed the fruit into juice, which went in to the tea pot and was then doled out in tiny cups by Penny the teamaster.<br />
It wasn’t particularly thirst quenching, but that summer we were part of a secret society known only by the purple rings around our cupid’s bows and the purple fingers and palms we sported for the day, those summer days.<br />
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* * * *Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-47837139790226412112009-04-02T10:51:00.000-07:002009-04-02T10:53:14.967-07:00Jayne & the Satanists --Chapter 33<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText">On the drive home, I voiced my thoughts to Lex.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Maybe I could get a book out of this story.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even if no one believed Ste. Germaine’s story as nonfiction, it wouldn’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The lunatic fringe would slurp it up, as fact and the relatively sane would find it a compelling tale regardless.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A bit of a world history through one man’s eyes and because of Ste. Germaine’s memory I can avoid the shitloads of research that such a book would normally entail.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What d’ya think, Lex, my man?”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">He lay on the passenger seat, for once not rubbernecking the passing sights.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His eyes were half slits, just an occasional glimmer of emerald catching an overhead streetlight.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thought his reunion with Ste. Germaine must have spawned many thoughts and memories.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They say a cat’s brain is about the size of a walnut, but this cat was doing some heavy thinking —and I was certain there was more to Lex than was contained in the confines of his hide. His tail quivered and whipped back and forth, smacking the dusty upholstery.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Turning to me, he let out a squawk.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“That’s an awful squeak coming from such a big boy,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He yawned, showing a brilliant pink healthy mouth and needle-sharp fangs. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then he put his head between his paws and unleashed a loud sigh.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He’d had enough for tonight.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His tail twitched a few more times, then I heard a few preliminary snorts and his chainsaw snores fired up.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">When we got home, I carried him out of the car and plopped him onto my bed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He looked up at me, released a guttural squawk and fell once more into the caress of sleep.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText">Next day, Jayne came with me to the library, where we looked up anything we could on the Mandylion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Most people would not expect it, but Jayne was a bear for research.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because she was famous for her body and the roles she landed were less than cerebral, she enjoyed any chance to learn about things that would give her something intelligent to think and talk about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Of course, explaining to Mickey how popcorn works would probably wow that audience for days.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>We were deep in the theology section and Jayne struck gold first.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Hey, y’know the Mandylion isn’t the only cloth with the face of Jesus.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“There’s that shroud thing in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>, right?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Full length, supposed to be his burial shroud that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped Him in as he lay Him in his own tomb.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Okay,” she said, dubiously.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“But there’s also this other one of just His face called the Sudarium.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And given what you’ve told me about Ste. Germaine’s run in with Him, I think it might be germane —if you will forgive the pun.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I rolled my eyes.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Okay, but this could be important.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At the same station of the cross where Christ stumbled and Ste. Germaine, known as Caraphilus then, yelled at Him to get moving, a woman who came to be known as St. Veronica took pity on Him and stepped up and wiped the grime and sweat and blood off His face.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After she stepped back into the crowd, she noticed that Christ’s face had been imprinted on her handkerchief.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Allegedly, this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">vera icon</i> or true icon is in the <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Vatican</st1:country-region></st1:place> and is one of three true relics that are brought out at special ceremonies in St. Peter’s.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">“So, this cloth really exists?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I don’t know. I’ve heard the <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Vatican</st1:country-region></st1:place> has Jesus’s foreskin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you believe that?” </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“That does sound a bit suspect, but then again, they don’t bring that one out like they ostensibly do with the Veronica.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“If they did, it doesn’t sound like it would be terribly impressive.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent:10.5pt">“Don’t talk like that. It’s ... sacreligious or something....”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The research corroborated Ste. Germaine’s story.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Mandylion had disappeared in a raid of cursaders on <st1:place st="on">Constantinople</st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When Jayne and I broke for coffee, we tried to suss out Ste. Germaine’s story.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If this Hoxhok character was so stoked on being a North American native wizard, why would he get involved in something from the ancient <st1:place st="on">Middle East</st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Well,” said Jayne, “I think it all has to do with the Easter period.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Y’see, Mormons believe that after Christ died on the cross and when he was resurrected, he was seen in North America by native people and that this knowledge was given to the church founder John Smith and that he then received the Book of Mormon and formed the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">Latter Day Saints</st1:placename></st1:place> based on Jesus’s brief visit.