Beloved BF in the early morning rain...(NFTD Photos)

While George W. Bush was...

…up here in Putney making a fool of himself as the ill-mannered drunken preppy sot from Texas, with a Vermont familial connection, Vladimir Putin was sharpening his teeth in St Petersburg…in later years as we know, having divested himself of his youthful escapades & peccadilloes, President Bush after meeting his Russian counterpart, claimed to have looked deeply into his eyes and saw his soul…

…in fact if you look at Mr. Putin’s eyes what you see is a frigid stare that would freeze the nuts off a steel bridge and a cold, cold exterior beneath which beats a heart of stone, and no matter how much he, Mr. Putin, may love American Jazz, he has no soul and no love for America nor for would-be soul-mate George Bush, the clown prince from Crawford. While a blissed-out ‘Dubya’ was/is in la-la land, Putin, knowing America was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention a world-shaking bum economy, and spread pretty thin around the globe, returned a rejuvenated and heavily-armed Russia to the world stage with a vengeance.

A melancholy Schubert

…doesn’t help much, filling the room as it does with the sad sweet melody of a single piano, in its beauty practically demanding one weep, and while I’m on the subject, weeping and the accompanying gnashing of teeth, why is it beauty should make one cry rather than leap ecstatically about with a big smile splashed across your cake hole?

Music in particular of the arts can do that. You can look all day at a Corot landscape – see above - and appreciate it in all its magnificent splendor and are not moved to tears but rarely, whereas any number of pieces of music can leave you a sobbing pile of rags in the corner, gasping for air…(He’s really out in space this guy don’t you think Dear? Look at this huh? Now he’s a crybaby over in the corner…criminy…why do we waste our hard-earned money on this stuff?)…and reveling in the lugubrious bittersweet sorrow one can only experience when alone with Bach, Telleman, Vivaldi or Handel.

But it is not only the Baroque which bring tears cascading, for instance have you ever heard Emmy Lou Harris and Waylon Jennings sing ‘Together Again’ – you’ll be calling your ex-spouse filled with remorse before the song’s over, but remember before you do that he/she is not sitting at home listening to Emmy Lou and waiting for your call, but might be watching the tube or something else might be afoot or abed, and your soulful revelations and confession will be an intrusion so don’t be gulled into doing it for real, and put that beer down, you don’t need it…

(…and cripes, he can’t maintain one subject for two complete paragraphs, off he goes into the ozone…here, you take it, I just can’t handle it anymore, buncha drunken babble I guess, here - hand over that Union-Leader, and pass me some toast please…)

I was thinking about great wealth...

...and how, once I DO hit the Mother Lode (and I will), it will take some getting used to.

Think about it...

One day, for instance, little Elvis is walking hand in hand down the streets of Tupelo with Grace, going to get an ice cream with a very short supply of extra cash and twenty years later this same Elvis is winging his way in the middle of the night on a private Lear jet from Graceland to Denver with a plane load of buddies, all because Elvis liked the way a certain joint in Denver made its peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for which he had a sudden hankerin'...it turns out the PB & J, taking all expenses for the flight into consideration, cost about 1500 bucks.

I'll try to exercise a little control, maybe have them send me one UPS or Fed Ex me a Omaha steak or something...

Trouble is I'm going to be sitting here in BF (see picture above) with all this cash and nothing to do. Other than to upgrade this beat weed I got I don't know what I'd do first if suddenly there stood in the doorway the Benevolent Sponsor I've awaited so eagerly for the last half-century (oddly enough my addled head over the years has convinced itself that this wraithlike creature with a philanthropic interest in me - and a bankroll to back it up, WILL show up one day...)

It's why I don't have a job! Why bother, knowing as I do that any day now, any day now, there (s)he is, portfolio in one hand, blank check with my name on it in the other?!

Meanwhile I've been doing my share of peanut butter and jelly myself Elvis. Incidentally, how come Elvis' picture is on a stamp? I thought you had to be dead to rate a stamp?

It's true, owning a Harley-Davidson...

…has a certain cachet to it, that indescribable je ne sais quoi and comes with certain pre-conceived notions that generally, while often unfavorable in nature, accrue to one’s benefit as people tend to lay off you…except real bikers, it is my constant dread, will see right through good ole transparent me and the jig will be up! All too soon it will be known: Terry Ward is Walter Mitty is Terry Ward. I often recall that Dr. Gonzo was real palsy-walsy with The HA until one day he got his ass kicked. It’s a fine line one walks wherever one steps.

I’ve had to kick my own ass many times over over the years for selling off my beautiful 1969 Harley-Davidson Sportster – HD69XLCH1442 – a number I remember as well as I do my service number.

Unsure of its provenance if not its pedigree, I heaved a sigh of relief when it passed through the Motor Vehicle Department without a hitch, it was mine! Wasn’t a hot item, not wanted anywhere by anybody but me.

After 900 kicks I got the starting pattern right and ever after could start it with no more than a dozen or so…Fat Boy was so strong in the leg he could stand beside it and kick one time and it’d roar to life…at home I would bring out a folding chair and a book, kick for awhile, rest & read for awhile, kick for awhile and…well, you see. They are hard to kick are Sportsters and it’s the only thing I don’t miss about it. The next one I get won’t be for sale.

Had I been a pioneer...

…I would have been a lousy one. Setting out for California from, say, Plymouth Rock, I might have made it to Worcester, a 100 or so miles if you don’t know. Remember in the beginning there was no Route 128 nor I-95, no country lanes, no roads at all and the paths of the animals went round and round, while if you followed the trails blazed by Native Americans (and weren’t a Native American and maybe even if you were - fair is fair…) you (I!) were going to get your hair-lifted or suddenly your white Anglo-Saxon heritages and traditions were going to be seriously tried as you go from slave-driver to slave in a simple twist of fate one afternoon while traversing Dearborn through enemy territory.

