The waiting was the hardest part.
A week out from when all the jobs that could be had would be posted, I was at a library to see a demonstration of a 3-D printer, and I took almost all of their books on resumes, cover letters and interviews. At least, I checked out everything written in the past ten years.
It was gluttonous, and it was pointless.It took days for me to get motivated to even crack open one of the books and then the books seemed to suggest that I needed to wait before I actually created a resume. I needed to know what I was applying for.
The list had yet to be posted.
At the office and on Facebook, I joked about the situation I found myself in, but I was terrified. I had no idea what would happen if I lost my main job. Sure, they told us that if we got cut, we could expect a severance of a week's pay for every year of service, up to 25 weeks. We also got our unused vacation.
It looked bad, but maybe manageable for some. A friend of mine who took the buyout package, had 26 years with the company. He got almost half a year of pay, plus his vacation.
With unemployment and some prudent budgeting, he's probably OK for at least a year, but he's also one of the exceptions, not the general rule.
I figured I was fucked. I had eight years in and about three weeks of vacation. I was good for 11 weeks, but then I had no idea what was going to happen with unemployment. I was pretty sure my part-time radio job was going to screw that up but good.
Public radio said they could help toss me a life preserver, if the worst happened. They could find extra hours for me to work, which might help me draw things out, buy me time, but it wasn't a solution.
I did the math, deducted all the little extras in my life. I could quit the gym. I have a family membership to the YMCA, which I use three or four times a week. That was about 60 bucks. I could cancel Netflix and my fancy XM radio subscription --about 20 bucks a month. I could cancel the internet at the house, which runs $35 a month.
The library has internet and you can find free wi-fi all over the place.
My biggest cost-saver would be to pull my youngest from his after-school program, which costs $55 a week.
Beyond that, I figured I could gut the grocery budget, cut out meat, cheese, dairy and bread. I could feed my pets the cheapest food available.
Still, it wouldn't be enough. I knew this. I could buy a couple of extra weeks, but there just wasn't enough gas in the tank. If I didn't find a job fast enough, some time after Christmas, I'd start missing mortgage payments.
In a more perfect world, I'd have savings, but I don't. Pay increases at the newspaper have been modest and irregular. The few raises I've managed to beg out of the company in the past eight years have never managed to keep up with the raises in the cost of living, payroll taxes or the insurance.
The threat of destruction and ruin was terrifying.
What would happen if I lost my home? I imagined my kids moving in with their mothers, which was not entirely a great prospect for both of them. I saw myself holed up in a guest room or on somebody's couch, while I scrambled to find some kind of work, probably nowhere near here.
At my worst, I imagined living in a U-haul trailer out in the Dakotas, where there's an oil and gas boom. I have no idea what I'd do there. I can barely hold a hammer straight.
How reasonable were these fears? I can't say, but this was what went through my mind over and over and over. I had trouble sleeping. I was unfocused and rattled at work --and while I got some support from my unreal pals on Facebook, there were people I expected to be there for me who just weren't.
While I waited for the list to be posted, I did everything I could think of to muster what resources I had at my disposal. I contacted nearly all the people I'd worked with in my little corner of the paper and asked them for letters of reference.
It was the nicest thing in the world when all of them agreed without anything approaching hesitation and reading their words encouraged me.
I asked a few people whom I've worked with over the years, doing stories about their venues. One of them was glad to do it. She was willing to send the letter while on vacation.
Another vote of confidence. It felt good.
The other said, no. He wasn't comfortable. It didn't matter what I'd written, how much I'd written or whether I'd been of any use at all, he wouldn't endorse me. I was free to ask my interviewers to give him a call to talk about me, which was ominous-sounding at best, but he wanted nothing in writing.
Best of luck. Sorry, but fuck you.
I'm not going to lie. That hurt.
But... it wasn't unexpected.
If anything, it was good he shot me down. It told me where we stood and would always stand, without any confusion. Honest criticism is hard to find in this town. It would have been easier to type up some lukewarm, bullshit response that meant nothing, but since he couldn't give me what I wanted, he gave me what I deserved: honesty.
I was grateful to get it.
After I'd gathered my letters of reference and recommendation, the list was posted.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
30 Days of Night in Charleston: three.
"So, how does this affect you?" the receptionist at the radio station where I also work asked me.
I sighed and explained the whole thing, as best I understood it and what was probably going to happen.
"That's awful," she said.
And I shrugged. I didn't want her to feel bad about it.
So, I said, "Well, I don't know how this is going to work out, but I've been through this before.
"Four years ago, I had a pretty lousy summer, too. I'd just bought a house and then my wife left me. Aside from the obvious thing, like getting kicked to the curb, I was horrified that I wouldn't be able to keep the house, that it would be too much for me to carry."
I remembered worrying about food, about keeping the lights on, about making sure everything was taken care of. Back then, I'd imagined living on the street by Christmas.
I told her, "But here I am, four years later. I kept the house and while I got my heart broke, I met someone amazing a few months later. My life changed completely and I couldn't imagine going back to what things were like before.
"I really hope that whichever way it goes with the job, that something better comes out of it."
She nodded and I went on, pointlessly. I was on a roll.
"Maybe it's cyclical with me, I don't know," I said. "Maybe there's a huge blow-up every four years for me, around this time. I just need to plan for it and be out of the way of whatever karmic meteor is coming my way next time.
"I could go to Antarctica."
She smiled, but had no idea what I was talking about; neither did I, really.
"I hope it turns out for you," she said.
I nodded and then went through the door to the take my place at the microphone to read cards and weather.
The morning host, who'd heard about half of that, said, "You seem like you're handling this pretty well."
I laughed and told her, "I'm a complete wreck."
I sighed and explained the whole thing, as best I understood it and what was probably going to happen.
"That's awful," she said.
And I shrugged. I didn't want her to feel bad about it.
So, I said, "Well, I don't know how this is going to work out, but I've been through this before.
"Four years ago, I had a pretty lousy summer, too. I'd just bought a house and then my wife left me. Aside from the obvious thing, like getting kicked to the curb, I was horrified that I wouldn't be able to keep the house, that it would be too much for me to carry."
I remembered worrying about food, about keeping the lights on, about making sure everything was taken care of. Back then, I'd imagined living on the street by Christmas.
I told her, "But here I am, four years later. I kept the house and while I got my heart broke, I met someone amazing a few months later. My life changed completely and I couldn't imagine going back to what things were like before.
"I really hope that whichever way it goes with the job, that something better comes out of it."
She nodded and I went on, pointlessly. I was on a roll.
"Maybe it's cyclical with me, I don't know," I said. "Maybe there's a huge blow-up every four years for me, around this time. I just need to plan for it and be out of the way of whatever karmic meteor is coming my way next time.
"I could go to Antarctica."
She smiled, but had no idea what I was talking about; neither did I, really.
"I hope it turns out for you," she said.
I nodded and then went through the door to the take my place at the microphone to read cards and weather.
The morning host, who'd heard about half of that, said, "You seem like you're handling this pretty well."
I laughed and told her, "I'm a complete wreck."
Thursday, July 23, 2015
30 Days of Night in Charleston: two "The Grocery List"
Journalists hate math.
Most of us, if we were any good at numbers and figures would have gone into some other field. There's never been real money in newspapers --unless you were an owner.
Money at both papers had been stretched thin for as long as I've been there. The computer I use is pretty much the same one I've had since the I logged in the first time almost nine years ago. Only the monitor is different.
Christmas bonuses stopped before I arrived. Across the board raises ended not long after I arrived, but, for the most part, I've always looked at what was happening at the newspaper as part of the overall economy of the state. The housing bubble collapsed. The financial industry all but disintegrated. Oil went up then came back down. Natural gas wiped out coal. The whole country was in a deep recession, and West Virginia was getting her ass kicked.
The only people who seemed to be making any real money were the meth labs and the state kept trying to shut them down.
I heard a lot of blame pushed onto the owners --bad choices, bad investments. I have no idea and I know very little about the people who run the company now.
My experiences with them have been select, but memorable for me.
During my first year at the paper, the owner threw a Christmas party at her house --a horribly awkward affair. It was a muddy December. I wore boots and she had cream colored carpeting. The contents of her first floor were worth more than the purchase price of my Dodge Neon.
I remember standing awkwardly over a table, drinking Maker's Mark bourbon and struggling to make small talk with the owner's son-in-law. I just couldn't do it. I had no idea what to say. Neither did he. We just stood there, finished our drinks and then I ambled off to review a show at the Clay Center.
The owner's daughter, the current publisher, I mistook for a secretary once.
I don't know if they're any good at math either. What I do know is that we have 45 former Gazette employees and 35 former Daily Mail employees and they really only want about 65 Gazette-Mail employees.
Fifteen people have to go --ballpark.
Redundancies make up the bulk of the losses. Most of those will come from the copy desk, photography, sports and a maybe editorial staff --maybe.
At a rough guess, that's about 10 people.
The rest comes from general reporters, beat reporters, feature writers, wherever.
The company has a list of needs, of course. They need reporters covering the statehouse, city hall, education, health, business and crime. They need people who can do a little bit of everything. They need photographers and people who can lay out the pages.
Some people on staff now are probably protected. I have a hard time imagining the paper without about ten specific staff members. I figure they're safe. I also think people with unique positions, like the editor of the teen section, have little to worry about.
So, how do I fit in?
I don't know. I really don't.
Most of us, if we were any good at numbers and figures would have gone into some other field. There's never been real money in newspapers --unless you were an owner.
Money at both papers had been stretched thin for as long as I've been there. The computer I use is pretty much the same one I've had since the I logged in the first time almost nine years ago. Only the monitor is different.
Christmas bonuses stopped before I arrived. Across the board raises ended not long after I arrived, but, for the most part, I've always looked at what was happening at the newspaper as part of the overall economy of the state. The housing bubble collapsed. The financial industry all but disintegrated. Oil went up then came back down. Natural gas wiped out coal. The whole country was in a deep recession, and West Virginia was getting her ass kicked.
The only people who seemed to be making any real money were the meth labs and the state kept trying to shut them down.
I heard a lot of blame pushed onto the owners --bad choices, bad investments. I have no idea and I know very little about the people who run the company now.
My experiences with them have been select, but memorable for me.
During my first year at the paper, the owner threw a Christmas party at her house --a horribly awkward affair. It was a muddy December. I wore boots and she had cream colored carpeting. The contents of her first floor were worth more than the purchase price of my Dodge Neon.
I remember standing awkwardly over a table, drinking Maker's Mark bourbon and struggling to make small talk with the owner's son-in-law. I just couldn't do it. I had no idea what to say. Neither did he. We just stood there, finished our drinks and then I ambled off to review a show at the Clay Center.
The owner's daughter, the current publisher, I mistook for a secretary once.
I don't know if they're any good at math either. What I do know is that we have 45 former Gazette employees and 35 former Daily Mail employees and they really only want about 65 Gazette-Mail employees.
Fifteen people have to go --ballpark.
Redundancies make up the bulk of the losses. Most of those will come from the copy desk, photography, sports and a maybe editorial staff --maybe.
At a rough guess, that's about 10 people.
The rest comes from general reporters, beat reporters, feature writers, wherever.
The company has a list of needs, of course. They need reporters covering the statehouse, city hall, education, health, business and crime. They need people who can do a little bit of everything. They need photographers and people who can lay out the pages.
Some people on staff now are probably protected. I have a hard time imagining the paper without about ten specific staff members. I figure they're safe. I also think people with unique positions, like the editor of the teen section, have little to worry about.
So, how do I fit in?
I don't know. I really don't.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
30 Days of Night in Charleston: one
I heard about the merger over the phone. It was Sunday evening.
The day before my girlfriend flew out of Charleston for Philadelphia --a trip I kind of envied her for because I don't travel much and even if she had to slog through four days of seminars and meetings, she still got to see one of America's most storied cities. She'd called because it had been a long day in a strange place amongst some people who didn't think so highly of where she was from.
West Virginia has a reputation for being backward, for being behind the rest of the country. This is not a new opinion.
Sometimes when I'm reaching for an angle in one of my entertainment interviews, particularly with comedians, I'll ask what they think of coming to West Virginia.
Most of them have never played here --at least, not the ones with names you'd easily recognize.
Now, they're always polite about the answer. They'll say they like coming to places like this, the boonies, because the best and brightest in the sticks buy all the tickets. The very nature of what they're doing requires, at the very least, an open mind, a certain amount of contemporary knowledge and maybe a willingness to hear something you don't necessarily agree with.
I remember Bill Marr told me, "People come and they look around the room and they can't believe there are that many people who are just like them!"