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“How do you know this stuff?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">She tapped her temple and grinned.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Kidneys, man, kidneys.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“So you think Hoxhok can increase his power here in the New World by accumulating <st1:place st="on">Old World</st1:place> talismans that relate to the period between the crucifiction and the resurrection.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“From what you’ve told me, Ste. Germaine was rattled.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t take him for the needlessly nervous type.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, yeah, that’s what I think.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He’s worried that someone —Hoxhok— is going to accumulate a psychic power that we haven’t seen in a couple thousand years.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>“Jesus....”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>“Precisely.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-75096132124386572922009-03-15T10:47:00.001-07:002009-04-08T19:38:26.140-07:00Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-8939910871184695872008-12-20T11:18:00.000-08:002008-12-20T11:19:49.034-08:00A Cat's Christmas on Mars<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Courier"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; line-height: 16px; ">A CAT'S CHRISTMAS ON MARS</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Courier"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier">Deathdogs, flamingos and flying bisons soar over immense herds of wildebeests.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The animals of the plain flock together forming a phalanx as the page is turned.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The cat, a golden tabby, looks up and flips another page with its paw.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Casting a wary glance at its masters who doze turkey-sodden by the Christmas tree in the adjoining room, the cat moves its paw into the picture and with a quick claw movement plucks out a wildebeest.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The beast frets.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Its heaving chest pulsates as the cat flips it into the air, then holds it to the carpet with one paw as it looks away seemingly disinterested.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The panic-spawned bellows are as the sound of gravel rolling on tiled floors.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The cat lifts the bovine creature to its eyes and sniffs the smell of the high grass and terror-induced sweat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The cat's eyes widen as its paws squeeze imperceptibly causing the animal's shrieks of panic to turn into moans of death agony.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The tiny ribs creak and bend and finally break until the small bit of fur vomits and excretes bits of blood and waste over the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With a sniff, the cat bats the crushed, mutilated carcass back into the confines of the photograph.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The two-dimensional universe is returned to normal as a pack of jackals, spurred on to unnatural voracity and courage by the smell of blood, disperse the herd of stunned wildebeests, and leap with maddened blood hunger on the carcass.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The gift books scattered about room show pictures of a place called Earth that over the centuries had suffered such radiation degradation that it had to be abandoned.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>New mutations were cropping up constantly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Few realized that mutations could be psychic as well as physical.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The cat thrusts its muzzle into another photograph and grabs an elephant between its teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Looking around guiltily he runs to a corner to masticate his prey.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The cat notices the boy, tow-headed in a new blue cardigan, come into the room and kneel over a book.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With tweezers the boy pulls an air bison from the pages.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The bison flits frantically on the tweezers while the boy inspects the beast.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The child's grip loosens however and the bison flies irratically around the room.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The cat leaps and within seconds is crunching bones between his teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>"Good Kitty," laughs the boy and pats the cat's head. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>"Here Kitty, you'll like this," the boy says.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He opens a book entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The World of Disney</i> and reaching in with tweezers he pulls out a black bipedal mouse wearing white gloves and red shorts with large black buttons.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He drops the mouse to the carpet and it scurries toward a corner.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the cat is immediately upon it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:24.0pt;mso-line-height-rule:exactly"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Courier"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The boy laughs and picks up another book.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Its title is <u>The Night Before Christmas</u>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The boy turns to a page showing a jolly, fat man in a red suit.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The cat looks on hungrily.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4659282157195970079.post-27264741092995843012008-08-29T15:47:00.000-07:002008-08-29T15:48:34.949-07:00Jayne & the Satanists --Chapter 32<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Next morning, I was up early, nursing a post celebratory hangover.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hadn’t celebrated with anybody but Lex, who had joined in with three dishes of beer before falling into a noisy snoring sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was downing coffee and aspirin when the phone rang.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was Pat Kennedy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was on the boil.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Of all the irresponsible journalism you’ve ever foisted on your reading public, this has got to be the worst,” he barked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I didn’t know you read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Inquistor</i>,” I said, cheerfully.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Well, a copy ended up on my desk this morning and I couldn’t believe the puke I was reading.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How dare you speculate on all these loose connections.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I’m betting there’s more than a grain of truth to what I wrote,” I said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Betting is for the horsetrack, not for speculation on unsolved felonies.