Who knew? One day I’m at Eton, the next I’m toady to a Shaman. Escape? And go where? Plus the snow would have been two feet deep and no sign of a let-up, snow to your waist, 20 below zero, bloody rags for shoes, no mittens, frozen salt-pork and hardtack for dinner. And the wagon master wanted you to push on, forge ahead, California is only light years away…

Beg pardon? Like, man, my dogs are killing me. I can barely breathe, there’s no end to the underbrush in these endless forests dark as a tomb, I’m hungry, I’m cold (hot), bored, terrified, lonely, sick, tired, irritable, scared – did I say that? – thirsty, broke, busted, disgusted…I want my Mommy and I want to go home!

Carrie Nation's (above, and below...)

RANDOM “…NOTES…” FROM WRINKLED SCRAPS…

…praised with faint damn…I staggered one gloomy night into the nefarious, notorious Carrie Nation’s, a 70s watering hole in which you could get anything illegal, not to put too fine a point on it…which was more or less what I was doing, looking around for a bag of reefer or anything else; in those days I didn’t know what was enough until I knew what was more than enough, so anyway, (he went on in his irritating hyperbolic fashion), I walked, if you could call it that, into this subterranean den of iniquity looking for dope and as I closed the door behind me and drifted into the blue smoke I heard my Friend Charlie saying to a bunch of other guys standing at the dim-lit bar, “Yes, but Terry’s got his good points too…” I burst out laughing then and again now writing it 30 years later…

The MRAP gets a bum rap...

…an MRAP is another of a growing list of acronyms fresh out of HQ Baghdad; pronounced M-RAP the MRAP will soon be a familiar term and has already become a target, both militarily and politically. It’s a huge armored behemoth designed by Force Protection with the idea of deflecting IEDs so our brave young men and women cease to be slaughtered in George Bush’s incarnadine war.

The rub is it doesn’t really do the trick – we build a stronger, more powerful armored vehicle, they build a stronger, more powerful roadside bomb, the war goes endlessly on…these babies cost $22.4 billion, money which by dint of your hard work in this life should be in your pockets doing your bidding instead of thrown away in a senseless, shameful war which has disgraced our wonderful country & besmirched our reputation for generations to come.

Act up! Bring our Brothers & Sisters home!

Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

@ THE LAST 4 4:20s, I WAS THERE DUDE…

…immediately 4:19 rolled over I put the Lucifer to the bowl and off I took…how’s that for a success story? Now, if I only had a percodan…Mother’s little helper may have been valium, mine ain’t…here I am an over-qualified 100 per cent disabled U.S. Navy vet with half a dozen serious illnesses, two of them terminal and I can’t get a pain killer from the VA, so I stand on a shadowy street corner with butterflies in my stomach and heart in my throat until somebody slips me a vicadon, perc or an oxy then I go back home and get right…not quite what I had in mind when I once looked forward to retirement, but it’ll do, I have no legitimate complaints. Including this, most of the troubles in my life have been self-induced…Fate often played a distant role.

Suddenly out of nowhere...

...comes Albee the lawyer...

...into the Golden Nugget where a bunch of us ex-sailors were sitting around putting a little package on with a bottle of Jameson's and pushing the boat out with an ocean of cheap draughts, The Nugget a greasy little Wales Street watering hole in a broken down city which a broken down me was haunting in days long gone.

He's got his trumpet with him Albee does and he's second to no one with it, well maybe third behind Satchmo and Wynton, but he's good, even drunk he's good, and he is drunk believe it, hammered, eyes rheumy and red and fairly dripping down his bright red chipmunk's cheeks, practically in tears he is because Barbie-doll has left him again, boarded a bus for LA or some Godforsaken place so the lawyer Albee is on a screaming broken-hearted bender.

Lately Albee was drunk more often than not...why he suddenly had broken out his trumpet I know not; actually I think it was a cornet, not that I know the difference, but anyway I think that's what it was and this early morning as we dypsomaniacs vibrated our double shots down our ululating epiglottises he put it to his lips and began the sweetest Spanish mariachi music you ever did hear and the three old harridans I was sitting with suddenly were lovely senoritas swirling around the floor in a lunatic's sarabande, graceful as one can be when lurching about under the influence and we all were soon writhing in alcoholic's melancholia, a twirling mass of repudiated reason personified in The Drunkards' Demented Dance.

As an exclamation point to The Dance, Ray came winging out of the kitchen with a tray of bacon and eggs & two huge pitchers of beer and in a somewhat clumsy pas a deux he caught his heel on the grate and went flying sending the tray and its contents washing over the filthy floor where it was shortly ground in and soaked up by our chorus line dancing.

Later, exhausted all, Albee sat and reminisced fondly-drunkenly about his days playing with Pops (Louis Armstrong) and we humored him patronizingly which he caught on to right away and said, "You don't believe me do you?" We assured him we did but he wouldn't buy it and went out to his rubbish-strewn office and when he returned a few minutes later had in hand a picture of him and - sure and begorra an 8 X 10 black and white glossy - there he was with Louis playing at the Lake Bomoseen Pavilion sometime in the 50's. A picture is worth a thousand words and we hoisted yet another pitcher to the picture until we were all completely wasted and Ray finally shut us off and ushered us out into the blinding-bright and bitter cold February morning...

Whatever happened to Albee I don't know. He was sometimes brilliant at one bar and not so brilliant at the other bar...

Something about redheads...

...sets the endorphins rolling and I'm off in a swoon everytime I get near one, especially if they're female, but the one I'm presently smitten (from a great distance) by is several years my junior which EYE could live with but could she? Secondarily she's an activist and I don't mean the kind of activist parading through hostile streets with placards for one cause or another, no, as an activist I mean she likes to DO things, like ride horses, bar-hop, go DANCING for Cris'sakes and take hikes, o spare me! I on the other hand don't like leaving the kitchen, and as for riding horses? Not this cowboy.