The place these comedians play in Charleston, The Clay Center, seats under 2000 people. They often struggle to sell the place out, unless it's Jeff Foxworthy.
My girlfriend called and we talked and she asked me, "So, what's this about your newspaper merging with The Daily Mail? Why didn't you tell me?"
I went, huh?
She repeated the question. I asked her where she heard that? I hadn't heard that. What?
Now, the possibility of a merger has hung over the workers at both papers for years --since the owners bought the Daily Mail, since the anti-trust lawsuit that everyone knew would eventually expire.
The terms of the lawsuit expired Monday at midnight, apparently, and the owner of both papers wanted to get on with what had been in the works for around a decade.
The skeleton staff working Sunday afternoon in both offices were gathered together, given the news and a plan was made to release the information in the next edition.
Things must have gone sideways. Ten years ago, you could maybe get away with that --maybe-- but these days, social media makes it oh so easy to leak information. From what I understand, the company started getting calls from outside the building, other news agencies were asking questions.
They'd already lost control of the story.
So, just before 5 p.m., an email was sent out explaining what was happening to the staff, but before 7 p.m. the story was posted on Facebook, where my girlfriend saw it and then called me.
After I hung up with her, I checked in with social media and my company email.
In the email, we were promised a meeting for information and to field questions.
Zack Harold did a great job of writing up exactly how that went down, but he probably had half a dozen sources in the room feeding him material. Reporters had their phones out. They were recording and they were texting non-stop.
The long and the short of what was said (and to no surprise to anyone) was the new, merged newspaper didn't need the reporters, photographers and editors of two newspapers. It just needed enough for one. This paper would be much larger than the previous two entities, but it still didn't require all the manpower.
Some of us were going to have to go and this was going to happen soon. Very soon.
Those of us who wanted a shot at staying needed to reapply for our jobs.
We were told this was fair, that it put us all on equal footing. The logic used to explain how it was fair and how it put us all on equal footing never really seemed to connect.
Each of us would be need to prepare a resume and a cover letter stating which job we were applying for and go into detail about why we should be chosen. We would also interview before a panel that included the managing editors of the former two papers and the publisher/owner. This was where we could make our case.
Nobody likes this. From the looks on the faces of the two editors seated at the front of the room, they didn't like it much either, but this was what they'd been committed to. This is what we've all been committed to.
Jobs will be posted in a little over a week from now. We will have about a week to turn in our resumes and cover letters, and then come the interviews.
We're all at least a little scared. I'm scared. There's nothing to be done, however, but work and prepare.
The day before my girlfriend flew out of Charleston for Philadelphia --a trip I kind of envied her for because I don't travel much and even if she had to slog through four days of seminars and meetings, she still got to see one of America's most storied cities. She'd called because it had been a long day in a strange place amongst some people who didn't think so highly of where she was from.
West Virginia has a reputation for being backward, for being behind the rest of the country. This is not a new opinion.
Sometimes when I'm reaching for an angle in one of my entertainment interviews, particularly with comedians, I'll ask what they think of coming to West Virginia.
Most of them have never played here --at least, not the ones with names you'd easily recognize.
Now, they're always polite about the answer. They'll say they like coming to places like this, the boonies, because the best and brightest in the sticks buy all the tickets. The very nature of what they're doing requires, at the very least, an open mind, a certain amount of contemporary knowledge and maybe a willingness to hear something you don't necessarily agree with.
I remember Bill Marr told me, "People come and they look around the room and they can't believe there are that many people who are just like them!"
The place these comedians play in Charleston, The Clay Center, seats under 2000 people. They often struggle to sell the place out, unless it's Jeff Foxworthy.
My girlfriend called and we talked and she asked me, "So, what's this about your newspaper merging with The Daily Mail? Why didn't you tell me?"
I went, huh?
She repeated the question. I asked her where she heard that? I hadn't heard that. What?
Now, the possibility of a merger has hung over the workers at both papers for years --since the owners bought the Daily Mail, since the anti-trust lawsuit that everyone knew would eventually expire.
The terms of the lawsuit expired Monday at midnight, apparently, and the owner of both papers wanted to get on with what had been in the works for around a decade.
The skeleton staff working Sunday afternoon in both offices were gathered together, given the news and a plan was made to release the information in the next edition.
Things must have gone sideways. Ten years ago, you could maybe get away with that --maybe-- but these days, social media makes it oh so easy to leak information. From what I understand, the company started getting calls from outside the building, other news agencies were asking questions.
They'd already lost control of the story.
So, just before 5 p.m., an email was sent out explaining what was happening to the staff, but before 7 p.m. the story was posted on Facebook, where my girlfriend saw it and then called me.
After I hung up with her, I checked in with social media and my company email.
In the email, we were promised a meeting for information and to field questions.
Zack Harold did a great job of writing up exactly how that went down, but he probably had half a dozen sources in the room feeding him material. Reporters had their phones out. They were recording and they were texting non-stop.
The long and the short of what was said (and to no surprise to anyone) was the new, merged newspaper didn't need the reporters, photographers and editors of two newspapers. It just needed enough for one. This paper would be much larger than the previous two entities, but it still didn't require all the manpower.
Some of us were going to have to go and this was going to happen soon. Very soon.
Those of us who wanted a shot at staying needed to reapply for our jobs.
We were told this was fair, that it put us all on equal footing. The logic used to explain how it was fair and how it put us all on equal footing never really seemed to connect.
Each of us would be need to prepare a resume and a cover letter stating which job we were applying for and go into detail about why we should be chosen. We would also interview before a panel that included the managing editors of the former two papers and the publisher/owner. This was where we could make our case.
Nobody likes this. From the looks on the faces of the two editors seated at the front of the room, they didn't like it much either, but this was what they'd been committed to. This is what we've all been committed to.
Jobs will be posted in a little over a week from now. We will have about a week to turn in our resumes and cover letters, and then come the interviews.
We're all at least a little scared. I'm scared. There's nothing to be done, however, but work and prepare.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Interlude at a chain diner
The girlfriend's car had a flat; the second in just a couple of months. It was the rear passenger side wheel. She might have caught a corner wrong or it might just be the car, but a jagged two-inch tear stood out like a stab wound in the black rubber.
It all seemed kind of suspicious to me. The tire had less than 5,000 miles on it, but I hadn't been called out to change the tire, which I was capable of, something I've done far too many times, but to offer comfort and moral support.
Besides, the car was practically new and came with free roadside assistance --why not leave it to the professionals.
But we had to wait around and she was hungry. I was not, but I offered to walk in from the Shoney's parking lot and buy a hamburger and a drink while she waited for a guy to come and change the tire.
I felt kind of wary of the place. The time before, not that long ago, we'd had dinner there. There had been a mix up, a minor issue of onion rings instead of fries, and I'd kind of been treated like an asshole for not accepting that I'd ordered something I hadn't.
The waitress sort of stomped off when I said, "Hey, I didn't order this."
A few minutes later, another waitress came and collected the onion rings in a bowl, but it was a good, long while before another waitress came back with the missing fries.
We didn't see the lady who took our order again until she swung by with the check and then scurried off.
It was a weird level of hostility for something that shouldn't have been that big of a deal to any of us, but I paid the bill without a fuss, hadn't said anything to the manager at the register, and I'd left a normal tip.
Still, the meal hadn't made me want to go back anytime soon.
I spotted the previous visit's waitress as I crossed the floor from the door to the counter. She looked up at me and, for a second, I thought she recognized me, remembered me somehow, but the place was only half-full at dinner time and just as likely, she was wondering if the hostess would seat me in her section. Each new customer was a few more bucks for the night.
A pair of old women stood at the register; the both of them were easily past the recommended retirement age. The younger of the two had gone gray. The elder dyed her hair black --or I presumed so since she seemed so much older than the other.
It seemed sad to me that two grandmothers would be stuck working the night shift at a Shoney's, but I explained what I needed from the younger of the two. She cheerfully took my order, while the other woman looked on.
The rest was just standing around, waiting for meat to cook and potatoes to fry.
I got a text: the roadside assistance guy was there.
I joked and texted back that she could share her fries with the man, if she wanted. Fries came with the meal. It was an extra.
A scrawny man in his 20s slipped out from the kitchen. He hovered next to the door, grimly, nervously, eyes darting furtively. The man looked looked pasty, but not quite feverish, like he was sweating something unpleasant out.
The old women tried very hard not to act like they weren't watching him.
A couple of moments later, a short woman with flinty eyes came out. She slipped a cigarette in her mouth as she walked past him and he followed her out the door.
The younger of the two old women said, "Now, what was that about?"
A little sharper than she maybe intended, she replied, "What do you think it was about?"
The younger woman sighed and warned,"It's a mistake."
"Of course, it is," the other woman told her. "I did it, too. Over and over."
The younger woman shook her head.
"Yeah, me, too."
They were quiet until a minute or so later when my order came up: a cheeseburger and fries boxed up in Styrofoam and dropped in a flimsy bag, ready to take to my girlfriend waiting in the parking lot.
"If she wants dessert, you come right back in," the junior of the two told me. "We got some really nice desserts."
I didn't think to even look at the menu.
It all seemed kind of suspicious to me. The tire had less than 5,000 miles on it, but I hadn't been called out to change the tire, which I was capable of, something I've done far too many times, but to offer comfort and moral support.
Besides, the car was practically new and came with free roadside assistance --why not leave it to the professionals.
But we had to wait around and she was hungry. I was not, but I offered to walk in from the Shoney's parking lot and buy a hamburger and a drink while she waited for a guy to come and change the tire.
I felt kind of wary of the place. The time before, not that long ago, we'd had dinner there. There had been a mix up, a minor issue of onion rings instead of fries, and I'd kind of been treated like an asshole for not accepting that I'd ordered something I hadn't.
The waitress sort of stomped off when I said, "Hey, I didn't order this."
A few minutes later, another waitress came and collected the onion rings in a bowl, but it was a good, long while before another waitress came back with the missing fries.
We didn't see the lady who took our order again until she swung by with the check and then scurried off.
It was a weird level of hostility for something that shouldn't have been that big of a deal to any of us, but I paid the bill without a fuss, hadn't said anything to the manager at the register, and I'd left a normal tip.
Still, the meal hadn't made me want to go back anytime soon.
I spotted the previous visit's waitress as I crossed the floor from the door to the counter. She looked up at me and, for a second, I thought she recognized me, remembered me somehow, but the place was only half-full at dinner time and just as likely, she was wondering if the hostess would seat me in her section. Each new customer was a few more bucks for the night.
A pair of old women stood at the register; the both of them were easily past the recommended retirement age. The younger of the two had gone gray. The elder dyed her hair black --or I presumed so since she seemed so much older than the other.
It seemed sad to me that two grandmothers would be stuck working the night shift at a Shoney's, but I explained what I needed from the younger of the two. She cheerfully took my order, while the other woman looked on.
The rest was just standing around, waiting for meat to cook and potatoes to fry.
I got a text: the roadside assistance guy was there.
I joked and texted back that she could share her fries with the man, if she wanted. Fries came with the meal. It was an extra.
A scrawny man in his 20s slipped out from the kitchen. He hovered next to the door, grimly, nervously, eyes darting furtively. The man looked looked pasty, but not quite feverish, like he was sweating something unpleasant out.
The old women tried very hard not to act like they weren't watching him.
A couple of moments later, a short woman with flinty eyes came out. She slipped a cigarette in her mouth as she walked past him and he followed her out the door.
The younger of the two old women said, "Now, what was that about?"
A little sharper than she maybe intended, she replied, "What do you think it was about?"
The younger woman sighed and warned,"It's a mistake."
"Of course, it is," the other woman told her. "I did it, too. Over and over."
The younger woman shook her head.
"Yeah, me, too."
They were quiet until a minute or so later when my order came up: a cheeseburger and fries boxed up in Styrofoam and dropped in a flimsy bag, ready to take to my girlfriend waiting in the parking lot.
"If she wants dessert, you come right back in," the junior of the two told me. "We got some really nice desserts."
I didn't think to even look at the menu.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Resume-3
I never accomplished much in Bluefield. I managed to con my way into working a few extra shifts here and there, but it was always minor stuff. My best shift was the Sunday morning ghetto shift. I worked Sunday mornings from 6 to noon, played a couple of canned national programs and only really hosted an hour or so before the afternoon guy came in.
I was never considered for anything more substantial.
Part of it lies with me --a large part of it. When it works, I have a pretty fair voice, but not a really over-the-top personality to go with it.