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You’ve set our investigations back weeks, not to mention abusing the public trust.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“The public trust is something that should not exist.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Everyone should question what they read.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I have no doubt that if you follow up on what I’ve theorized in my piece that your investigation will accelerate toward confirming what I’ve speculated.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Maybe I’m not publishing such unfounded speculation after all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">There was a dead silence.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then, “Who’s the movie producer?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I’ve got to see what kind of death threats I get today, then maybe I’ll slip that to you.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hung up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The phone was still warm when it rang again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Good day, Mr. Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I read with interest your story in today’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Inquisitor</i>…”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>“Who’s calling please?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>“My name is Ste. Germaine.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">A wave of hangover nausea swept through me and I sprang sweat all over my body.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“How may I help you Mr. Ste Germaine.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I would like to meet with you to discuss some matters that might interest you.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I’m sorry Mr. Ste. Germaine, but I make it a policy never to meet with readers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s just a matter of personal security.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Put Lex on the phone.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">My sweats notched up a few pints per second and my knees threatened to give out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“How do you know about Lex?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Lex and I have known each other for years, Mr. Holcomb.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“What?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You want me to put a cat on the phone to you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“That’s correct.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His conversation is more intelligent than most humans I have met.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Plus, I think he is one of the few character references you would believe.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I felt<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>as if I had just swigged a bottle of bourbon and it was rolling into my head.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Lex was staring at me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Hell, why not? <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I put the receiver to his ear.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I could hear muttering over the line then that gutteral snore that was Lex’s purr rolled through the room.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He languidly closed his eyes and his paws started to make the milking motion in air that cats make when they are luxuriant.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I pulled the earpiece back to my own head.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“You seem to have a friend.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“And, I’m proud to say, I have had for a number of years.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We must get together and you must bring Lex.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“It’s easier if you come over here, Lex can’t really sit in a café.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or we could come to wherever you live.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“When you have lived as long as I have, you find that you need no residence, no fixed address.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why don’t we meet in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Griffith</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Uhm, well, because last time I was to meet somebody there, they ended up dead and I was attacked by coyotes.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I can assure you, Mr. Holcomb, that when you are with me, no one will be in danger.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Still, I can understand your caution.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is a pull-off about 17 miles south of <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Venice</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Beach</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is a path down the cliff to some rocks known as Devil’s Dive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Meet me there at eleven tonight and bring Lex.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">The phone clicked off before I could whine about the inconvenience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I let out a sigh and grabbed the bottle.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Lex, you better be a good judge of character, otherwise your Dinty Moore gravy train could come to an end.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lex turned his rear end and flipped his tail at me, then went to his dish to prepare for his morning nap.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He sat hunched on a rock.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The wind rippled a dark scarf and longish white hair. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I got nearer, I saw a gaunt face leathered by too much life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He turned to me and smiled.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was smoking a small cigar and smoke plumed from his nostrils.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His eyes had huge bags under them<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Great parentheses carved around his mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His nose was rough, pitted, pebbled, his forehead crosshatched.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the wind, his hair whipped around this face of faces.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When he spoke, there was more whiskey and smoke in those pipes than in the roughest Mississippi Delta blues singer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I held Lex in the chest of my windbreaker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As cats will do, he poked his head out and back like a furry cobra,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>sniffing the salt air, peering at the apparition before us.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Mr. Ste Germaine....”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">He glanced at me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Lex how are you, old friend?