An Iron Horse maybe but no Appaloosas. Anatomically speaking, men should ride side-saddle so they don't flatten their flaccid member and squash their stones; women did not CHOOSE to ride side-saddle, Daddy (Boy Friend, Hubby) MADE them ride side-saddle because they knew riding with one leg thrown over one side of the horse and one over the other...well, they didn't want to go there...

Anyway I don't do horses nor hikes, two beers is more or less my limit so I'd be a cheap date for her in a bar but she'd have to do all her dancing with someone else which would be no problem for her because she's a beauty but then I'd get jealous and...ahhh...what's the sense of any of it? I'll stay right here by the wood stove, alone with the radiant heat, suffused with warmth, not lonely at all really. Ki-yi-yippi-eye-ay...yahoo...

WHETHER PROUD OR ASHAMED OF THEM...

...certain innocuous events in your life become defining moments in your history when looked back on many years later; what had seemed insignificant at the time has since played so major a role in your life that nothing would have turned out this way were it not for the insinuation of these little asides into the mainstream of your life. Unbelievable! At the time they were so minor, so petty, so forgettable...

Who could have guessed the life-long importance of a long ago whispered late-night warning? How was one to know the role a simple pine tree would play? Or a water tower? What if the bus had been Trailways not Greyhound and you went to the Park Square terminal instead of to South Station? Only moments and a couple miles separate the present-day you from the you that was and the you that might have been.

Alas, poor Yurick...whatta ya gonna do? Not to be flippant about life's anachronisms, o no, don't take lightly the consequences of your folly because they'll be back to haunt you! Conversely, I am told, if you don't fuck up real bad along the way the consequences of your orderly life will also be back to remind you but more as a reward than punishment; a little hindsight, like a little venom, goes a long way.

(Sorry, don't mean to be preachy, I was actually talking to myself but writing it down as I went and you got caught in the cross fire.)

So on to something else...

Hungry - in the most basic sense...(NFTD Archives)

...not for love nor lust nor instant intellectual gratification - o nay, nay knave, tis hunger far more basic and necessary to survival, namely that for a huge chocolate egg cream and a ham & swiss on rye, please - that hunger!

I can almost taste 'em, from The Hempstead Deli on Old Country Road - is that right? - where Jim made the best in New York sandwiches and I got to going in there a lot and tasting everything he made several times over over a number of years on my way to and from my job driving cab in New York...

Ahhhh...those were the days. Days of my youth when there was still hope and vigor and vitality, days when you now know you were at your best, days you can now see as the acme, but also the beginning of the decline...the higher the peaks the lower the valleys...

I've had a lot of jobs in my short sweet life but none can hold a candle to cab driving for a lasting power over me; it hovers in my memory as close as a blanket over me at night; it is comfort and it is warmth the memory of New York in a cab is...

I could faint so heavy the memory of it washing over me; if I stood surely I would fall, and then it is gone as my cab, M-42, comes ripping out of the Midtown into Manhattan and heads up on Park Avenue South to pick up a package, a package no less that I have to take to Garden City LI for IBM which is sending me and my taxi to Long Island with a box about the size of a book of matches which is intrinsic to conducting the Vietnam War and its telemetric circuitry...

At the time I was able to live with this paradox - me so free and riding in my taxi ('...takin' tips and gettin' stoned...') while delivering what might be a trigger for a bomb in Vietnam - I'd done my time in the Navy. I'd like to say I did something heroic but I'm afraid as I recall that I did the run regularly and was well-compensated for it by of all people IBM & my company, and so would have to say that I too participated in the evil and illegal war effort if only in a peripheral sense, and never mind 'if only' - there are no little murders I now realize and I'm not especially proud of that particular service.

...here I was raking in a bundle from IBM in fares and huge mandatory tips on a daily basis, and on the other hand raling balls to the wall against the war, even marching twice in the streets of Denver with 30,000 or so others...too hypocritical by half I say...not a matter of pride, but pride's a sin it is said, and so...

So I relate the experience as just another scenario and not a lesson or a confession or anything; just more to fill up my time so's not to go nuts from...well, from a number of things really but I get by. Do you? You get by right? Life's OK in the main, I can take it so far...I never thought I'd see 18 and here I am 64 so I guess I've been around a while...cab driving, truck driving, commercial salmon fishing, drinking as profession, bartending, bell-hopping/desk clerking - O those Wheelers in the Hotel Vermont in Burlington - how I loved them...but it didn't work out; they went to El Paso and me to San Diego...sailor, writer, reporter...laborer, bum...laborer...laborer...writer, student, Curator of The Dump, quarry worker, brakeman on a railroad, working on the guillotine in the marble company...bum...laborer, bum, bum, bum...window washer, furniture mover, cook, bum, laborer, laborer...working in a silver mine in Idaho...editor of several newspapers, student, laborer, bum, bum, bum...

Bum seems to win out by the numbers...it's not a bad life if you can stand the cold...and I haffta laff though it ain't truly funny. Or maybe it is all part of The Cosmic Joke? In which case it is rather funny in a wry, ironic sense and I get the message: anything goes.

'The end of your life is very close...'

…I intone solemnly to The Fool In The Mirror (‘LOOK at you you fucking stumblebum!’), but then it always has been close, the end of life has…hmm…never mind that, did I spell solemnly right? Ah, yes I did, wouldn’t you know it, right again, it’s a terrible burden to bear this of being continuously correct, and never mind politically correct – like Dude – anything with the word politics in it is bullshit, politically correct, in my unasked for opinion is another way of saying you’re afraid to speak your mind, which NFTD is anything but politically correct…and I’m usually not afraid to speak my mind but over the last 64 years I have often regretted that flawed little bit of my rent character to run my mouth when keep it shut would have been best…(wheeew, talk about verbose, how was that?)

…where was I anyway…hmmm…oyez, in the mirror again trying to make it go backwards, to watch my youth return, ah there it is, stop! Hold it right there Dude, this is a stickup, I want you back, I remember you quite well; when I once stood there with you I was in the glow of a young man full of promise, Golden Boy embarking on the road to his uncommon destiny, academia, wisdom, future bright…the approbation and adoration of the multitudes was within my grasp…this is as far as I got, so far. (More catastrophic thinking from NFTD).