Most of the guys who do well in radio aren't necessarily funny. They're sometimes sort of funny and some of them are kind of charming, but they're over-the-top loud. Their voices boom and so do their personalities on the air. They're larger than life, larger than they actually are.
I've always been pretty much the same size --and that's no crime, but it doesn't necessarily open doors for you.
Things never really got better for me and I made them worse. A few months after my first wife and I split (I left. She was horrible), I developed a crush on a co-worker. I wanted it to be more than a crush, but I really just wasn't her type. I was kind of nerdy, silly and sort of plain. I was hard worker and very creative. She liked guys who were handy with tools, followed NASCAR and were, mostly, just simple, uncomplicated country boys.
I was doomed to fail from the beginning and she was either too kind or too afraid to tell me to move along. Maybe she thought I was fragile, but I was unhappy with going nowhere with her and going nowhere at the radio station. So, when the opportunity arose, I jumped ship for public broadcasting.
A couple months after I left, the guy they hired to replace me was basically canned. I got a call from the station manager offering me to write commercials for him on the side. That lasted for seven or eight months before I got fed up with being paid late and with the scripts I wrote being horribly mangled.
I told the boss to go fuck himself.
I had the public broadcasting job, anyway.
It was TV, though, and kind of dull. When a position opened up in Charleston, it seemed like the answer to all kinds of prayers.
I don't know that it was.
I was never considered for anything more substantial.
Part of it lies with me --a large part of it. When it works, I have a pretty fair voice, but not a really over-the-top personality to go with it.
Most of the guys who do well in radio aren't necessarily funny. They're sometimes sort of funny and some of them are kind of charming, but they're over-the-top loud. Their voices boom and so do their personalities on the air. They're larger than life, larger than they actually are.
I've always been pretty much the same size --and that's no crime, but it doesn't necessarily open doors for you.
Things never really got better for me and I made them worse. A few months after my first wife and I split (I left. She was horrible), I developed a crush on a co-worker. I wanted it to be more than a crush, but I really just wasn't her type. I was kind of nerdy, silly and sort of plain. I was hard worker and very creative. She liked guys who were handy with tools, followed NASCAR and were, mostly, just simple, uncomplicated country boys.
I was doomed to fail from the beginning and she was either too kind or too afraid to tell me to move along. Maybe she thought I was fragile, but I was unhappy with going nowhere with her and going nowhere at the radio station. So, when the opportunity arose, I jumped ship for public broadcasting.
A couple months after I left, the guy they hired to replace me was basically canned. I got a call from the station manager offering me to write commercials for him on the side. That lasted for seven or eight months before I got fed up with being paid late and with the scripts I wrote being horribly mangled.
I told the boss to go fuck himself.
I had the public broadcasting job, anyway.
It was TV, though, and kind of dull. When a position opened up in Charleston, it seemed like the answer to all kinds of prayers.
I don't know that it was.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Resume-2
A very long side note:
I got out of the habit of blogging not long after I moved into this house. For a while things were really tough and then they were really good. Blogging about how truly awful I felt seemed too self-indulgent. So, I dialed it down.
After I met Vanessa, things just got so much better that I didn't think anybody would believe me or they'd think that I'd been holding out.
After a while, I just got out of the habit of blogging. I just didn't write much.
I missed it all the time, but I didn't feel like I needed it. I could walk away.
So last night I come home full up with anger and frustration. I sat down at the computer really just to do something besides open a second beer and glower at the cat, but the words came and when I was done, I felt a lot better.
I've always thought of the writing as just communication. This is me trying to connect and explain the things that sometimes don't come out so easily from my idiot mouth.
It's something else, too, something I never considered --it's therapy. I bottle stuff up. I obsess. I brood. I dwell. I am frequently frustrated by my job, my community; the people I love and the people I wish would get genital warts so large that they have to buy pants the next size larger.
I don't talk it out as much as I should and I don't know why. It seems to me like I do, like I'm constantly shouting "Ow!" at every physical, financial or emotional injury, but maybe I'm not. Maybe it gets buried in there somewhere or maybe I yell "ow!" but I don't actually put a band-aid on the wound. Maybe that's part of the problem.
Anyway, the blogging seems to help.
More about radio...
I got my second job in radio about a year after my first gig ended. For right at a year, I took a job working inbound customer service for a satellite television company based out of Canada. I like to refer to it as the worst satellite television company in the world and it was pretty bad. The equipment had been rushed to market and didn't work properly. The bulk of our customers seemed to be from the Spanish-speaking parts of central America and the call center was located in Bluefield, WV --which is not known for its vibrant Spanish-speaking community.
The job lasted exactly a year and then all of us were laid off just after the company announced it planned to cease broadcasting channels. They announced this in a message that scrolled across the bottom of their customers' television screens.
What a bunch of assholes.
In the interim, I answered an ad for a local radio station I didn't much like. They needed someone to write commercials and work with the sales force and the on-air talent. I interviewed, showed a panel of managers a couple of scripts I'd written while I was sitting around the trailer park and they were impressed --not impressed enough to hire me, but impressed.
I spent the next month selling vacuum cleaners --badly.
And just after I decided I wasn't meant to be a vacuum cleaner salesman, I got a call back from the radio station. The woman they'd hired, an old friend of the current station manager, was basically stinking up the joint. She was a little unbalanced, wasn't taking her medication, I was told, and worse, she was unreliable.
The commercials they needed her to write weren't getting done and the incoming station manager wanted her gone.
I was hired to assist her and do some production work, but then they fired her the day before I came into work.
I remember it well. It was Halloween. The sale staff were in costumes. One woman, Catherine, was dressed as Little Bo Peep. The company also provided pizza for lunch, something I was told, "not to get used to."
I almost didn't make it. When I came on staff, they showed me the system the last two people who'd held the job had used to manage the workload. I tried to do the same thing and fell flat on my face. It was one disaster after another.
For Thanksgiving weekend, a car dealer wanted us to run a different commercial every hour for four days straight on three different radio stations. I was called in Thanksgiving day to correct my mistake and then come Monday morning, the boss wanted my head.
"Can you even do this?" She shouted at me.
I told her I didn't know, but I asked her to let me give it one more shot.
How we'd done things before, how the copy writer had assigned things for people to do, I tossed it out the window, came up with my own, very simple, very primitive and very effective method.
We stopped making big mistakes. We stopped making little mistakes, mostly. The work got done. It was good work and for a while, they treated me like I was some kind of a miracle.
But nobody gets into radio to write commercials. I started asking about getting an air-shift. I was willing to do it for free, if they'd just let me.
No takers, until my old boss at the satellite company called me and offered to hire me back for three dollars an hour more than I was making at the radio station.
The radio station agreed to a two dollar an hour raise and gave me a weekend air-shift.
Everything seemed great... but really, it wasn't.
I got out of the habit of blogging not long after I moved into this house. For a while things were really tough and then they were really good. Blogging about how truly awful I felt seemed too self-indulgent. So, I dialed it down.
After I met Vanessa, things just got so much better that I didn't think anybody would believe me or they'd think that I'd been holding out.
After a while, I just got out of the habit of blogging. I just didn't write much.
I missed it all the time, but I didn't feel like I needed it. I could walk away.
So last night I come home full up with anger and frustration. I sat down at the computer really just to do something besides open a second beer and glower at the cat, but the words came and when I was done, I felt a lot better.
I've always thought of the writing as just communication. This is me trying to connect and explain the things that sometimes don't come out so easily from my idiot mouth.
It's something else, too, something I never considered --it's therapy. I bottle stuff up. I obsess. I brood. I dwell. I am frequently frustrated by my job, my community; the people I love and the people I wish would get genital warts so large that they have to buy pants the next size larger.
I don't talk it out as much as I should and I don't know why. It seems to me like I do, like I'm constantly shouting "Ow!" at every physical, financial or emotional injury, but maybe I'm not. Maybe it gets buried in there somewhere or maybe I yell "ow!" but I don't actually put a band-aid on the wound. Maybe that's part of the problem.
Anyway, the blogging seems to help.
More about radio...
I got my second job in radio about a year after my first gig ended. For right at a year, I took a job working inbound customer service for a satellite television company based out of Canada. I like to refer to it as the worst satellite television company in the world and it was pretty bad. The equipment had been rushed to market and didn't work properly. The bulk of our customers seemed to be from the Spanish-speaking parts of central America and the call center was located in Bluefield, WV --which is not known for its vibrant Spanish-speaking community.
The job lasted exactly a year and then all of us were laid off just after the company announced it planned to cease broadcasting channels. They announced this in a message that scrolled across the bottom of their customers' television screens.
What a bunch of assholes.
In the interim, I answered an ad for a local radio station I didn't much like. They needed someone to write commercials and work with the sales force and the on-air talent. I interviewed, showed a panel of managers a couple of scripts I'd written while I was sitting around the trailer park and they were impressed --not impressed enough to hire me, but impressed.
I spent the next month selling vacuum cleaners --badly.
And just after I decided I wasn't meant to be a vacuum cleaner salesman, I got a call back from the radio station. The woman they'd hired, an old friend of the current station manager, was basically stinking up the joint. She was a little unbalanced, wasn't taking her medication, I was told, and worse, she was unreliable.
The commercials they needed her to write weren't getting done and the incoming station manager wanted her gone.
I was hired to assist her and do some production work, but then they fired her the day before I came into work.
I remember it well. It was Halloween. The sale staff were in costumes. One woman, Catherine, was dressed as Little Bo Peep. The company also provided pizza for lunch, something I was told, "not to get used to."
I almost didn't make it. When I came on staff, they showed me the system the last two people who'd held the job had used to manage the workload. I tried to do the same thing and fell flat on my face. It was one disaster after another.
For Thanksgiving weekend, a car dealer wanted us to run a different commercial every hour for four days straight on three different radio stations. I was called in Thanksgiving day to correct my mistake and then come Monday morning, the boss wanted my head.
"Can you even do this?" She shouted at me.
I told her I didn't know, but I asked her to let me give it one more shot.
How we'd done things before, how the copy writer had assigned things for people to do, I tossed it out the window, came up with my own, very simple, very primitive and very effective method.
We stopped making big mistakes. We stopped making little mistakes, mostly. The work got done. It was good work and for a while, they treated me like I was some kind of a miracle.
But nobody gets into radio to write commercials. I started asking about getting an air-shift. I was willing to do it for free, if they'd just let me.
No takers, until my old boss at the satellite company called me and offered to hire me back for three dollars an hour more than I was making at the radio station.
The radio station agreed to a two dollar an hour raise and gave me a weekend air-shift.
Everything seemed great... but really, it wasn't.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Resume -1
I have no idea if I'm quitting radio or not, but I've been thinking about my career in that business a lot lately.
My first radio gig was in Beckley. I worked for a guy named Al. He treated us all kind of poorly and cheated people whenever he got the chance.
I got the job because I was willing to put up with a lot of shit. The interview had been a relentless mocking of my experience and newly minted educational accomplishment. I hadn't walked out on him and I hadn't jumped across the desk and put my hands around his throat.
That probably meant something.
He didn't heat the building in the winter and the on-air staff used to hole up in the control room with a space heater somebody brought from home. You had to stuff a towel under the gap below the door to keep the heat in --and it was never enough.
I worked nights and weekends.
It wasn't so bad and when I was down a car, I could walk to the job.
One night, after midnight, a man in car followed me. He rolled the passenger side window down and tried to offer me a ride.
I declined.
"I just want to talk," he said.
I kept walking.
He followed and I ducked down a side street.
He looped around and came looking for me.
I slipped away, but the same scene played out a couple of other times before I finally moved.
Another night, a couple of junkies, huffing paint on the roof of the building where I worked, tried to break in through a side door. The station manager, John, lived in an apartment on the third floor and was working that night. He called the cops.
"Hey, I've got a break-in over here!"
The Beckley police department were across the street.
They asked him if they had gotten inside the buidling. He told them, no. They told him until they actually got through the door, it wasn't a break-in.
He fired three rounds into the door, while he was on the phone.
They came running, put the crooks in cuffs and took John's gun.
He was pissed about the gun, had to go to court to get it back, but he had a couple of others lying around.
There were a lot of guns in that place.
Al kept what looked like a sawed off shotgun in his desk. John said he'd seen him shoot it at a couple of honest-to-God hobos who'd jumped off a train and were down below the building, messing with his car.
Eventually, Al sold the station off and we got new owners who occupied some offices and quietly went bankrupt over some bad coal deals. The only real thing I remember about them was that they didn't approve of me wearing sweat pants on Saturday.
