The Ballad of Billy Jack...

 

It was so sad to see them like this.

Him on a stretcher, her sniveling...Kleenex dabbing in her wheelchair.

Billy Jack and Delores Taylor had once been so vibrant. You have to wonder what happened to them.

What went wrong?

Do you think the fact that she slept upside down in the basement during daylight hours could have had anything to do with it? In her case, was “deathly pale” more literal than not? Was Billy frustrated with mistaking his wife for a Kombucha scoby. floating like a gelatinous loogie in a sea of vinegar?

There’s a new book coming out. An expose on the life and mysterious demise of Billy and Delores.

The bombshell revelation is something we’ve all suspected from time to time.

It was Joan Baez music that killed them.

Apparently, they played it seven days a week for thirty years. Those oh-so-sincere dog whistle protest songs reached out and murdered, song by song.

Inoperable ear cancer.

Looking back, it’s obvious in hindsight that like a house wrapped in asbestos, pumping water from Flint and filled to the brim with radon gas…an early death was inevitable.

Personally, if I had listened to Joan Baez music that often for thirty years, I would welcome an early death.

But maybe that's just me...

Vitamix Victory...

 

 

Wilder has too many teeth coming in at the same time to remain level for more than a quick pause between dramas.

But as is true with babies, and us old men, we’re easily distracted and pleased, if we can be tricked into believing that we’re getting our way...even if it’s only for the time it takes to pause briefly and celebrate our own awesomeness to achieve such an obvious victory.

_______________________

Ruth messaged:

“He’s settled back down.

He forms attachment to odd things and right now it’s my Vitamix. It’s the first thing he goes for when he wakes up in the morning and last night we had a big battle because we wouldn’t let him take it in the bathtub and then wouldn’t let him take it into his crib with him to sleep.

But blender does get to be part of story time.”

 

Between the Troublemaker and the Recycle plant...

 

 

A Brooklyn kind of guy. Old school. He smelled of spaghetti sauce that needed refrigeration yesterday. Probably in his mid-70’s, still carrying a flame for Annette Funicello.

“Tony”

Of course it’s Tony.

“They used to call me Tony B.”  he told me, swelling a little with the memory.

“When I moved down here… it’s different. I just go by Tony, just Tony, you know?”

That’s what Momo Rose called me, just Tony. You met her once before she passed. She said that the “B” was for Tony Boy. Her boy, but we both knew it wasn’t.

A bit surprised at how slowly he had been walking, somewhat bowlegged, I asked Tony how he was doing.

“Ehh, I’m alive.” he shrugged.

“Doctor tells me I got a problem with my prostrate. They did some tests, want to do some more. Fuck them.”

Working himself up, red-faced, he sputtered out a rehearsed refusal “I ain’t letting three guys and that fat nurse get all up in my business. It’s like a stage show with lights there between the troublemaker and the recycle plant! They want to shoot a radiation bomb in me…right between the troublemaker and the recycle plant. Fuck them.”

And with that descriptive little slice of life, Tony shuffled off, never to be seen again. Not by me, anyway.

I’m sorry that I never got to know him well enough to ask why they called him Tony B.  Tony Brooklyn?  Tony the Butcher? He did seem like he may have been a tough guy. Funny that it wasn’t bullets to do Tony in though, it was a problem he couldn’t get rid of with concrete blocks and deep water.

Tony was bumped off by an unseen enemy…somewhere between the troublemaker and the recycle plant.  

 

 

 

Grackles...

 

A FB friend of mine mentioned her affinity for the color purple when she was in High school, mainly due to the purple uniforms the cheerleaders and footballers wore.

Give me a “V”, give me an “I”, give me, give me…Victory!

For me, High School, and the color purple, conjure up very different images. In my mind’s eye, I still see the splashes of purple puke running down the sides and rear windows of Mrs. Callahan's tan station wagon.

Our crew had been retching purple slime out of David Callahan's mother's station wagon, doing 95 MPH as we shot through the open toll booth between Staten Island and New Jersey sometime past 1:30 in the morning. A sick green wash added another dimension as the fluorescent lighting of the toll booth came and went in a blur.

Earlier, we had driven 45 minutes to a horrible little bar that Westfield peeps frequented back in the daze, and parked in a dark, fetid alley behind it. The whole place was alien territory for us, something right out of a black & white low budget detective flick. Exciting, dangerous, and unpredictable.

I remember seeing a used condom lying broken and bloody on the sidewalk, wondering if the girl involved had been used and discarded in the same way.

This place wasn't the pristine, neatly trimmed “colonial” Westfield I was used to. The very definition of creepy, and don’t touch anything nasty, but the bar knew that most of us were underage, and didn’t care.

We would present our fake ID's at the door, standing up straight, doing our best “of course I’m 18, you must be crazy to even ask me for my ID” pose. I looked 14, blond and pink cheeked, but since I had the bad ID, it was no problem. I have no remaining memory of why we drank slow Gin Fizzes, having never had one before or since. Nasty purple puke color drinks, even before you blow them out of your nose onto the sides of Mrs. Callahan’s tan station wagon. Like a gaggle of berry stuffed Grackles, we stained all surfaces within shooting distance on the frantic run back home, including my perception of those kinds of desperate, youthful attempts to find something, some kind of an elusive prize, that I mistakenly thought was adulthood.

Over and over, I found that adulthood was in the opposite direction, and way more than just the one step ahead we imagined.

It was still a very sobering, long way off.

Owls in the Oaks...

 

Owls in the oaks wake me with their incessant questioning.

"Who?"

Night after night.

My eyes stretched wide open, as useless in that black cave as my car keys,

Everything dead still.

Except for the Owls. Are they standing at my feet, twin bedposts? Do they expect me to answer? What is the answer, anyway? Even if I knew, and told them, they would keep after me with more of the same.

Damn them to hell. They push me to face it, now I wonder too.

Lying back on what must be a bed of dry guano, deep in the bowels of a cave, flanked by my inquisitors and their demands to know...

“Who?”

Dreams are the only source of light. Perhaps I'll find the answers there...perhaps I never woke at all, still bracing for that harrowing cry, 

the incessant questioning of the Owls in the oaks...

"Who?'

At the Edge...

 

 

In August of 2014, I looked over the edge. Apparently, not yet my time to jump or be pushed.

-------------------------

Checking into the local hospital for an overhaul a few weeks ago was the best thing that I’ve done for myself in a long time. A problem identified and corrected, ready for another 20. But the pain, morphine and Dilaudid had me drifting in and out, most of it a blur. I missed this post from Hannah that I just found yesterday. I like it a lot…

----------------------------

Hannah Gypsyon Haller

We didn't have a lot of money, but I don't remember ever wanting anything I didn't have.

You liked my hair long when I was young, still do. When I started to wear bracelets on my wrists you encouraged me to get more. Said they looked cool. I made my own clothes and dreadlocked my hair, you never once said anything negative about it. You allowed me to grow up wild and free, and fostered my own creative process. You always had my back, no matter what and supported me on whatever endeavor I chose, whether it be worthy or not, I felt you in my corner. You have encouraged me to live for me, be me, and answer to no one but myself. A strong, independent woman you must have known I'd become.

You taught me to watch the birds that fly over the water, listen to the cicadas at sunset. Love animals like our friends and compliment strangers. I never felt like I couldn't tell you something.

I'm here with you now, dad. Supporting you, every step of the way. Let's go home soon okay?

— with Hugh Maverick Haller at Flagler Hospital St.