So, you're unemployed are you...

...not enough to go around you say...

No food for the kids? Short on medicine, Mom in a rest home withering away? Teeth rotting for lack of proper dental care? Junk car won't start, no wood to keep warm this winter, threadbare cardboard socks, electric bill overdue, no this and no that and they ain't but one way out?

It's a tough world.

...and make no mistake about it: Your government (no matter where you live) doesn't give a shit. The scumbag politicians you've erroneously thought you elected to represent you (or had foisted on you by your demagogic leaders) do NOT care about you at all. Not selectman, senator, president nor king...
As proof may I offer (as if you need proof...your beleaguered lives all the proof you need I know) but:

According to World Priorities Inc., a Washington-based research organization (and admittedly I don't know who the hell they are either; they may be just as full of crap as the governments of the world) but anyway this outfit claims one of the reasons you had such a tough time last year is because the world spent $600 billion on weapons supporting 29 different wars around the globe so there wasn't a lot of money left over for social services.

And war deaths were the highest in 17 years with poor countries bearing the brunt of the burden (naturally, the poor have always been fodder for the cannons and canons of the aristocracy: the rich don't fight wars they just start them as a means of driving off their indolent spleens, a little diversion, something to while away their idle time when they're not out on the links) - as usual the impoverished were fueled and fooled along and armed by the industrialized nations, who should know better but don't.

The US,France and Great Britain are the largest suppliers of arms to the so-called Third World (read: black; at the moment in Somalia there are more land mines in the ground practically than there are blades of grass...) The only criteria for a shipment of bristling arms is luchre; right or wrong plays no role in it.("How much money did you say you have? Good, I'll trade you that for a six-pack of anti-personnel mines...")

So if you're living at or near poverty level, watch out, you are at risk, could be called up to defend what isn't even your's - you are anexpendable cipher in the configurations of the ruling class, but take heart: Here's how we beat the bastards at their own game!

Land mines in every golf course across the world all going off in one day of exploding tees and sand traps, fairways and 19th greens, would upset their handicaps & snuff the hierarchy in an afternoon...and good fucking riddance.

I loath the rich with a palpable hatred borne of the many frustrations endemic to being poor, but oddly, I am also dependent on them...all who are poor are, and that is why we tumble to the crap they pull on us: nowhere else to turn. We Shall Overcome! Don't give up hope, come together...but despite my idle threatening prattle we must be non-violent in our approach, difficult though that may be...Grrrrr...

IT LOOKED SAFE ENOUGH...

...but in Boston you can't always tell.

I eased that big heavy black door open and stepped out onto the street in front of 278 Commonwealth Ave., in those days the penultimate Back Bay address eclipsed only by Beacon Hill. Today's tony Newbury Street was then - 40 years ago when I was at my B & E peak - just a bunch of pharmacies, delis & dorms and here and there a fancy shop where you could spend 50 bucks for a tie if you were so inclined. I wasn't, didn't have fifty bucks if I was, and for sure it woulda gone into rotgut Narragansett beer before I would have thrown my filched loot at Brooks Brothers on a Burberry tie made from New Hebrides wool.

Comm Ave one of the numerous streets I roamed on the map of my early travels and travails, a street to match hands down San Francisco's North Beach Denver's East Colfax or Collins Avenue in Miami.

Other than the fact the apartment I was vacating was not mine and I was weighted down with about 21 stolen carats and a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, also not mine - until now anyway - I felt OK, ready to bolt and run like hell down the alleys if the heat showed or a scream suddenly erupted from the brownstone I just left...ease on down the street, make a right onto Exeter, cross Newbury, step up the pace but don't run, cross Boylston, make a left and head into the inner city up to Washington Street and into...

The Palace.

When a Massachusetts state crime commission did a study of crime in Boston, The Palace was featured in color on the cover and no friggin' wonder - you could get anything you wanted in it, or get rid of anything you had and to cover up your sins there was always a throbbing Blues band hard at work.

Place was full of pugs and thugs and cops, sailors hookers and pimps, and me. I wasn't a cop is all I can tell you and I wasn't as tough as I thought I was then or would have you believe I am now, o no, I was a kid from Vermont for Cris'sakes playing at being a city boy, tryin' to make a livin' off the second story heists. How I managed to live through that period in my life can only be written off to living by luck for as sure as I am 64 now, by rights I shoulda died at 20...or just be gettin' outta MCI Walpole, Cedar Junction now they call it, The Big House no matter what name you give it.

Living by luck!

Look, a Yankee punk run amok in Beantown eluding capture by moments, escaping to the Med aboard an aircraft carrier, turning up years later in Oakland, Berkeley, lost in California, Denver, Wyoming...outliving the statute of limitations and dodging the revenge of the aggrieved.

I leap for joy, shriek for joy, am ecs-fucking-static with joy at never having gotten caught and believe me when I tell you - I have cleaned up my sidewalk act...o yea verily Brothers & Sisters I am a virtual paragon of virtue these days...
Well, comparatively speaking I should maybe say. But like my Friend Mollie the bank robber says, `Always keep an air of mystery about yourself...'

My Dinner With Bob Dylan...

...'s multi-talented bass player - electric and upright - Tony Garnier, backstage at Lincoln's Loon Mountain in the foothills of New Hampshire's o-so-scenic Presidential Range, was more than I ever could have dared hope for!

Well, it wasn't quite dinner for me as I sipped self-consciously at coffee while he, Tony (and numerous other of Bob Dylan's entourage) dined on rather fancy cuisine before the upcoming concert as 3500 fans or so ranged the slopes fronting the massive stage while Dylan rested on his private bus.

