Still want to know more?Time moves on, as it always does, I hitch-hike through Wyoming in the middle of winter. Early one morning before the sun had risen and after walking all night, I stop in a truck-stop for some hot chocolate, I never was fond of coffee. I didn't want to spend any of what little money I had on food, so I don't stay long. I continue to walk along the interstate and a few hours later a trucker drives by recognizing me from the truck stop and pulls over to give me a ride the rest of the way to Illinois. In my hometown I manage a rooming house nicknamed the barn for obvious reasons. I run with a partying crowd, don't get me wrong, I'm no teetotaler I like my alcohol, but many times when I go to these parties I'd bring Dr-pepper, I'd almost always end up being the referee. I thought I killed a guy once. It was winter and he was starting fights, so I picked him up and carried him out. I was going to find a snowbank to throw him in, but the concrete porch was very slippery. I slipped on the ice and slammed his head on the frozen concrete knocking him cold. We finally revived him. I finished writing my first novel one weekend leaving only to get snacks, I wrote for about two days straight. I remember a beautiful young woman I was in love with then, She'd sneak in my window because her friend's father lived there and she didn't want him to know we were seeing each other. She moved on. Her parents didn't approve, or her mother anyway, her father didn't know. The partying life wasn't for me, it was too much, too often, so I moved on, but I drove this time.
|
Now I'm in Florida, the sunshine state, wow what a difference. I met a man and his family down there that I still call friends today. I worked part-time painting for him and also worked again flipping pizzas. I auditioned for and was cast in several roles in a community theatre in Cocoa Beach Florida. Lost a good job too because although I had made arrangements which were approved by my supervisor about two months before the show began, he insisted I work on opening night. "Act well your part there all the honor lies" I remember that quote from high school theatre, there was no way I could just drop out of the play on such short notice, so the show went on and I was back to bartending. I met many great people there especially young women. I fondly remember one young lady I walked her to her home after the bar closed along the beach, where we ended up going skinny-dipping in the ocean. I laugh now as I remember an old woman on an electric cart on a pier where we left our clothes. She kept shining her flashlight on my ass and threatened to call the cops. That relationship didn't go beyond that, again her mother didn't approve, I guess bartenders have a reputation she thought I fit. I very much enjoyed Florida, I lived near the beach and would often write poems for the women I'd meet, but it wasn't all fun and games unfortunately. I remember getting in a fight with a drunken, hatchet wielding roommate over two slices of bread and broken rusty tape measure. Also at the time, and of course still could be true, Florida's number two income second only to tourism was their court system and misdemeanor fines. I was charged once with failing to leave a bar when asked. I didn't know the guy who asked me, I had never seen him before and he was on the patron side of the bar, I simply asked, "Why what's the problem?" He didn't answer, he just turned to go call the police. The station was only two-three blocks away and they arrived within two minutes, I walked out WILLINGLY and was arrested out in the parking lot. I spent thirty days in jail for that and thirty days previously because my auto insurance lapsed two weeks, even though the company vehicle I was driving had insurance. I lost my truck and all my painting equipment, so when I got out, I bought a bus ticket on the first bus out of town and never went back.
|
I'm in Wisconsin now more than two decades after the time I told stories in the fort as a boy. Much has happened to shape my perspective; much more than I can write here. I've heard said that you can't run away from yourself, because wherever you go, there you are. I never thought of it as running away, (except of course when I left Florida to avoid their corrupt courts, how dare I expect a fair trial), but I saw it more as searching, exploring. There is so much out there to see, by this time, I've been in or through every state in the lower forty eight of the U.S.A. I've always found Wisconsin the most welcoming state. It has its region of rural, but it's never far from a city if you want something a little faster paced, and the people are also the most welcoming. I've bartended here, drove taxi, worked in restaurants and warehouses. My first year here some roommates brought home a kitten that we named Felix. He still had the scars on the back of his neck from where his mother carried him around. The first night with us he jumped up in my bed and curled up under the covers with me, he's been mine ever since. He was a very loving kitty. He cried when my roommates were moving out, he must have sensed what was going on. He's traveled with me, as I've continued exploring, or running, depending on your perspective and has been more places than most humans. I've had rough times here of course too, I lost a home I was trying to buy in 2008 after losing my job. I've slept in my van most of the time. I wiped more than twenty five years of dust of that novel I wrote and started to re-write it.
Not having enough money at the time for a car, or really needing one in the small Lake Michigan city I was living in, I rode my bike most everywhere, even in the winter. I laugh now as I remember riding my bike home from the tavern I worked at. I'd often stop at other taverns and have a few drinks. One time I fell off my bike and slid about twenty feet on the freshly fallen snow. I'd continue writing my novel and much to my landlord's dismay also start to paint murals on my apartment wall. I saved up enough money to buy an old truck and a camper it could barely pull. I drove to Omaha to visit a friend and finished a prequel to my first novel. I also drove down to visit my sister in Arkansas and paint her house for her and met an internet friend in St. Louis before stopping again at the grave of my high school teacher to drop off a copy of my first released novel that I put in a sealed plastic baggy and left it on his grave. I then realized, although I always thought him to be much older, he was about the same age I'm at now when he died. These are but a few of the highlights of my lifelong journey. There's of course more, always more. Like some stories I could tell about trying to return to school at 47 years old, or using social media to find a son I hadn't seen in more than twenty five years and inviting him over for Thanksgiving dinner. I've released six stories at or near novel length over the past twelve years. "All too often we focus on the dust of difference, ignoring the mountain of commonality". I've always loved this quote from one of my novels. It really summarizes much of what I've seen and learned in my travels. No matter where I've lived, or who I've met this seems to ring true. We are truly all the same. We may each have different backgrounds or ethnicity, different wants or desires, but deep down we are all the same. We can all learn a lot from my cat Felix who I recently had to put down and of course wrote a story about his adventure in kitty afterlife. He loved everyone. Whenever I had a visitor or any of the people I met over the twelve short years of his life, he'd be sure to rub up against their leg or jump in their lap. He didn't care what you looked like, or where you came from, so long as you were nice to him, he'd love you with all of his tiny kitty heart. I miss you Felix. Well thank you for following me on this flashback and I hope all is well with you and yours. Stay tuned for more stories from the next fifty plus years of my journey through life. |