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Lex squirmed in my jacket and leapt out to the jagged rocks at my feet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He ambled over to Ste. Germaine and sat, the perfect image of those Egyptian cats, Baal or Bastet or something. Ste Germaine made no move to pet him, nor Lex to brush against him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">He stared at Lex, their gazes locking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He ignored me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Every few seconds, one of their heads would nod.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was a communication going on there that I would never be able to unscramble.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After about five minutes of this, Lex’s tail lifted and he scampered up the rocks and faded into the twilight.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Lex, come here,” I shouted.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Ste. Germaine looked at me and waved his hand in dismissal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Do not concern yourself, Mr. Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Lex can take care of himself while you and I converse.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Mr. ....”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Actually, it’s Comte.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But just call me Ste. Germaine,” he said, pronouncing it Sinjermin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>C’mere Lex.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lex stayed where he was, but his head bobbed forward and back and he closed his eyes sniffing the winds.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“That’s right, Lex.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I smell old.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It happens.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Comte...”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Ste. Germaine,” he said, with that strange pronunciation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Like when they name a kid <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">St. John</st1:place></st1:city> and they pronounce it Sinjin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s easy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sinjermin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Cigar?” He held one out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It seemed to materialize in his hand.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“What the fu...,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I took it, put it in my mouth and it was lit.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I puffed on it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was’t much of a smoker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, I was getting used to the top of my head flying into the stratosphere.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So might as well shoot the moon.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“How may I help you,” I asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Holcomb, I believe I knew your great-great-great-grandfather.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was a moderately successful pig farmer in <st1:place st="on">Essex</st1:place> in the 1700s.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I was impressed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“That’s correct.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We can trace my family back seven generations.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Share a glass?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He held out a snifter of brandy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“You’re good,” I said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Not really,” he said and pulled back the heft of his coat to reveal a heavy bottle half full and another glass resting on a flat piece of rock.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">I tugged on the snifter.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Well...”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I read the papers the other day after I heard some conversation in a restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I never read the papers because I consider them all too impossibly stupid and biased.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">“You must love my career...”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">“Some of your work is amusing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">“Gee, thanks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What’s the upshot?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“The point I wish to make is that I am tired, Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That I wish to do some good before I give up this game.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Good? I’ve heard you are evil incarnate.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Yes, I’ve done more evil than probably any man on this planet, but that was a long time ago and the difference between good and evil is that good has less consequences to answer for.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ll defend every child I killed in its crib, every family I left fatherless, every man whose mind I left destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yes, I can conjure daemons.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yes, as <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Crowley</st1:place></st1:city> bragged, I have passed to the other side.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Crowley</st1:place></st1:city> was not around long enough to gain true understanding.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He flipped his hand, banishing the matter.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Lex wandered back and stood sniffing the tidal scents beside where I sat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“So if I were to believe what I’ve heard of you, I take it you’re two millennia old.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“And not in bad shape for my age,” he said, baring teeth the color of mahogany.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I suppose the question to ask someone of your age is if you believe in a God.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Yeah, that’s always a popular question.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He sat and smoked as the silence wound out like silken kite cord.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Well?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Of course there is a God, Mr. Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was his Son who cursed me with this life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was a Jewish doorkeeper in the judgement halls of Pontius Pilate. I witnessed the trial of Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My name was Caraphilus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I went out to see the spectacle when Jesus carried his cross to <st1:place st="on">Calvary</st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When the poor man stopped to rest I stepped up to him and told him to hurry on to his punishment, mocking him as King of the Jews with his crown of thorns.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“The Messiah, the most powerful man to ever live and I, in my ignorance, mocked him on his way to his unjustified execution.