At the end of the run, they more or less sold the station off to another radio company. They offered to keep me around if I was willing to continue working Sunday mornings and manage the African-American preachers who came in and did their shows.
They'd been doing their shows for years. Some of them were pretty good. Al seemed to despise them. He called them, "his nigger preachers," but they paid on time and they paid in cash. They were practically the only reliable source of income the station had.
I could keep doing Sunday mornings, they said, if I was also willing to take a two dollar an hour pay-cut.
My answer was to take another job.
My first radio gig was in Beckley. I worked for a guy named Al. He treated us all kind of poorly and cheated people whenever he got the chance.
I got the job because I was willing to put up with a lot of shit. The interview had been a relentless mocking of my experience and newly minted educational accomplishment. I hadn't walked out on him and I hadn't jumped across the desk and put my hands around his throat.
That probably meant something.
He didn't heat the building in the winter and the on-air staff used to hole up in the control room with a space heater somebody brought from home. You had to stuff a towel under the gap below the door to keep the heat in --and it was never enough.
I worked nights and weekends.
It wasn't so bad and when I was down a car, I could walk to the job.
One night, after midnight, a man in car followed me. He rolled the passenger side window down and tried to offer me a ride.
I declined.
"I just want to talk," he said.
I kept walking.
He followed and I ducked down a side street.
He looped around and came looking for me.
I slipped away, but the same scene played out a couple of other times before I finally moved.
Another night, a couple of junkies, huffing paint on the roof of the building where I worked, tried to break in through a side door. The station manager, John, lived in an apartment on the third floor and was working that night. He called the cops.
"Hey, I've got a break-in over here!"
The Beckley police department were across the street.
They asked him if they had gotten inside the buidling. He told them, no. They told him until they actually got through the door, it wasn't a break-in.
He fired three rounds into the door, while he was on the phone.
They came running, put the crooks in cuffs and took John's gun.
He was pissed about the gun, had to go to court to get it back, but he had a couple of others lying around.
There were a lot of guns in that place.
Al kept what looked like a sawed off shotgun in his desk. John said he'd seen him shoot it at a couple of honest-to-God hobos who'd jumped off a train and were down below the building, messing with his car.
Eventually, Al sold the station off and we got new owners who occupied some offices and quietly went bankrupt over some bad coal deals. The only real thing I remember about them was that they didn't approve of me wearing sweat pants on Saturday.
At the end of the run, they more or less sold the station off to another radio company. They offered to keep me around if I was willing to continue working Sunday mornings and manage the African-American preachers who came in and did their shows.
They'd been doing their shows for years. Some of them were pretty good. Al seemed to despise them. He called them, "his nigger preachers," but they paid on time and they paid in cash. They were practically the only reliable source of income the station had.
I could keep doing Sunday mornings, they said, if I was also willing to take a two dollar an hour pay-cut.
My answer was to take another job.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
It came from under the sea, from the stars, from beneath the earth... etc.
I honestly thought I was done with this blog.
Don't Print This was too dark. There was too much history.
I like blogging. I've been doing it for 10 years and figured I'd just wipe the slate clean. I could blog about my fucking house or I could maybe blog about getting my shit together, but honestly, it was just me trying to beat around the bush, trying to avoid some truths.
The greatest of these truths is I seek approval. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. I want to be respected, thought highly of, adored, admired, esteemed, and, if its not too much trouble, lusted after.
This blog is not great for that.
Historically, it hasn't been. Historically, it's been a place that lands me into trouble.
So, it seemed like a good idea, a wise idea, to do something else. I could blog about the house or maybe losing weight or maybe reaching what is maybe the mid-point in my life --and there is nothing wrong with any of these things-- but all of them were poor attempts to change the subject of conversation.
So, what changed? Why am I back here, again trying to breathe life into this thing?
I went to a radio meeting this morning.
.
Meetings at public radio are miserable. They're kind of hapless downward conversations mixed in with some meaningless banter. No one gets much out of it, but we all get to say we went, which seems to satisfy whoever it is that decided we should have a regular pointless meetings everyone sort of resents.
We were all seated around the radio console. Someone was speaking, but I can't remember who or what they were saying or why. What I remember was looking over at my computer screen and seeing the rant of a young lesbian on Facebook.
It had something to do with jettisoning the things that make you unhappy, that don't work in your life. She, I think, was talking about a relationship.
For me, I just looked around the room and wondered, What the fuck am I doing? Why am I in here? Does any of this make me happy? What's the point?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is maybe why I'm here blogging again.
Don't Print This was too dark. There was too much history.
I like blogging. I've been doing it for 10 years and figured I'd just wipe the slate clean. I could blog about my fucking house or I could maybe blog about getting my shit together, but honestly, it was just me trying to beat around the bush, trying to avoid some truths.
The greatest of these truths is I seek approval. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. I want to be respected, thought highly of, adored, admired, esteemed, and, if its not too much trouble, lusted after.
This blog is not great for that.
Historically, it hasn't been. Historically, it's been a place that lands me into trouble.
So, it seemed like a good idea, a wise idea, to do something else. I could blog about the house or maybe losing weight or maybe reaching what is maybe the mid-point in my life --and there is nothing wrong with any of these things-- but all of them were poor attempts to change the subject of conversation.
So, what changed? Why am I back here, again trying to breathe life into this thing?
I went to a radio meeting this morning.
.
Meetings at public radio are miserable. They're kind of hapless downward conversations mixed in with some meaningless banter. No one gets much out of it, but we all get to say we went, which seems to satisfy whoever it is that decided we should have a regular pointless meetings everyone sort of resents.
We were all seated around the radio console. Someone was speaking, but I can't remember who or what they were saying or why. What I remember was looking over at my computer screen and seeing the rant of a young lesbian on Facebook.
It had something to do with jettisoning the things that make you unhappy, that don't work in your life. She, I think, was talking about a relationship.
For me, I just looked around the room and wondered, What the fuck am I doing? Why am I in here? Does any of this make me happy? What's the point?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is maybe why I'm here blogging again.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Dueling Banjos: part 1
We pulled up to the gatehouse to the campground. An older lady greeted us, tried to collect money and get me to sign something, but then I told her I was with the press and there to cover the string band festival.
As usual, nobody had said anything to anybody. Puzzled, she told me to wait right there.
"I'll go check."
Off she went to call somebody.
Five minutes later, she came back, all smiles, and told me, "Sure. You're expected."
We were told we could park and camp just about anywhere we could find a spot. She gave my son a bracelet to wear --proof that he was supposed to be there. I was given a lanyard to wear around my neck with a big, laminated card that said PRESS.
"You have to wear that at all times," she said pointedly, almost as if to challenge me.
I didn't like their damned sign. I'd come to experience the festival, to immerse myself in it. This had been explained. The tag felt heavy handed, unnecessary, and more than a little insulting.
With a camera around my neck, a notepad, and pen in my hand, it seemed pretty obvious who and what I was.
Honestly, they were lucky to have me there. The String Band Festival is a small event -at least compared to other festivals along the same lines, like the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Virginia. It's out of the way, about an hour and a half along a two-lane road that winds around the side of a couple of mountains.
There's not much near the campgrounds and cell service is limited --particularly if you're a dummy like me who can only afford a cheap phone through Sprint.
Promotion for the festival is poor to very poor --at least on the local level. The division of culture and history sends out email blasts about the string band festival, if they send them at all, which are indistinguishable from their other regular announcements about quilting exhibitions, historical lectures and the like, none of which have anything to do with someone like me who covers arts and entertainment.
At best, their approach is uninspired and lazy. At worst, it's comically inept.
The Appalachian String Band Festival has been around for right at 25 years and it's still kind of secret to anyone other than the music nerds who play this kind of music.
Even getting to go cover the festival had been a little tricky. Because of deadlines, workflow and even newspaper resources, getting approved for an overnight story was hard. The paper didn't want to pay for anything. My editors wanted the story, but I think they only agreed to paying the mileage because I'd agreed to shoot pictures.
I wanted to go because, two years back, I'd gone to Clifftop with a photographer and spent about an hour chasing over the grounds to get material for what felt like a very superficial take on the festival.
I wanted to dig a little deeper, really look around, and I also wanted a change from what had become my regular routine.
Most of the work I do is on the phone. I am endlessly chatting with actors and musicians to the point that it sometimes feels like I'm chained to my desk. That work has to get done because Brad Paisley or (more likely) the bass player from some 80s rock band that's coming to town isn't going to make a special trip out to meet me for coffee. Likewise, I am not going to be approved for a flight to L.A. or Nashville for a meeting.
Talking on the phone is fine, but it gets old, and it feels like an insufficient use of my abilities.
All throughout 2014, I'd made plans to get away from the newsroom for stories. I'd worked out plans to attend several regional festivals. All of those dried up after a minor car accident drained my bank account.
Free tickets to the show is fine, but you still can't go if you don't have any money to buy food or pay for a motel room --things the newspaper would absolutely not cover.
By the time of the Appalachian String Band Festival, it was the end of July. Half the year had gone by and the only other trip out I'd managed to make happen had been a bus tour to Southwestern Virginia, which was just weird.
So, on a personal level, just being at the festival was important to me --and I was well outside what I considered comfortable.
I don't even like camping. I hate it. Of the many places you might choose to call it a night, inside a flimsy nylon shell, atop the cold, hard ground is about the worst. I'd rather a good bed in a cheap, chain motel than a sleeping bag in a tent staked next to my car.
But here I was at the gate house. A story had been approved and I had promises to keep. So, I agreed to their terms, put the stupid sign around my neck, and went looking for a place to park and set up camp.
It would be dark soon.
As usual, nobody had said anything to anybody. Puzzled, she told me to wait right there.
"I'll go check."
Off she went to call somebody.
Five minutes later, she came back, all smiles, and told me, "Sure. You're expected."
We were told we could park and camp just about anywhere we could find a spot. She gave my son a bracelet to wear --proof that he was supposed to be there. I was given a lanyard to wear around my neck with a big, laminated card that said PRESS.
"You have to wear that at all times," she said pointedly, almost as if to challenge me.
I didn't like their damned sign. I'd come to experience the festival, to immerse myself in it. This had been explained. The tag felt heavy handed, unnecessary, and more than a little insulting.
With a camera around my neck, a notepad, and pen in my hand, it seemed pretty obvious who and what I was.
Honestly, they were lucky to have me there. The String Band Festival is a small event -at least compared to other festivals along the same lines, like the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Virginia. It's out of the way, about an hour and a half along a two-lane road that winds around the side of a couple of mountains.
There's not much near the campgrounds and cell service is limited --particularly if you're a dummy like me who can only afford a cheap phone through Sprint.
Promotion for the festival is poor to very poor --at least on the local level. The division of culture and history sends out email blasts about the string band festival, if they send them at all, which are indistinguishable from their other regular announcements about quilting exhibitions, historical lectures and the like, none of which have anything to do with someone like me who covers arts and entertainment.
At best, their approach is uninspired and lazy. At worst, it's comically inept.
The Appalachian String Band Festival has been around for right at 25 years and it's still kind of secret to anyone other than the music nerds who play this kind of music.
Even getting to go cover the festival had been a little tricky. Because of deadlines, workflow and even newspaper resources, getting approved for an overnight story was hard. The paper didn't want to pay for anything. My editors wanted the story, but I think they only agreed to paying the mileage because I'd agreed to shoot pictures.
I wanted to go because, two years back, I'd gone to Clifftop with a photographer and spent about an hour chasing over the grounds to get material for what felt like a very superficial take on the festival.
I wanted to dig a little deeper, really look around, and I also wanted a change from what had become my regular routine.
Most of the work I do is on the phone. I am endlessly chatting with actors and musicians to the point that it sometimes feels like I'm chained to my desk. That work has to get done because Brad Paisley or (more likely) the bass player from some 80s rock band that's coming to town isn't going to make a special trip out to meet me for coffee. Likewise, I am not going to be approved for a flight to L.A. or Nashville for a meeting.
Talking on the phone is fine, but it gets old, and it feels like an insufficient use of my abilities.
All throughout 2014, I'd made plans to get away from the newsroom for stories. I'd worked out plans to attend several regional festivals. All of those dried up after a minor car accident drained my bank account.
Free tickets to the show is fine, but you still can't go if you don't have any money to buy food or pay for a motel room --things the newspaper would absolutely not cover.
By the time of the Appalachian String Band Festival, it was the end of July. Half the year had gone by and the only other trip out I'd managed to make happen had been a bus tour to Southwestern Virginia, which was just weird.
So, on a personal level, just being at the festival was important to me --and I was well outside what I considered comfortable.