I happen to be backstage because I know somebody who knows somebody who it actually turns out knows somebody else and because of this long-distance connection reached through Jeff Firestone via T-Bone Wolk, with the aid of a seldom-seen Nick Branch, I, with Jill Robert and Ann and Jeff Firestone, am sitting here with Tony, Larry Campbell, Bob's 'to die for handsome' the women noted and we agreed, rhythm guitar player, plus a couple other fellows whose names escape me but were extremely pleasant (including Bob's manager who said when I asked if the papers he was was poring over at the table - me a big know-it-all right? - were part and parcel of the intricate strategies of keeping things perfected on tour, said,'Actually it's the menu...'), and made us each feel comfortable and at ease...and there was Baron, about whom more anon...

A backstage pass is absolutely golden.

We arrived to find a line outside the spacious grounds which stretched 800 people long and cars were streaming in. We asked a parking lot attendant to tell us how to get our set-aside tickets and he directed us to a window where there was another line, probably six people in the whole thing. Already we're ahead of the game.

At the window they finally find our tickets sealed in an envelope as we waited (breathlessly) patiently, and then we went off to get in line with the 1000 ahead of us - yes it grew 200 in five minutes, but...

...enter the backstage pass, which we flashed back at the window and asked if the procedure was the same, like get in line, but she said o no - go over there and pointed to a spot where there was no line,nobody - and in we go, flashing our blue triangular BACKSTAGE badges.

Inside, two gleaming semis, a Pete and a Kenny if you want to know, with shiny non-committalboxes (no lettering except on the truck doors and it was called UpStaging) and which held the stage and all its scaffolding and a variety of other paraphernalia and who knows how many personnel, 30 maybe, maybe more, all of whom went on the road each time the tour took off and then with military precision, set up again next day 200-300 miles distant, an adult-size erector set astonishing to behold, not to mention all the band equipment - amps, monitors, instruments, wires, heaters - on and on the list goes until finally...the show must go on...

THIRTY FEET WAS ABOUT AS CLOSE...

...as I got to Dylan and he couldn't respond very well to my scintillating inquiries nor laugh with unbridled glee at my clever ripostes because he was busy singing and playing guitar at the moment; there it was, that raspin' & rheumin' voice of his by which I've been mesmerised since 1962 - for 34 years I've never wavered in my affection for the greatest troubador of all time; the Newport switch from open-hole acoustic to Fender Strat endeared him to me all the more.

'...I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more...'
'...Hey Mr. Tambourine man play a song for me...'

AND, AS I SAY, THERE WAS BARON...

...leonine, not too tall, quiet appearing, but he wasn't kidding me...beneath that casual jump suit he wore, muscles rippled like windflaws across water. He sat with us and with a big cherubic smile was introduced and shook hands all around. Baron being Bob's personal bodyguard and chief of security, which is formidable. 'Baron,' Tony explained later, '...is from a family of martial arts instructors (from Hawaii I think he said), 3rd generation. He was recently featured on the cover of Black Belt magazine.'

(I better cut him some slack, I thought; I'll be on my best behavior so he won't need to demonstrate any of his capabilities...Christ I couldn't even outrun the guy!)

Watching Dylan, Tony, Larry and the rest of the band on stage later that night in the surrealistic sunset I tried to weld the moment to me, to concentrate so hard on what I was seeing and hearing that I would carry it with me for the rest of my life, and even though the night itself is now 11 years ago, not a moment of it is lost to me.

...and even though (as is the wont of NFTD) I've rather gone on at length about this singular event in my life, I really can't put in words what the night did for me emotionally, historically, philosophically...

O, and gustatorily too, because when everyone had exited left and left me I made the rounds of the board and bolted down enough food in three minutes - what pecan pie! what cookies! - to feed two for a day.

WELL SO MUCH FOR SCHMOOZIN' WITH HISTORY...

...today it was back to reality, harsh reality in the cold glare light of a new rainy day - the gas in the car is low, the lights about to get cut off, holes in the shoes and so on ad nauseum, the same old plaints unrequited, but I ain't dead yet and I'm grown horny (no not THAT horny, the other one as in calloused) to adversity, indeed would be lost without the challenges afforded by privation; in fact I do not really look forward to the inevitable day when I escape the indiscriminating clutches of poverty into the world of Versailles-style wealth because I'll have nothing about which to complain and, as you know, that is anathema to me and'd be the end of NFTD; nay, nay I say, I don't see my alter ego and me installed in regally appointed Tuscan digs, somnambulant with torpor from the fine foods and wines, ah yes a life of ease is not for me I prophesy...

O woe is poor poor pitiful me I yowl into the star-studded night!

…SPEAKING OF BOB DYLAN…

…I had the great good fortune of seeing him a week ago with my Darling Daughter, 36, and her Darling Daughter, 11, and me, 63 today, representing three generations of Dylan fans, me going back to 1962, my Daughter for 20 years anyway and my Darling Granddaughter – until this night – not really aware of Bob Dylan nor very excited about going to see him, all of which changed favorably, dramatically and exponentially as the great man took the stage and dazzled thousands of us for two hours during which everyfriggin’body in the Mullins Center at UMASS-Amherst hollered themselves hoarse and at one point I clapped so long and hard I had to sit and take O2 from my Significant Other…

I love Bob Dylan and all he has done for most of his life; I would say my Daughter does too and that her Daughter will…personally it was among the most memorable nights of my life to once more have the privilege of being with my two favorite girls & listening to some of the best music ever written by the poet laureate of three generations, and listen to the world’s best worst voice, I mean Dylan’s beautiful mellifluous growl, filled as it is with bathos, pathos and pain and still raspy and rheumatic, fills me with a variety of emotions, one can laff, one can cry, wonder, ponder or Think About IT! If it’ll help in your resume Bob, tell ‘em we – me, Casey, Devon & NFTD – highly approve! You the best, Dude!

Snow making...

In the 1940s and '50s my Father - and me - panned for gold in a brook east of Mt. Killington known as Gold Brook - its water was pure and clear and biting cold year-round, and getting to it it was a stunning walk through a verdant under-canopy of beautiful, velvet-floored forests and old-growth trees - as old as America, plus it, Gold Brook, curled through the valley and then plunged over what certainly must be Vermont's longest waterfall, and if you got tired of panning for gold and not finding any, there was always fishing for the big rainbows and native brown trout.