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ste. Germaine shook his head. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I had never seen eyes like those, full of pain, disappointment and, yes, Christ knew vengeance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His eyes flared and in them I could see the fires of Hell and he snarled at me. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I will go now, but thou shalt wait until I return.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He shouldered his bloody cross and the centurions shoved me back in the crowd.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I watched the crucifixion for an hour or so, but got bored and wandered away to my wife and son.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christ took six hours to die.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the skies darkened in midday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we all knew that justice had been miscarried that day and that there would be Hell to pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I feared most of all for myself because of my stupid arrogance and cruelty.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“I was 45 years old then.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I watched my good wife grow old and die.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I watched my son grow from 10 to 80 and die.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I remained for all visible purposes 45 years old.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Time had stopped for me and me only.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christ’s vengeance was that I should walk the Earth until his Second Coming.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With those I loved gone and eternity staring blankly at me, I leapt from a tall building and dusted myself off, suffering no injury.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I waded into the <st1:place st="on">Sea of Galilee</st1:place> and washed ashore two days later, alive and well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, leaving all that I had, I began to walk and became known as the legendary Wandering Jew.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I found that I did not have to eat and, as the years went by, that I was accumulating vast knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Having no question of Christ’s demonstrable power and hence little doubt of his Father’s existence, I spent years in monasteries, llamasteries, ashrams and the like.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Inevitably, I ventured into the occult knowledge of the ages and to accumulate power and wealth I became fully committed to the Dark Arts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Like accomplishing anything in life, the Dark Arts require sacrifice, though perhaps more extreme than less, shall we say, rewarding pursuits.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I killed, I slaughtered with Vlad the Impaler.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I plotted and betrayed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I destroyed lives with schemes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I grew wealthy and I kept all of my wealth in gems.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the court of Louis IV, I was well known.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was arrested for spying in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> by Horace Walpole during the Jacobite revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I taught Mesmer the simple art of hypnotism....” His voice drifted off into the wind. “.... Yeah, yeah, I’m such a big deal, despised of Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And as to your earlier question, I am entirely convinced of the truth of God and the reality of eternal damnation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“You see, Holcomb, God is order and everywhere this order is evident from a mother giving birth, to the eagle catching the salmon, to the baleen whale sifting kril through its ?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Evil is disorder.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Cancer cells multiplying too fast.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An adult male who wants to force sex on a child.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A mercenary killing for money....<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, there’s a God and there’s a God damned.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“And you’re him.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“When you see, in reality, how tightly and inflexibly the string is drawn between what is good and what is damnable, you’ll know I’m far from alone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Although I’m sad to say I’m probably in the Top 40.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Which is why you want to help me...?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Ste. Germain raised his eyebrows.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Come now, Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you really think I’m that altruistic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m not trying to save my soul.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That was a lost cause long ago.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m after vengeance and property.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>*<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ste. Germaine had ugly eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He locked them into mine or looked away with equal power. One look was intimidation, the other, dismissal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both modes gave me a low-grade nausea as if the pupils of those eyes might skin back and give me a glimpse into the fires of Hell.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I felt soiled to be in this being’s presence.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>From behind me, I heard a rustling and Lex—big, healthy, good Lex—bobbed his head under my hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It seemed entirely incongruous, as I was consorting with this paradigm of evil, that my cat wanted to be petted.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then I knew.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Lex was my cat, always had been and always would be.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And with him on my side, I need not fear the paractitioners of dark arts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I scratched behind his ears and he rubbed his head into my palm.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I lifted my eyes to Ste. Germaine’s.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That lizardskin face pulled into a semblance of a smirk.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I’m jealous, Holcomb.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Lex is a wonderful friend to have and his obvious affection and stewardship for you reinforce my hunch that you are the one I need to partner with in order to retrieve my purloined property.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“What did you lose?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Have you ever heard of the Mandylion?