I don't even like camping. I hate it. Of the many places you might choose to call it a night, inside a flimsy nylon shell, atop the cold, hard ground is about the worst. I'd rather a good bed in a cheap, chain motel than a sleeping bag in a tent staked next to my car.
But here I was at the gate house. A story had been approved and I had promises to keep. So, I agreed to their terms, put the stupid sign around my neck, and went looking for a place to park and set up camp.
It would be dark soon.
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Pattern recognition
You never wish for the things you don't want. You always wish for the things you don't have, the things you need.
I wish Christmas had been merry.
I don't think I'm going to bother with the lights, the tree, the cooking or much of anything else next year. Somehow, I'm doing this wrong. Somehow, I've always done this wrong and I've had enough.
Fuck it.
I wish Christmas had been merry.
I don't think I'm going to bother with the lights, the tree, the cooking or much of anything else next year. Somehow, I'm doing this wrong. Somehow, I've always done this wrong and I've had enough.
Fuck it.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Ritual de lo Habitual
A lot of the bad that came with 2014, I think, came with habits --or lack of them. I read less than I've read in years in 2014. I checked out plenty of books from the library, but I finished so few. I kept picking things up and then putting them down, picking them up again and then putting them down and eventually discarding them when the failed to hold my interest.
My garden was a mess. I never really worked it, did very little to keep the deer away or the blight and predictably, my crops were very poor. My tomatoes did horribly. There were no peppers to speak of and no lettuce or spinach. I took less than ten small pumpkins at harvest and the only plant that did well was a weird zucchini that crept over everything and required nothing much but to be left alone.
I got behind on my exercise. There were months where I barely made it to the gym and even during the best of times, I was still spotty about doing the work.
There are plenty of excuses to be had: weather, stress, depression, financial struggle and access to endless hours of quality programming through the magic of Netflix.
I think I self-medicate with escapist crap when I'm down and 2014 was a year for downers --personal, professional, ecological.
But I'm building up again, starting over with some things. I already have a gardening book out and I'm looking through it for ideas on how to keep the fucking deer at bay so I can potentially have a decent growing season.
I'm also reading more diligently. I'm halfway through "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell.
Mitchell wrote the book "Cloud Atlas," which was made into a fair science fiction film, but was (not surprising) a thought-provoking book about identity, time and fate. It really worked for me and seemed to be taking the position that maybe, just maybe, the future can influence the past.
I'm also trying to write more --that's part of the reason, I guess, the blog has suddenly creaked back to life, though I'm not going out of my way to promote it. There's no money in it, so why bother? I don't even know if people actually read these kinds of blogs anymore.
Still, the hope is if I can find enough energy to write here, maybe I can finish one of my other long-suffering projects, which seem to go on the back burner whenever the least, little thing arises to compete with them.
Anyway, it's a hope. Habits, I'm trying to create some new, good ones.
My garden was a mess. I never really worked it, did very little to keep the deer away or the blight and predictably, my crops were very poor. My tomatoes did horribly. There were no peppers to speak of and no lettuce or spinach. I took less than ten small pumpkins at harvest and the only plant that did well was a weird zucchini that crept over everything and required nothing much but to be left alone.
I got behind on my exercise. There were months where I barely made it to the gym and even during the best of times, I was still spotty about doing the work.
There are plenty of excuses to be had: weather, stress, depression, financial struggle and access to endless hours of quality programming through the magic of Netflix.
I think I self-medicate with escapist crap when I'm down and 2014 was a year for downers --personal, professional, ecological.
But I'm building up again, starting over with some things. I already have a gardening book out and I'm looking through it for ideas on how to keep the fucking deer at bay so I can potentially have a decent growing season.
I'm also reading more diligently. I'm halfway through "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell.
Mitchell wrote the book "Cloud Atlas," which was made into a fair science fiction film, but was (not surprising) a thought-provoking book about identity, time and fate. It really worked for me and seemed to be taking the position that maybe, just maybe, the future can influence the past.
I'm also trying to write more --that's part of the reason, I guess, the blog has suddenly creaked back to life, though I'm not going out of my way to promote it. There's no money in it, so why bother? I don't even know if people actually read these kinds of blogs anymore.
Still, the hope is if I can find enough energy to write here, maybe I can finish one of my other long-suffering projects, which seem to go on the back burner whenever the least, little thing arises to compete with them.
Anyway, it's a hope. Habits, I'm trying to create some new, good ones.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Vacation 1
I started my vacation today. For the next week and a half, I don't have to go to the newspaper for anything --other than to fill out a time card. I do need to do that, if I want to get paid.
I still have to do radio, though not as much, thanks to ongoing efforts to automate the station.
I'm not a fan of that project. The company bought the equipment last Spring, but has struggled to get it online. I can't say for sure what the hold up is. I've heard that the old system doesn't work with the new, which doesn't make sense to me. I don't see why it's necessary to keep the old system, but who knows? The company has a checkered history with equipment purchases.
I'm not a fan of automation because it threatens to put me out of a job --or at least cut back on the amount of income I take home doing it. The basic gist of what it will do eventually is it will make it easier to run the place with fewer employees --how many less is anyone's guess, but I figure they could drop half of us without blinking.
But who knows? The company seems willing to throw money at some things with questionable value. They do a live webcast of their signature radio show, which involves contracting probably three or four people to direct and shoot video; all to reach less than a hundred people scattered around the globe, most of whom probably won't tune into the radio broadcast later.
I'm not criticizing exactly, but it does beg the question: Why bother?
The situation with the radio leaves me wondering what happens if I lose that job? Probably, I'll have to get another second job or else quit the paper and find something that pays me enough to live on. Some friends have been urging me to do that for quite a while now.
Mostly, I'd kind of like to move on, but that's not exactly a secret. It's not that I've run out of things to write about or that I hate living here. I'd just like to make a living.
Too serious.
It feels good to be on vacation. It feels good to have the opportunity to try and unwind and maybe think about what to do next.
I still have to do radio, though not as much, thanks to ongoing efforts to automate the station.
I'm not a fan of that project. The company bought the equipment last Spring, but has struggled to get it online. I can't say for sure what the hold up is. I've heard that the old system doesn't work with the new, which doesn't make sense to me. I don't see why it's necessary to keep the old system, but who knows? The company has a checkered history with equipment purchases.
I'm not a fan of automation because it threatens to put me out of a job --or at least cut back on the amount of income I take home doing it. The basic gist of what it will do eventually is it will make it easier to run the place with fewer employees --how many less is anyone's guess, but I figure they could drop half of us without blinking.
But who knows? The company seems willing to throw money at some things with questionable value. They do a live webcast of their signature radio show, which involves contracting probably three or four people to direct and shoot video; all to reach less than a hundred people scattered around the globe, most of whom probably won't tune into the radio broadcast later.
I'm not criticizing exactly, but it does beg the question: Why bother?
The situation with the radio leaves me wondering what happens if I lose that job? Probably, I'll have to get another second job or else quit the paper and find something that pays me enough to live on. Some friends have been urging me to do that for quite a while now.
Mostly, I'd kind of like to move on, but that's not exactly a secret. It's not that I've run out of things to write about or that I hate living here. I'd just like to make a living.
Too serious.
It feels good to be on vacation. It feels good to have the opportunity to try and unwind and maybe think about what to do next.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Ginger Brandy
I keep a fair amount of alcohol around the house, but I don't actually drink much. It's not the taste, but the loss of control that comes with it, the loss of inhibitions and filters and things that make me able to be around other people, that keeps me from drinking too much too often.
I can be an awful drunk. I will say things I mean, but never mean to say. I will do things I want to, but should never actually put the will to power. I can make an ass of myself --worse than usual.
On the shelf in the kitchen, I keep a couple of bottles. I have a bottle of Henry McKenna, which was cheap and seemed like a good idea at the time. I bought it to get through the first broadcast of my little radio show. I drank shots every couple of minutes of the broadcast and barely felt them hit me at all.
There's still a couple of swallows left. I've used it for cooking, and I think the kid has been nipping in it.
I have a bottle of Fighting Cock bourbon. I bought it because the name sounds vulgar. It's 104 proof, but is kinder than a more expensive bourbon called Bullitt I tried, which feels like getting hit upside the head with a sock full of nickels.
I like Fighting Cock, but I drink it sparingly.
There's also a bottle of Black Seal rum. I got that a month ago, right before I had some friends over for a post-Thanksgiving meal. I thought it would be something people could mix with their soda, but nobody drank it and I've only had a couple of sips here and there.
I'm not a rum drinker. It seems like something only pirates would drink.
Last, there's a bottle of Joaquin's Ginger brandy, a cordial made in the city of brotherly love and a value buy at around nine bucks.
I have a history with the stuff.
Long, long ago, my friend Tim and I used to buy this stuff back when it was six dollars a bottle. We drank it in college, loved it because it was cheap and the stuff mixed so well with soda. With a healthy dose of Sprite, you didn't know you were hammered until suddenly you were.
We drank it a lot.
I think about Tim when I drink it now. I can't help but think about him.
Tim was a friend, older than me. We met in college, his last semester. We were fast friends, hung out a lot, smoked cigarettes, drank, and watched shitty horror films.
A couple of years after he graduated from college, he put a bullet in his head --entirely accidental, his mother told me.
The story goes:
After a year or so of working at the local Wal-mart, he got a job as a statistician for the state. He moved from Beckley to Charleston, rented an apartment with a couple of childhood friends and everything seemed to be going great. One night, they had a small party, invited some girls over, were drinking and Tim got it in his head to spook one of them. He pulled out a pistol, slammed an empty clip into the butt of it and pointed it at his head.
What happened next was an unfortunate cliche.
Blam.
But it didn't kill him. He survived, in a manner, though the story of what happened the night he shot himself is one that still knots my stomach.
His friends called for help and then called his parents, who met Tim at the hospital.
In the E.R. the nurse kept trying to convince his parents to sign over his organs, though he was clearly still breathing and even moving on the stretcher. His parents refused. His mother, indignant and upset, screamed, "He's still alive! He's alive!"
The nurse told her to calm down. She was upsetting Tim.
That still makes me feel ill.
My friend spent over a month in a coma, when he came to, only about 2/3 of him made it back. He'd been a mathematician, a statistician for some unremembered state agency. He was a lot less than that after and on some level, he knew it.
That was the real horror. He was sometimes aware of what he'd become.
After I heard about what happened, I visited him a couple of times. I saw him in the hospital, a couple of months after his accident, and the visit haunted me for years. I dreamed of him as a zombie, crawling up the foot of my bed.
The nightmares kept me away for three years.
I went to visit him again, when he was in a daycare/rehab, where he sat with thirty others in a room that stank of piss.He had a wild beard then and he was pale as corpse. His teeth looked mossy and yellow and his eyes looked frightened, dazed and stupid.
It was hard to look at him.
I'd loved the man, been impressed by him. Tim had been crazy smart and we'd bonded over bad movies, Pink Floyd and Mexican food. We'd read some of the same books and had philosophical debates that went on for weeks.
He was also the only man I knew who'd actually had sex with two women at once. In college, somehow, he'd conned two women at the same time to have sex with him in his dorm room and no one understood how he'd managed that --because he was a nerd, because he was a geek, because he was a scrawny, little weirdo --but he'd somehow, pulled it off.
There were actual witnesses (of a sort) and for that alone, Tim had earned a certain amount of respect. Hell, the fucking quarterback for the damned football team hadn't pulled that off and by even my rough assessment, he should have been able to.
He's also managed to have sex with a smoking hot redhead who was clearly out of his league.
No one understood that either --including the redhead in question, who later seemed embarrassed by the fact that it had happened.
That first visit after the hospital (and after my first divorce) was hard. I remember I pushed him in his wheelchair, along Mercer Street in Princeton, past the pawn shop and the dusty, evacuated storefronts. I don't remember what we'd talked about, but it made me hurt all the way down to my bones.
I didn't see him again for at least a year.
The guilt of his condition gnawed at me. He was my friend.
Finally, somehow, he got my phone number and started calling me. We talked on the phone. The conversations were non-sensical. We had nothing to talk about. His days were spent creeping through shopping malls, harassing young mothers with children, eating sweets and haunting his mother.
I started going up every other weekend. I took him out to the mall, to the movies, to a local stable where we could watch the horses. The people at the mall knew him. They'd seen him a thousand times already, but the manager of the theater pulled me aside.
He said, "Hey, I don't know if you can, but you need to keep him on a leash. If you can't, you're going to have to leave."
Tim adored children. In the hospital, he'd tried to put my girl friend's fingers in his mouth. He'd talked about how they'd had sex, though she laughed it off, denied it ever happened.