Fast forward, no longer would the ranger atop Killington be lonely as the majestic peak was turned into a playground for the rich at the expense of the environment. Snow-making machines drank/drink up the aquifer and the runoff rages down the hillsides and rushes into the surrounding streams, re-enter Gold Brook which now - half a century later, runs white, white as 2 per cent milk, a nasty translucent bluish hue in which, in my opinion, no fish swim.

And even that was 20 odd years ago so by now maybe the ski industry has found its collective conscience and perhaps Gold Brook runs clear again?

From NFTD Archives...

...AND SPEAKING OF BOMBS...

...all the metric tons of bombs over Belgrade did nothing to sway Slobodan Milosevic's zeal until NATO put one right down his fucking chimney, at his home, blew up his goddamned house it did and the next day Slobo, the Butcher of The Balkans, decided he wanted a universal presence, as in UN forces, to come and monitor the situation and hopefully this would end the shattering of Yugoslavian cities, but my feeling is tons and tons and tons of ordnance, with countless bodies littering the countryside swayed Slobo not a whit till NATO pinpointed one right down on his own plush house in suburban Belgrade, and you can bet NATO knew what it was doing and knew that he wasn't home; 'Here,' the bombers said, 'try this on,' and BLOTTO, Slobo's homeless!

Hey, I'm not a big fan of bombing ANYthing. Even though he - Milosevic -deserves it, do all the people of Serbia? Why doesn't someone slip Madeline Albright a heater (if she doesn't have one she can run across the street to the park nearby The White House and I'm sure someone there will sell her one, if they don't blow HER away); anyway, then she can off the bastard across the diplomatic table. Who's gonna care? About time she earned her keep.

Anyway, that's NFTD's skewed view of things.

IT'S TOUGH TO REMAIN UPBEAT ABOUT LIFE...

...when you look around and see what's going on.

Bombs over Baghdad? Belgrade? Kids wantonly slaughtering other kids...what gives? What's the buzz, tell me, what's a-happening? One cannot be current and aware of one's surroundings without being devastated by the scene...how can it be that I am living this cushy existence in East Eden, nestled in the forests of the Great Granite State, full larder, lots of toys, many perks, and yet, across the sea exploding missiles are hamburgerizing scores of essentially innocent people. Soldiers aren't dying; townspeople are dying.

Don't even have to go across the sea, just look here at home, go to
Littleton, to LA, Peoria or Ashtabula - there's trouble in River City. If you were going to troubleshoot the problems of the world as they exist today you have to go back several centuries, even further, and now these long-standing blood feuds continue unabated, generation after generation and generally one warped version or another of religious differences not uncommonly ending in avenging angels hacking one another to pieces. Algiers, Rwanda...the list of offenders is long, no country is free of this taint.

We're a senseless lot in the main; shoot first, ask questions later is
worldwide practice. Keep your head down, dig your bunker deeper, you're not being paranoid: the rest of the world IS after you.

IT SUCKS BIG-TIME...

...all this madness the world over. Here I am trying to make a living by being something of a (in my humble estimation) wry humorist with my hand on the pulse of the world, but what is one to do when all hell is exploding?

What is there to joke about?

It's all too sad and I am at Wit's End.

To whom appeal? Where is this elusive messianic devil we've been hearing about since time immemorial? This savior...

"Do you want a shotgun," Valerie asked?

...'I don't know,' I answered, '...doesn't sound too cool, what is it?'

'I'll show you.'

As I drove she did something with the joint which made it disappear in her mouth then somehow managed to kiss me and expel into my mouth a huge toke of reefer madness which overwhelmed and dazed me; maybe it was the kiss I don't know but it all hung together pretty well as we cruised along East Colfax in Denver, the original 'Desolation Row', until we turned down High St. & suddenly there looms before us a jack-booted, bullet-headed, jodphur wearin', pistol-packin', bullet-proof-vested Denver motorcycle cop, arms akimbo, smiling, helmeted, shades, six feet five of him standing alongside his FLH, red & blues flashing, fire trucks in the distance...

We're fucked!

He approaches the big station wagon I've not quite stolen but shouldn't really be in Denver in, a car full of smoke, dope and burned-out hippy freaks, some of whom are approaching LSD meltdown (not here at all) & in a minute from now they'll be shipping us off to the penitentiary at Canyon City...we've had it...

But wait! He walks up to the car and says politely, 'Roll the window down please,' and by accident I catch the wing window which is good enough for him (and which saved him from having to breathe in a huge cumulonimbus of reefer smoke) and said, 'There's a fire. You'll have to turn around and go the other way,' which we were only too happy to do, zipping away in giddy high back to Cheesman Park, there to sit and contemplate IT.

Meanwhile, I'm embroiled in an imbroglio...

…thick as a mulligatawny stew…it is impossible to wrestle yourself and win. Or maybe, like so much in life, it really doesn’t matter and at best will generate a ‘Who cares?’

Everything you do comes back to you, is driven home again…

…it’s that time of the day, 10:48, every time I see it is 10:48 I am immediately dashed on the rocks in 1971 when 1048 was an instruction and a place my cab was often dispatched to, a 100 times, and each time there was one, two, three or more girls/women from all over America converging on 1048 Old Country Rd., the only legal abortion clinic in the country…it weighs heavy on my conscience…nobody likes abortion…many times I would catch some of the same girls/women I had brought to the clinic on the ride from 1048, back to Kennedy to LaGuardia or even Port Authority to suffer a bus ride return to wherever home was…there was lots of Southern accents, no color but white, precious little small talk, or any other, no sightseeing, no tips, your basic bummer, but the clinic at 1048 Old Country lavished lots of filthy lucre on my cab company and as the trickle down theory goes I made quite a lot of blood-soaked money…in those days I don’t remember giving it a lot of thought one way or another, these days, twice a day, I am bowed with shame and remorse; society may forgive me, I don’t...