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Nope.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“It is also known by the Greek name Achieropoietos.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“You lost a dinosaur?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">Ste. Germaine smiled, weakly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“No.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Mandylion is the oldest known portrait of Jesus Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It means the little handkerchief.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Achieropoietos means not made by human hands.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was a king of <st1:city st="on">Edessa</st1:city>, now <st1:city st="on">Urfa</st1:city> in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Turkey</st1:place></st1:country-region>, who was a leper.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Hearing of the Christ’s miraculous healings, he sent a servant to Galilee to persuade Jesus to come to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Edessa</st1:place></st1:city> to heal him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>King Abgar knew that his man, Hannan, might not be successful, so he asked the man to paint a portrait of Jesus, if that were all he could bring back.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Being in awe of the great man, who was busy preaching to a large group, Hannan could not paint accurately.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When he noticed the man’s distress, Jesus asked for water and washed his face and wiped it with linen that perfectly preserved his image.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Hannan returned, Abgar was cured and the Mandylion was the city’s most precious treasure.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When <st1:city st="on">Edessa</st1:city> was under Moslem rule, the Byzantines stole the relic and took it to <st1:place st="on">Constantinople</st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“In 1204, an army of Crusaders plundered the city.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of that number was me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had visited the city previously and went straight for the room where the Mandlylion was kept.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes framed, sometimes rolled, it traveled with me for centuries—in saddlebags and steamer trunks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It decorated secret shrines in various of my residences.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It gave me power.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Power just in possessing it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Obviously, if a ritual required desecration, this icon would make it the most powerful spell ever.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I respected it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I never abused it or used it in ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was for me alone to stare at the face of the God who was man who had set me on my bizarre and endless journey.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That familiar face that had haunted my dreams for centuries.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“Then, in 1953, I was living in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Buenos Aires</st1:place></st1:city>, getting away from a conflagration in which I had taken part —you know the one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was the subject of a manhunt and international persecution.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had gone for a brief pilgrimage to Macchu Picchu for restoration and meditation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I returned to my castle-like mansion, I went to the shrine and the Mandylion was gone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I felt violated, raped and ruined.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had not left the relic unguarded and I knew that it could only have been taken by a master sorcerer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Psychic defenses had been contravened, guardian spirits circumvented.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was a pall of evil left in my house.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My servants had been slaughtered, my beloved dogs eviscerated.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I vowed vengeance, however my anger was tempered by pure fear, for whoever had the image would likely not respect it the way I had, but might use it for a spell so powerful it could crack the globe.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To who knows what ends.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was terrified.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:21.6pt">“When I had gathered my senses, I began to call in my resources, which over the years have grown to be considerable.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had, of course, heard of other immortals, but, call it ego, I had never sought any out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The few I had accidentally met were crazed vampires, or outsiders, little people and discombobulated spirits.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>All, incidentally, crazy as shithouse rats, not a rational man among them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had heard inklings from the early part of the 18<sup>th</sup> century of a brotherhood of illuminati who were trying to create what would now be called a database of the characteristics, powers, life histories and locations of these beings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In 1954, figuring I would be persona grata there, I contacted the organization, The Brotherhood of Thoth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They, quite kindly, though undoubtedly out of self interest, set one of their men on the trail of my Mandylion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Through a combination of his efforts and later through friends such as <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Crowley</st1:place></st1:city> and the Golden Dawn, I heard by 1956 of a mad shaman and powerful sorcerer known as Hoxhok.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Though, despite much investigation, he remained merely a rumor, a number of circumstances point to him as the most likely thief of my property.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When you enquired of LaVey, saying that you had observed Hoxhok in an actual rite, I was notified.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And now, Holcomb, how is it that you with your notepad and pen have located him and I with considerably more invested in scouring the earth for him, have not?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, luckily, it does not matter, for I have located you and because of that brand on your shoulder and the protection it has offered you, I believe you owe me.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The corners of his mouth twitched up into his cheeks for a second, then fell back into his flat emotionless expression, the attempted smile’s purpose of demonstrating friendliness done.</p>Corridorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09915464512587251299noreply@blogger.com0