He told me they'd cut him, taken away his ability to have children. I don't know what they did exactly, but his libido was gone. What was left was just a horrible craving for fatherhood, for family, that he'd never be able to satisfy.
He stopped women with small children to tell them they had beautiful babies, they had handsome sons and lovely daughters. He told the women they themselves were beautiful. He wanted to shake everyone's hand.
He frightened everyone. They assumed he was a pervert.
His mother was glad to see me. We only spent a couple of hours together every other Saturday or so --usually on weekends when I didn't see me kids. Back then, I didn't have much of a life. Going to see Tim wasn't something I looked forward to, but it gave me someplace to be.
I stopped going to visit, shortly after I changed jobs, got involved with a woman whose daughter was autistic, and eventually moved away. I disappeared out of his life and in well over last ten years have never gone back. I've scarcely looked back.
But tonight I started drinking. I'm pretty God damned drunk at the moment and I picked up that bottle of ginger brandy. It was a comfort when I felt alone or abandoned and I feel that way tonight, and I've had just enough to make me wonder what became of Tim, what has become of him and whether I should seek him out one more time.
I can't fix him, but everybody deserves at least one person who won't leave them. Maybe I can try again to be that person or maybe I'm just drunk and lonesome.
I can be an awful drunk. I will say things I mean, but never mean to say. I will do things I want to, but should never actually put the will to power. I can make an ass of myself --worse than usual.
On the shelf in the kitchen, I keep a couple of bottles. I have a bottle of Henry McKenna, which was cheap and seemed like a good idea at the time. I bought it to get through the first broadcast of my little radio show. I drank shots every couple of minutes of the broadcast and barely felt them hit me at all.
There's still a couple of swallows left. I've used it for cooking, and I think the kid has been nipping in it.
I have a bottle of Fighting Cock bourbon. I bought it because the name sounds vulgar. It's 104 proof, but is kinder than a more expensive bourbon called Bullitt I tried, which feels like getting hit upside the head with a sock full of nickels.
I like Fighting Cock, but I drink it sparingly.
There's also a bottle of Black Seal rum. I got that a month ago, right before I had some friends over for a post-Thanksgiving meal. I thought it would be something people could mix with their soda, but nobody drank it and I've only had a couple of sips here and there.
I'm not a rum drinker. It seems like something only pirates would drink.
Last, there's a bottle of Joaquin's Ginger brandy, a cordial made in the city of brotherly love and a value buy at around nine bucks.
I have a history with the stuff.
Long, long ago, my friend Tim and I used to buy this stuff back when it was six dollars a bottle. We drank it in college, loved it because it was cheap and the stuff mixed so well with soda. With a healthy dose of Sprite, you didn't know you were hammered until suddenly you were.
We drank it a lot.
I think about Tim when I drink it now. I can't help but think about him.
Tim was a friend, older than me. We met in college, his last semester. We were fast friends, hung out a lot, smoked cigarettes, drank, and watched shitty horror films.
A couple of years after he graduated from college, he put a bullet in his head --entirely accidental, his mother told me.
The story goes:
After a year or so of working at the local Wal-mart, he got a job as a statistician for the state. He moved from Beckley to Charleston, rented an apartment with a couple of childhood friends and everything seemed to be going great. One night, they had a small party, invited some girls over, were drinking and Tim got it in his head to spook one of them. He pulled out a pistol, slammed an empty clip into the butt of it and pointed it at his head.
What happened next was an unfortunate cliche.
Blam.
But it didn't kill him. He survived, in a manner, though the story of what happened the night he shot himself is one that still knots my stomach.
His friends called for help and then called his parents, who met Tim at the hospital.
In the E.R. the nurse kept trying to convince his parents to sign over his organs, though he was clearly still breathing and even moving on the stretcher. His parents refused. His mother, indignant and upset, screamed, "He's still alive! He's alive!"
The nurse told her to calm down. She was upsetting Tim.
That still makes me feel ill.
My friend spent over a month in a coma, when he came to, only about 2/3 of him made it back. He'd been a mathematician, a statistician for some unremembered state agency. He was a lot less than that after and on some level, he knew it.
That was the real horror. He was sometimes aware of what he'd become.
After I heard about what happened, I visited him a couple of times. I saw him in the hospital, a couple of months after his accident, and the visit haunted me for years. I dreamed of him as a zombie, crawling up the foot of my bed.
The nightmares kept me away for three years.
I went to visit him again, when he was in a daycare/rehab, where he sat with thirty others in a room that stank of piss.He had a wild beard then and he was pale as corpse. His teeth looked mossy and yellow and his eyes looked frightened, dazed and stupid.
It was hard to look at him.
I'd loved the man, been impressed by him. Tim had been crazy smart and we'd bonded over bad movies, Pink Floyd and Mexican food. We'd read some of the same books and had philosophical debates that went on for weeks.
He was also the only man I knew who'd actually had sex with two women at once. In college, somehow, he'd conned two women at the same time to have sex with him in his dorm room and no one understood how he'd managed that --because he was a nerd, because he was a geek, because he was a scrawny, little weirdo --but he'd somehow, pulled it off.
There were actual witnesses (of a sort) and for that alone, Tim had earned a certain amount of respect. Hell, the fucking quarterback for the damned football team hadn't pulled that off and by even my rough assessment, he should have been able to.
He's also managed to have sex with a smoking hot redhead who was clearly out of his league.
No one understood that either --including the redhead in question, who later seemed embarrassed by the fact that it had happened.
That first visit after the hospital (and after my first divorce) was hard. I remember I pushed him in his wheelchair, along Mercer Street in Princeton, past the pawn shop and the dusty, evacuated storefronts. I don't remember what we'd talked about, but it made me hurt all the way down to my bones.
I didn't see him again for at least a year.
The guilt of his condition gnawed at me. He was my friend.
Finally, somehow, he got my phone number and started calling me. We talked on the phone. The conversations were non-sensical. We had nothing to talk about. His days were spent creeping through shopping malls, harassing young mothers with children, eating sweets and haunting his mother.
I started going up every other weekend. I took him out to the mall, to the movies, to a local stable where we could watch the horses. The people at the mall knew him. They'd seen him a thousand times already, but the manager of the theater pulled me aside.
He said, "Hey, I don't know if you can, but you need to keep him on a leash. If you can't, you're going to have to leave."
Tim adored children. In the hospital, he'd tried to put my girl friend's fingers in his mouth. He'd talked about how they'd had sex, though she laughed it off, denied it ever happened.
He told me they'd cut him, taken away his ability to have children. I don't know what they did exactly, but his libido was gone. What was left was just a horrible craving for fatherhood, for family, that he'd never be able to satisfy.
He stopped women with small children to tell them they had beautiful babies, they had handsome sons and lovely daughters. He told the women they themselves were beautiful. He wanted to shake everyone's hand.
He frightened everyone. They assumed he was a pervert.
His mother was glad to see me. We only spent a couple of hours together every other Saturday or so --usually on weekends when I didn't see me kids. Back then, I didn't have much of a life. Going to see Tim wasn't something I looked forward to, but it gave me someplace to be.
I stopped going to visit, shortly after I changed jobs, got involved with a woman whose daughter was autistic, and eventually moved away. I disappeared out of his life and in well over last ten years have never gone back. I've scarcely looked back.
But tonight I started drinking. I'm pretty God damned drunk at the moment and I picked up that bottle of ginger brandy. It was a comfort when I felt alone or abandoned and I feel that way tonight, and I've had just enough to make me wonder what became of Tim, what has become of him and whether I should seek him out one more time.
I can't fix him, but everybody deserves at least one person who won't leave them. Maybe I can try again to be that person or maybe I'm just drunk and lonesome.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Holidaze
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire and nobody likes the damned office holiday party. These days, we don't even call it a holiday party. Parties suggest music and fun and good cheer. We don't have that. We barely refer to the holiday party as a holiday feast.
The spread declines a little every year. Usually, the company provides some meat, a little bread and some drinks. We were encouraged to bring side dishes and desserts.
Some years, what everyone else brought was the best part and while we tended to sit at our desks, we clustered together socially.
Most of the people who liked to cook and liked to bring their cooking to things like an office luncheon either retired, quit or stopped giving a damn.
I would be in the latter category.
I used to bring an apple walnut cake I made from scratch. I used to bring a lot of apple walnut cakes, but this was back when I had free and easy access to black walnuts, back when the expense of a few Granny Smith apples and a little bit of flour seemed like a nice way to give back to the people I worked for and with.
One year, I gave out over a dozen at the job. I wrapped them in aluminum foil, stacked the loafs like bricks and carried them into the building inside of a heavy cardboard box.
I handed them out to people I liked and even to people I barely spoke to.
I started cutting back last year. This year, I haven't baked a single cake yet and so I brought nothing to the meal. Nobody else brought much either. The receptionist did some baking. Someone baked a pie and maybe someone else bought a couple of boxes of cookies.
It was a tiny contribution from the ranks.
We made our plates and I went back to my desk. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing. We ate while staring at Facebook or while finishing up the dregs of one more story.
When I first joined the paper, I felt so lonesome there. I didn't know anyone, didn't think anyone took me seriously and felt so out of place.
It felt the same way again.
I finished my plate, then gathered my things and went home unhappy and unsatisfied. The company ham and turkey sank to the bottom of my stomach like a discarded hubcap.
The spread declines a little every year. Usually, the company provides some meat, a little bread and some drinks. We were encouraged to bring side dishes and desserts.
Some years, what everyone else brought was the best part and while we tended to sit at our desks, we clustered together socially.
Most of the people who liked to cook and liked to bring their cooking to things like an office luncheon either retired, quit or stopped giving a damn.
I would be in the latter category.
I used to bring an apple walnut cake I made from scratch. I used to bring a lot of apple walnut cakes, but this was back when I had free and easy access to black walnuts, back when the expense of a few Granny Smith apples and a little bit of flour seemed like a nice way to give back to the people I worked for and with.
One year, I gave out over a dozen at the job. I wrapped them in aluminum foil, stacked the loafs like bricks and carried them into the building inside of a heavy cardboard box.
I handed them out to people I liked and even to people I barely spoke to.
I started cutting back last year. This year, I haven't baked a single cake yet and so I brought nothing to the meal. Nobody else brought much either. The receptionist did some baking. Someone baked a pie and maybe someone else bought a couple of boxes of cookies.
It was a tiny contribution from the ranks.
We made our plates and I went back to my desk. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing. We ate while staring at Facebook or while finishing up the dregs of one more story.
When I first joined the paper, I felt so lonesome there. I didn't know anyone, didn't think anyone took me seriously and felt so out of place.
It felt the same way again.
I finished my plate, then gathered my things and went home unhappy and unsatisfied. The company ham and turkey sank to the bottom of my stomach like a discarded hubcap.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Two socks
The girl nodded perfunctorily as I passed, but she didn't smile. We both had large baskets of laundry in our arms. She was being polite, acknowledging that our paths were crossing, that we shared a similar struggle, but nothing more.
She wore a yellow flannel shirt and the lower third of her jeans disappeared under the seem of heavy, black boots. A cigarette was tucked behind her ear.
Her face was plain: no lipstick, no powder and no earrings. She'd clipped her hair short and it was growing back unevenly --a home job. She'd probably done it herself in front of a bathroom mirror with a pair of twelve dollar clippers.
Almost every man I know has tried that same look one time or another. You argue that a pair of clippers from the drugstore, the big box chain store, the little box chain store costs the same as a haircut from the mall and you don't have to pay for parking or tip anybody.
How hard can it be to cut hair, especially if you're not going for anything fancy? Just take your time, keep your hand steady, start with the larger combs and work your way down. No problem.
The math is easy. After one haircut, the clippers pay for themselves, but unless you've got some kind of skill at cutting hair or are particularly desperate, by the sixth or seventh cut, you get tired of looking like an ex-con or a prisoner of war. You find a new barber, lie and blame your hair on the last guy or slink back to the salon at the mall.
If they don't ask any questions about what you've done to your head, you tip them better than they deserve. If they do, you still tip, but you never come back.
I wonder what it's like with women?
With 40 minutes to kill and only a book to keep me company, I watched the woman with the bad haircut and the work boots. She wasn't alone. Another woman was with her and the two of them shuffled wet clothes into the dryers, talked in short, awkward bursts, but never laughed.
The other woman was older, but blond and pretty. She wore officially licensed college football team sweats. They were clean and, like most sweats meant for lounging or doing mild chores, made her look vaguely shapeless.