What next...?! (From NFTD Archives...)

...a recent issue of The New York Times, the mouthpiece and henchman/accomplice to the ruling aristocracy, has a quarter-page ad with a graphic black & white drawing of a postal package about the size of a boom box which is depicted blowing to smithereens, box all shredded,dust and cordite wafting into the room, an obvious explosion has taken place, your mail has just blown up in what were your hands and at the top of the ad it reads: "This was addressed to you." Below the drawing of the exploded bomb it goes on to say, "Your security system should have included EGIS, the latest in bomb detection."

What a world we live in huh? A company which scans your mail to make sure George Metesky, Pablo Escobar, or the blind sheik from Brooklyn hasn't dropped you a line, not to mention maybe one of your own personal foes with vengeance in mind for your real or imagined transgressions...(see page 3, vol. 181, para. #1 under "...NOTES...")

Ifyou want to cut your losses call EGIS ("...is not an x-ray system...is a portable explosives-detection system based on advanced vapor detection technology...used in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel, Germany and Spain...screen mail, vehicles, personnel, luggage and other at-risk items for the prevention of explosives...")

It doesn't say it but in the UK they watch for IRA bombs, in Israel the bombs could come from anywhere, and do; ditto Germany whose industrialists get snuffed with something like regularity; Spain's landed gentry and police have been bombed and shot by Basque separatists as long as I can remember. Why the Swiss use EGIS I don't know but it probably has something to do with them banking everybody else's stolen funds and accordingly they are high risk.

Directly beneath this ad for bomb insurance is another quarter-page ad from "...a world class address for world class business...enjoy spectacular vistas and an exceptional variety of services...the Asian International Banking Community counts on The World Trade Center...they'll also tell you that they appreciate the stability and continuity that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey bring to their tenancy as the sole owner and operator of the World Trade Center..."

So if you're in the market for a little bomb control at home you can do something about it by calling Jim Buckley at 508/251-2030; FAX 508/251-2024...I don't imagine he comes cheap, but if somebody's dropping bombs in your path you probably got money so you can afford it. Poor people don't get bombed at home as a rule except in war and then all hell breaks loose.

How I became a dump attendant...

...wasn't easy. You have to lie and cheat and steal and live a life of total immersion in drugs and alcohol if you're going to claw your way to the bottom - and I became past master at these scurrilous and nefarious forms of subhuman existence. Becoming a dump attendant has been the trial of my life so far...this life which has brought me to a screeching standstill. Where is there to go but up?

O and don't get me wrong - I love my job. It is in fact the longest job I've ever held except for four honorable years (63-67) in the Navy. All in all it is a simple task and one for which I'm grateful. It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it and none come more qualfied to wallow in swill than I, believe it... Ahhh, life and its endless variations, huh? As a callow youth my game plan did not include the present - I prepared for the future and it never got here. I wasn't prepared for my present life as a dump attendant.

My fantasies had groomed me for superstardom. Somehow I figured to be enjying caviar and champagne (or whatever you drink with caviar...vodka!) in ancient Athens - sloe-eyed, dusky Mediterranean ladies hanging on my every, ah - word, but no as luck would have it things got confused along the way and there you go... It seems so ironic that I spend my life squashing Pampers. Ironic and JUST I might add because you reap what you sow. It's fate. I always figured I was born to an uncommon destiny and it's true: there aren't THAT many dump attedants. We are unique.

Not exactly the apogee of ambition granted and what sort of magnum opus may come from all this trash I do not know...but tend we must. Everybody's gotta do something! If you're nursing a huge chilled pina colada from a coconut in a hammock on Maui, well you'll just have to live with it, it's what you're supposed to be doing in The Cosmos. Unfortunately that's also true if you happen to be plummeting earthward in an out-of-control DC-10. On the other hand I could be wrong; maybe we are able to alter destiny by ever so slight an insinuation of free will...

O the hell with all this metaphysical crap! now I can barely function. Does your life get like that? I mean I don't want to do ANYthing. You have to though. You have to keep up appearances. Why I don't know but you just can't walk around moaning and groaning and bemoaning your fate...other people got their trials too and only so much spare time from them can be devoted to your troubles. Basically, you're on your own. Don't let me wax preachy on you. Just tell me to layoffand I will.

"YOUNG MEN LIVING IN OLD MENS' BODIES..."

...is more or less how my friend Jimmy Kane sums up aging in males and I can certainly relate. It's funny ain't it? It is and it ain't...it's pretty right-on though, you must admit that if you're male and greying or wrinkling, balding/aging...heftier, slower. Where once you might have stayed out and up for two days running now you're in bed around nine (to sleep!) and the only time you see three a.m. is when you get up to evacuate your sad, tired kidneys....it's the beginning of the end for you, Pal - dig it! You haffta laff know what I mean? Not to worry.

I used to say "Let the music keep your spirits high..." but in fact it doesn't always work that way, young or old. Certain music plunges me into despair and puts me in a mood so bleak I can barely stand, hardly lift my head, lost in some dismal abyss - this Mozart piece for instance, an organ and strings - it is lovely but it is so...heartbreaking.

What you have to do in this case, as all those wasted years come zeroing in on your weighted,"sainted" head, is to plod woodenly with leaden feet to the Harmon-Kardon or whatever you're listening to, switch from FM to auxiliary and let Ken Lyons or Stevie Ray Vaughn or Ma Rainey for cryin' out loud - well let any or all of them growl at you for awhile in those salooned-out voices of theirs and then - you MARTYR you! - you'll feel a little better. Crank it up if you ask me...what's to lose?

It's not just me is it? I'm not naturally atrabilious I would say (atrabilious being melancholy) but if you look beneath the surface how can you be anything else? It's tough on everybody I gotta believe it - from the starving Nigerian children to Trump Plaza - everybody BUT everybody is singing the blues for one thing or another. Donald Trump might be singing the blues because he's got so much money he can't find anything else to buy that he doesn't already have. Keep looking Donald, it's out there but all the money in the world can't buy it.