I more or less had on the same outfit, though my sweats had seen better days. Most of my clothes have seen better days.
Still, there was a contrast here. Where the one woman seemed to have ditched the fashion magazine ideal of femininity, the other wore makeup to come to the grubby laundromat. She'd put some work into her hair --something I could not also cop to. A baseball cap covered the grubby nest of frayed wire on my head. I looked like someone who worked parking lots to be paid in spare change.
For the briefest of moments I thought they might be lovers, but then I watched the older, prettier woman fold a pair of boxer shorts. She looked up from her work, looked across the room, through the glass door to the parking lot.
The cigarette had been plucked from behind the younger woman's ear and she stood outside, watching traffic and smoking.
The older woman scowled, but went on folding cheap, sleeveless cotton undershirts, bleached the color of bones; white, athletic socks with red stripes; old t-shirts and a rainbow of flannel, work shirts.
All of it looked just shy of new, but well-kept, and she resented having to put her hands on it.
When the girl with the bad haircut came back, the laundry was folded and neatly stacked in plastic baskets. She grabbed the largest and led the way to their car.
We nodded again, as they passed. We all had our hands full. I tried to smile at her mother, too, a sympathetic gesture, but she didn't look up.
She wore a yellow flannel shirt and the lower third of her jeans disappeared under the seem of heavy, black boots. A cigarette was tucked behind her ear.
Her face was plain: no lipstick, no powder and no earrings. She'd clipped her hair short and it was growing back unevenly --a home job. She'd probably done it herself in front of a bathroom mirror with a pair of twelve dollar clippers.
Almost every man I know has tried that same look one time or another. You argue that a pair of clippers from the drugstore, the big box chain store, the little box chain store costs the same as a haircut from the mall and you don't have to pay for parking or tip anybody.
How hard can it be to cut hair, especially if you're not going for anything fancy? Just take your time, keep your hand steady, start with the larger combs and work your way down. No problem.
The math is easy. After one haircut, the clippers pay for themselves, but unless you've got some kind of skill at cutting hair or are particularly desperate, by the sixth or seventh cut, you get tired of looking like an ex-con or a prisoner of war. You find a new barber, lie and blame your hair on the last guy or slink back to the salon at the mall.
If they don't ask any questions about what you've done to your head, you tip them better than they deserve. If they do, you still tip, but you never come back.
I wonder what it's like with women?
With 40 minutes to kill and only a book to keep me company, I watched the woman with the bad haircut and the work boots. She wasn't alone. Another woman was with her and the two of them shuffled wet clothes into the dryers, talked in short, awkward bursts, but never laughed.
The other woman was older, but blond and pretty. She wore officially licensed college football team sweats. They were clean and, like most sweats meant for lounging or doing mild chores, made her look vaguely shapeless.
I more or less had on the same outfit, though my sweats had seen better days. Most of my clothes have seen better days.
Still, there was a contrast here. Where the one woman seemed to have ditched the fashion magazine ideal of femininity, the other wore makeup to come to the grubby laundromat. She'd put some work into her hair --something I could not also cop to. A baseball cap covered the grubby nest of frayed wire on my head. I looked like someone who worked parking lots to be paid in spare change.
For the briefest of moments I thought they might be lovers, but then I watched the older, prettier woman fold a pair of boxer shorts. She looked up from her work, looked across the room, through the glass door to the parking lot.
The cigarette had been plucked from behind the younger woman's ear and she stood outside, watching traffic and smoking.
The older woman scowled, but went on folding cheap, sleeveless cotton undershirts, bleached the color of bones; white, athletic socks with red stripes; old t-shirts and a rainbow of flannel, work shirts.
All of it looked just shy of new, but well-kept, and she resented having to put her hands on it.
When the girl with the bad haircut came back, the laundry was folded and neatly stacked in plastic baskets. She grabbed the largest and led the way to their car.
We nodded again, as they passed. We all had our hands full. I tried to smile at her mother, too, a sympathetic gesture, but she didn't look up.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Lodi
I started at the newspaper almost eight years ago, though I'd been writing for them for a couple of years before that. The story is kind of well-known. I lied my way into the gig and then kept at it until it more or less became the truth.
This blog was started because another blog the Gazette paid me to write for wasn't any good, didn't have any readers and the paper wanted real value for their measly $35 a month. I lost my slot on the company blog roster to Hippie Killer and Raging Red, who'd been brought on to write about food. Through the early creation of their blog, that was how I learned their real names --back when any of us believed in anonymity.
I failed at one blog, but wasn't ready to quit blogging and started this one. The title was created around the idea that it would be subjects I wanted to write about, but would either get me in trouble or was considered too personal for the paper.
Also I could say fuck as much as I wanted and be as mercilessly honest as I could stand without weeping.
The newspaper job came later. I got it because I was writing one or two stories a week for the entertainment section and one or two a month for the Sunday section. They had an opening. I seemed like someone the editors thought they could bring along and train up, even though I lacked a journalism degree and hadn't attended even a respected state college.
I hadn't gone to even WVU and, honestly, had only been to Morgantown three times since I'd come to West Virginia, but it hardly mattered. They didn't want me to do anything important, just write little stories that seemed to be more about occupying space than telling anyone THE TRUTH. I could do that and talk to whatever stray musicians happened to amble into town.
For weeks, maybe months, I was out of my depth in the newsroom. I didn't write nearly enough and everyone seemed to know so much more about everything than I did. As little good as it did me, I took a copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" with me when I went to the bathroom. I tried to read the work of the writers in the room everyone talked about and had no clue what made one better than the other.
I sucked. I was awful. I knew I was awful, and any second they were going to pack my things up in a box and tell me to go.
I hung in there. The people in my little corner of the second floor basement were kind. I got good advice from the old, Jewish guy who wore gardening gloves to type sometimes. The two ladies with grown or almost grown children listened to my fears. They encouraged me.
I was lucky. My editors were good ones. They were patient. They were teachers. I learned to write for them. They taught me to focus more, write responsibly, and I learned to tell different kinds of stories than I thought I ever could.
I felt like a kid there for a long time. I relished that. I loved it. It felt like I'd somehow slept very late the night after I'd graduated from college, woke up, and ten years had passed like an unsettling dream. The paper was a new start, a new beginning, a new life, and I have never regretted going into work. I never dreaded having to be there or wished Monday morning was suddenly Friday at five.
People left from time to time. At first, I didn't think much of it. Some of the newer reporters, out of school for a year or two, they moved on, which was sad sometimes, but understandable. They weren't from Charleston or West Virginia and never meant to stay in the first place. They took better jobs in bigger cities and I wished them well when they left.
A few people retired. They put in 20 or 30 or however many years and decided they'd had enough. We had a cake or else met at somebody's house, drank wine and ate cheese and then said good-bye.
One guy left because he was a raging drunk. To this day, he's the only person I've ever witnessed being fired in that newsroom.
A few years ago, things started getting darker or maybe I just began to notice it. People began to leave, not necessarily because they'd found a better job, but because they were fed up. They felt poorly used, underpaid and over-stressed for what they'd signed on for.
A little over a year ago, I stopped being the kid. As unlikely as it seemed to me, I became the veteran, sharing space with others who were wide-eyed and hopeful. I've tried to help them as others helped me and tried to be encouraging as others encouraged me.
It has never been enough and all of the people who came to replace the people who were my friends have been replaced by other people and are now, themselves, in the process of packing up and moving on.
Others will come.
But now, I feel very alone. Soon, the last person connecting me to my first days at the paper will be gone, the victim of people who maybe should have been a little more curious as to why she was so angry all the time.
And now, I have hard days, too. I still don't come in on Monday and dream of Friday, but I often wonder why I feel like I am treated so shabbily. I wonder what it is the people I work for think of me and consider that they must think very little indeed. My pay, which has scarcely changed in eight years, does not encourage me to believe otherwise.
Sometimes, I wonder if I've stayed too long. Other times I wonder if I've stayed too long to leave.
This blog was started because another blog the Gazette paid me to write for wasn't any good, didn't have any readers and the paper wanted real value for their measly $35 a month. I lost my slot on the company blog roster to Hippie Killer and Raging Red, who'd been brought on to write about food. Through the early creation of their blog, that was how I learned their real names --back when any of us believed in anonymity.
I failed at one blog, but wasn't ready to quit blogging and started this one. The title was created around the idea that it would be subjects I wanted to write about, but would either get me in trouble or was considered too personal for the paper.
Also I could say fuck as much as I wanted and be as mercilessly honest as I could stand without weeping.
The newspaper job came later. I got it because I was writing one or two stories a week for the entertainment section and one or two a month for the Sunday section. They had an opening. I seemed like someone the editors thought they could bring along and train up, even though I lacked a journalism degree and hadn't attended even a respected state college.
I hadn't gone to even WVU and, honestly, had only been to Morgantown three times since I'd come to West Virginia, but it hardly mattered. They didn't want me to do anything important, just write little stories that seemed to be more about occupying space than telling anyone THE TRUTH. I could do that and talk to whatever stray musicians happened to amble into town.
For weeks, maybe months, I was out of my depth in the newsroom. I didn't write nearly enough and everyone seemed to know so much more about everything than I did. As little good as it did me, I took a copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" with me when I went to the bathroom. I tried to read the work of the writers in the room everyone talked about and had no clue what made one better than the other.
I sucked. I was awful. I knew I was awful, and any second they were going to pack my things up in a box and tell me to go.
I hung in there. The people in my little corner of the second floor basement were kind. I got good advice from the old, Jewish guy who wore gardening gloves to type sometimes. The two ladies with grown or almost grown children listened to my fears. They encouraged me.
I was lucky. My editors were good ones. They were patient. They were teachers. I learned to write for them. They taught me to focus more, write responsibly, and I learned to tell different kinds of stories than I thought I ever could.
I felt like a kid there for a long time. I relished that. I loved it. It felt like I'd somehow slept very late the night after I'd graduated from college, woke up, and ten years had passed like an unsettling dream. The paper was a new start, a new beginning, a new life, and I have never regretted going into work. I never dreaded having to be there or wished Monday morning was suddenly Friday at five.
People left from time to time. At first, I didn't think much of it. Some of the newer reporters, out of school for a year or two, they moved on, which was sad sometimes, but understandable. They weren't from Charleston or West Virginia and never meant to stay in the first place. They took better jobs in bigger cities and I wished them well when they left.
A few people retired. They put in 20 or 30 or however many years and decided they'd had enough. We had a cake or else met at somebody's house, drank wine and ate cheese and then said good-bye.
One guy left because he was a raging drunk. To this day, he's the only person I've ever witnessed being fired in that newsroom.
A few years ago, things started getting darker or maybe I just began to notice it. People began to leave, not necessarily because they'd found a better job, but because they were fed up. They felt poorly used, underpaid and over-stressed for what they'd signed on for.
A little over a year ago, I stopped being the kid. As unlikely as it seemed to me, I became the veteran, sharing space with others who were wide-eyed and hopeful. I've tried to help them as others helped me and tried to be encouraging as others encouraged me.
It has never been enough and all of the people who came to replace the people who were my friends have been replaced by other people and are now, themselves, in the process of packing up and moving on.
Others will come.
But now, I feel very alone. Soon, the last person connecting me to my first days at the paper will be gone, the victim of people who maybe should have been a little more curious as to why she was so angry all the time.
And now, I have hard days, too. I still don't come in on Monday and dream of Friday, but I often wonder why I feel like I am treated so shabbily. I wonder what it is the people I work for think of me and consider that they must think very little indeed. My pay, which has scarcely changed in eight years, does not encourage me to believe otherwise.
Sometimes, I wonder if I've stayed too long. Other times I wonder if I've stayed too long to leave.
Monday, December 8, 2014
2015
For a while there, I used to post a list of resolutions for the new year. Most of the time, the usual ideas were listed in some shape of form: lose weight/get in shape, get a better job/get published, travel, etc...
Most of the time, I failed and then 12 months came crawling back, making a new list. Call it misplaced optimism or lunacy, but either way I gave up and stopped making lists or following lists a while back.
So, this year I went in with no goals and got pretty much what I asked for.
This last year was pretty miserable --just one bad thing after another. Take your pick: there were personal disappointments and setbacks. My garden failed, my workload increased dramatically, and I didn't get a pay raise. There was no vacation, no cool music festivals and I was sick when my dad came to visit.
Professionally, I was at a standstill. The one bright spot was the radio show. After too many years of hammering away, occasionally begging for a chance to do something on the air, I was given it --and then promptly ignored by management.
I have no idea who really listens. I have no clue.
The weather was against me (and everyone else). Winter arrived early, stayed too long and took a dump on the front porch just because.
There was a water crisis and living in the little town of Pinch or in the great state of West Virginia just sort of sucked in general. Crime, politics or anxiety brought on by criminal politicians. It was a hard year. Almost nobody was happy. Nobody wanted to be happy either. We all just wanted to leave.
But the year is coming over and it feels like the bad voodoo, bad vibes and bad luck is kind of flickering and guttering out like the last inch of a cheap, pillar candle. Change is coming. I can feel it in my bones and the next year, this next year, is going to be a good one, maybe a great one.
Call it misplaced optimism, but here I am blogging here again (which has become so uncool that it's kind of cool) --and I'm thinking about what I want 2015 to be.
So, we start with another list and this isn't necessarily a collection of action items. The things I want to do never change: travel, get in shape, sell a novel, do better work, be a better boyfriend, friend, father, brother and son. Read good books. Make more money. See cool things and grow happier and wiser.
No, it's more of a statement of intent, a mantra to reflect and meditate upon. It is the needle pointing north for when I invariably lose my way.
1-Don't quit.
The most important thing to remember. Just keep trying. Don't give up.
2-Make plans.
Spur of the moment is great. Improvisation is great. Improvise from the plan. It's ok to have a plan B and do something else, but have a plan A first.
3-Follow through.
Just get it done.
4-Take it easy on yourself.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
That's my list. Not really all that impressive, but it's easy to remember.
So, here we go again...
Most of the time, I failed and then 12 months came crawling back, making a new list. Call it misplaced optimism or lunacy, but either way I gave up and stopped making lists or following lists a while back.
So, this year I went in with no goals and got pretty much what I asked for.
This last year was pretty miserable --just one bad thing after another. Take your pick: there were personal disappointments and setbacks. My garden failed, my workload increased dramatically, and I didn't get a pay raise. There was no vacation, no cool music festivals and I was sick when my dad came to visit.
Professionally, I was at a standstill. The one bright spot was the radio show. After too many years of hammering away, occasionally begging for a chance to do something on the air, I was given it --and then promptly ignored by management.
I have no idea who really listens. I have no clue.
The weather was against me (and everyone else). Winter arrived early, stayed too long and took a dump on the front porch just because.
There was a water crisis and living in the little town of Pinch or in the great state of West Virginia just sort of sucked in general. Crime, politics or anxiety brought on by criminal politicians. It was a hard year. Almost nobody was happy. Nobody wanted to be happy either. We all just wanted to leave.
But the year is coming over and it feels like the bad voodoo, bad vibes and bad luck is kind of flickering and guttering out like the last inch of a cheap, pillar candle. Change is coming. I can feel it in my bones and the next year, this next year, is going to be a good one, maybe a great one.
Call it misplaced optimism, but here I am blogging here again (which has become so uncool that it's kind of cool) --and I'm thinking about what I want 2015 to be.
So, we start with another list and this isn't necessarily a collection of action items. The things I want to do never change: travel, get in shape, sell a novel, do better work, be a better boyfriend, friend, father, brother and son. Read good books. Make more money. See cool things and grow happier and wiser.
No, it's more of a statement of intent, a mantra to reflect and meditate upon. It is the needle pointing north for when I invariably lose my way.
1-Don't quit.
The most important thing to remember. Just keep trying. Don't give up.
2-Make plans.
Spur of the moment is great. Improvisation is great. Improvise from the plan. It's ok to have a plan B and do something else, but have a plan A first.
3-Follow through.
Just get it done.
4-Take it easy on yourself.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
That's my list. Not really all that impressive, but it's easy to remember.
So, here we go again...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
ghosts of Christmas past
One of my co-workers turns 30 next month. I can't tell if she's fretting over the age or not. Thirty isn't the milestone it used to be (if it ever was), but she joked about having a month to get to Africa and run a marathon. She was looking for an adventure.
I offered to take her shoplifting.
Across the aisle, another of my co-workers, who is a good five years from 30, said she could get the 29-year-old to Africa for about three grand. All she had to do was harvest some of the eggs from her ovaries.
That sounded good, except, of course, it sucked. There's pain, weirdness, loss of eggs...
The 25-year-old told the 29-year-old she could sell plasma.
"It's a waste of time," I said. "I did that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," I said and then spent five minutes fielding questions about the process, explaining what was done, showing the scar in the crook of my arm and fending off disinterest and disbelief.
"I could never do that then," the 25-year-old said. "I've been to Africa."
I nodded and pressed down the sad envy boiling through my guts.
I tried to tell her that didn't really matter. There were rules. You couldn't use drugs, show up drunk, have a criminal record or be a gay man (lesbians, however, were apparently welcome), but nobody was really checking. I'd see plenty of guys come in who were either clearly drunk, high or were sporting the kind of tattoos you only get from a guy who gets paid in candy bars and postage stamps.
Plasma donation is on the honor system, which is absolutely nuts.
I told her they'd take her as long as she could prove she had an official residence. They don't let you "donate" if you're homeless.
In the end, she wasn't all that interested in the subject and I was maybe a little too interested. I don't know why I wanted to talk about it, why I wanted to prove that I had done this --maybe because she said she'd been to Africa, maybe because my girlfriend has been to Germany, and I've only been to Ohio a few times.
Finally, I sort of shrugged and said it was something I could write about next year. Maybe.
I don't want to go back there again. I still dream about the plasma center sometimes: the needle in my arm, the clinical, contemptuous way some of the drones looked at me as they harvested my dark, red blood to make rich, golden plasma.
Sometimes, I think about what I did with the money I made there. I converted it into gas for the car, spent it on cat food, bought Christmas presents nobody gave two shits about, and paid phone bills, water bills, gas bills, daycare.
Just remembering makes me feel so cold and alone all over again.
I don't know what to give the 29-year-old for her birthday, to acknowledge this milestone that may or may not signify anything, but it ain't going to be much.
I offered to take her shoplifting.
Across the aisle, another of my co-workers, who is a good five years from 30, said she could get the 29-year-old to Africa for about three grand. All she had to do was harvest some of the eggs from her ovaries.
That sounded good, except, of course, it sucked. There's pain, weirdness, loss of eggs...
The 25-year-old told the 29-year-old she could sell plasma.
"It's a waste of time," I said. "I did that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," I said and then spent five minutes fielding questions about the process, explaining what was done, showing the scar in the crook of my arm and fending off disinterest and disbelief.
"I could never do that then," the 25-year-old said. "I've been to Africa."
I nodded and pressed down the sad envy boiling through my guts.
I tried to tell her that didn't really matter. There were rules. You couldn't use drugs, show up drunk, have a criminal record or be a gay man (lesbians, however, were apparently welcome), but nobody was really checking. I'd see plenty of guys come in who were either clearly drunk, high or were sporting the kind of tattoos you only get from a guy who gets paid in candy bars and postage stamps.
Plasma donation is on the honor system, which is absolutely nuts.
I told her they'd take her as long as she could prove she had an official residence. They don't let you "donate" if you're homeless.
In the end, she wasn't all that interested in the subject and I was maybe a little too interested. I don't know why I wanted to talk about it, why I wanted to prove that I had done this --maybe because she said she'd been to Africa, maybe because my girlfriend has been to Germany, and I've only been to Ohio a few times.
Finally, I sort of shrugged and said it was something I could write about next year. Maybe.
I don't want to go back there again. I still dream about the plasma center sometimes: the needle in my arm, the clinical, contemptuous way some of the drones looked at me as they harvested my dark, red blood to make rich, golden plasma.
Sometimes, I think about what I did with the money I made there. I converted it into gas for the car, spent it on cat food, bought Christmas presents nobody gave two shits about, and paid phone bills, water bills, gas bills, daycare.
Just remembering makes me feel so cold and alone all over again.
I don't know what to give the 29-year-old for her birthday, to acknowledge this milestone that may or may not signify anything, but it ain't going to be much.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Gotham
It was just a couple of bored cub scout dads sitting off in a corner while their kids played some game only amusing to children under 10 or drunks on their fourth or fifth double.
Nobody was paying attention, though the scoutmaster was all smiles, encouraging the kids to try harder, work together or some such.
To be truthful, I don't recall the game. It didn't hold my attention, but that's nothing new. Most nights in that church basement, I find myself compulsively looking to my phone, hoping for a message from just about anyone and willing to invent one of my own to send to someone else, if it comes to that.
My best friend in Virginia believes my son's cub scout troop is populated by the children of strippers, meth addicts, and circus freaks, and he believes this because I have described it that way in loving detail.
These are all mostly tall tales --mostly.
The fathers in the corner, talking in low voices, had my attention. I couldn't turn away or tune them out.
"They said the whole building was full of ATVS," one of them said. "It was an Quonset hut. I'd like to know how they even got that thing up there."
Nobody seemed to know who "They" were, but they had a vague idea of who owned the property --some woman who owned the land, maybe even had a house somewhere on it, but lived in Florida and never came around. Whoever owned the hut never bothered to buy or rent the land, but had counted on the lingering absence of people with enough sense to move away, but not enough luck to sell what they had.
The ATVs were, of course, all stolen, but they didn't know by who or even who the ATVs belonged to.
One of the other fathers talked about the rash of break-ins in the area.
"I spoke to a deputy," he said. "He told me 200 houses had been broken into over the summer."
Aghast, I wondered how many houses there were in my little corner of the county. Two hundred sounded like a lot. Two hundred sounded like maybe a third of the houses that could be found.
A third man had heard about the break-ins. He knew someone who'd been hit.
"They went in, took the gun safe and then went into the bedroom and found the box where he kept the serial numbers for his guns." He looked around and like he was giving away great secrets, said, "That was an inside job."
"They're looking for guns, I hear."
Who, I wanted to know, who?
"If this keeps up, somebody is gonna get hurt," the second man said. "They're gonna come up on somebody who ain't supposed to be there."
Bullets would fly.
While the kids played on, they talked about meth labs in the trailer park --I didn't know we had a trailer park --and shadowy figures seen at night, up to God knows what.
Everybody knew something, but nobody really knew anything. It all seemed like chatter.
Coming home, for the hundredth time I counted the "For Sale" signs in the yards until it became too depressing and drove past the "For Rent" sign that's been in the same place now for six months. I wondered why I hadn't heard from my realtor in a while.
Nobody was paying attention, though the scoutmaster was all smiles, encouraging the kids to try harder, work together or some such.
To be truthful, I don't recall the game. It didn't hold my attention, but that's nothing new. Most nights in that church basement, I find myself compulsively looking to my phone, hoping for a message from just about anyone and willing to invent one of my own to send to someone else, if it comes to that.
My best friend in Virginia believes my son's cub scout troop is populated by the children of strippers, meth addicts, and circus freaks, and he believes this because I have described it that way in loving detail.
These are all mostly tall tales --mostly.
The fathers in the corner, talking in low voices, had my attention. I couldn't turn away or tune them out.
"They said the whole building was full of ATVS," one of them said. "It was an Quonset hut. I'd like to know how they even got that thing up there."
Nobody seemed to know who "They" were, but they had a vague idea of who owned the property --some woman who owned the land, maybe even had a house somewhere on it, but lived in Florida and never came around. Whoever owned the hut never bothered to buy or rent the land, but had counted on the lingering absence of people with enough sense to move away, but not enough luck to sell what they had.
The ATVs were, of course, all stolen, but they didn't know by who or even who the ATVs belonged to.
One of the other fathers talked about the rash of break-ins in the area.
"I spoke to a deputy," he said. "He told me 200 houses had been broken into over the summer."
Aghast, I wondered how many houses there were in my little corner of the county. Two hundred sounded like a lot. Two hundred sounded like maybe a third of the houses that could be found.
A third man had heard about the break-ins. He knew someone who'd been hit.
"They went in, took the gun safe and then went into the bedroom and found the box where he kept the serial numbers for his guns." He looked around and like he was giving away great secrets, said, "That was an inside job."
"They're looking for guns, I hear."
Who, I wanted to know, who?
"If this keeps up, somebody is gonna get hurt," the second man said. "They're gonna come up on somebody who ain't supposed to be there."
Bullets would fly.
While the kids played on, they talked about meth labs in the trailer park --I didn't know we had a trailer park --and shadowy figures seen at night, up to God knows what.
Everybody knew something, but nobody really knew anything. It all seemed like chatter.
Coming home, for the hundredth time I counted the "For Sale" signs in the yards until it became too depressing and drove past the "For Rent" sign that's been in the same place now for six months. I wondered why I hadn't heard from my realtor in a while.
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