Only all of a sudden the music's over, you're home alone ears ringing like Niagra Falls, talkin' to the dogs & the cats - even the friggin' fish! - the Last Call Saloon and Bob Colson are 180 miles away and it's the middle of the day...mundane reality zeros in on you (me) - the dishes need to be washed.

Youth! Youth! YOUTH! Where did you go?!

A fleeting fantasy gone as quickly as a cloud.

What happened...

...where am I?

It was only yesterday...there I was...we were picking blackberries...it was just the other day I remember it well - we strode hand in hand happily up The Acropolis...horyatiki salada at Baba Stavros, ah nay,nay - theemommay, thee mommay polee...(yes, yes I remember, I remember well) - it was only yesterday...

But wait, why the sudden return to melancholia Terry my boy? ...aaHAH! The music stopped, there was nothing to occupy my mind but the real thing and now I'm off to flip this tape over and come out swinging with a little, let's see here, ah OK here we have it blues fans, none other than Bessie Smith...

"Aaoooow, the blues has got me on the go...
...aaoooow, the blues has got me on the go -
They runs around my house & in and outta my front do'..."

4:04 PM...CAN'T WAIT ANOTHER MINUTE...

...I fairly run to the refrigerator, quick flip the top from a Heinie and toss half of it off in a flash. The invidious and sinister demon alcohol begins it's all-pervasive trip through my axons and dendrites, what's left of them anyway. Not exactly what you would call a class act.

Reminds me of my friend Albee, a BRILLIANT lawyer but completely gone
from years of projectile drinking...one time I was bartending at a fancy wedding in a castle over in Vermont when Albee stepped up to the bar and wanted to know if he could sample a bottle of Napoleon Brandy that the bride and groom had been given as a wedding gift. He was quite offended when I told him I thought not. He reached for it as I turned to serve someone else. When I turned backa moment later there was Albee, all three-piece suited up and totally burned out, hoisting this fancy bottle of vintage brandy and draining it like it was a friggin' root beer...three good slugs and he slapped the bottle down about half empty, eyes glistening, grinning and red-faced; the only sign of brilliance was his gleaming bulbous nose and amber brandy shimmering in the light at the corners of his upturned mouth...

It's funny - as in peculiar - how intelligence disappears proportionately to alcohol intake. I remember seeing this graffitti on a wall in Athens, in English - "Would that my liver were my brain and alcohol knowledge." I have to say Amen to that...

CAN'T CLEAR MY MIND...

...it won't go away and doesn't change except to get more and more impossible to bear and yet all around me life goes on; in fact life goes on for me also only with a massive hole in it. I'm sure you've got holes in your life too and ain't they a DRAG!?!

It takes serious Brobdingnagian effort to get out of bed even, to say nothing of actually confronting another human being and have to participate in any kind of exchange. Why I can barely open my mouth and Lord knows I got nothing to say that means anything. Can't even listen. O sure I listened to what you said and maybe even answered correctly at the proper time but I didn't hear you. I haven't heard or said a word in 67 days...haven't tasted any food. Spent six bucks on salmon and it might have well as been a sucker outta the deep hole. Haven't seena thing in two months. A hundred fifty movies I sat thru... didn't see a one. Spent a fortune and got nothin' to show for it...but I say but, you all...

But, ...ain't dead yet, Folks, still alive and semi-well...well as one can be. Thanks for caring. I'm fairly healthy,got a roof over my head, water, lights, all the basics that make life tolerable if not great so I got no legitimate complaints and ask your indulgence for getting carried away a bit with my own personal tribulations.

You're a lot nicer than shrinks and not so much per hour.

Entiende? Bueno! Muchos Gracias, Amigos!

Reminiscing fondly is not my thing...

...the good ole days weren't.

...fact is, as I reflect on my life and note the dates where events went to hell, it occurs to me that the major turmoils began in 1970 and didn't 'end' until 1998, so fully half my life was wasted, thrown away, drunk up in Carrie Nation's, The Green Door, Whittingtons and on and on ad nauseum; shot up in Albee's office, burned out in bars and ports o'call 'round the world, why, for nearly three decades I thought I was having some sort of off-the-wall fun.

...off the wall it was, and I suppose it was fun too, if you discount the grief my selfish self brought down on others, oh well...but nothing came of it; there were no long-term rewards from the short-term free-for-all, although there are plenty of residual long-term effects from my errant life of dissolution.

It's true of many of us I would think. Didn't you do things then you cringe and flush with embarassment to think about now? And wouldn't you practically have to flee the 'hood if your kids found out? Or your Mother!

Ouch. I promise to be better from now on...well, so I tell myself this early ayem over coffee whilst burning evidence...and hmmm...what might a little dollop of Kahlua in this coffee do for it...mmmmmmm...nay nay little dollop, rather a lavish splash and it's ho ho ho-ing I go as the Demon Rum kicks in and life in the breakdown lane resumes apace...

Naw, I can't do it...instead I add a little Cremora to black instant coffee and the backsliding screeches to a halt, but it was close; hard to ignore the lure of the streets for all the danger; hard to say no to instant gratification, tough to NOT do things; doing them was a snap, it's not doing them which proves (my) your mettle.

So okay, gimme that boring cup of coffee, but give it to me in an NFTD Diner Mug - you can have one too - have as in buy - yes Folks for a mere $15.75 (plus $3 S & H) - an NFTD Commemorative Diner Mug is on its way to you...you know what you have to do.

E-mail: nftdnotes@yahoo.com

Wide awake at 3 ayem...

...can't sleep...can't eat, nothing to drink or do but sit here lamenting life without you. I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars that I got away basically intact instead of continually going on about this sorry state of affairs, but the heart is a peculiar organ and once smitten quite reluctant to let go...

But let go I do and here I am alone at three a. m. wondering who you are 'dancing' with and where, but soon this self-pitying blast leaves and I am still here with no thoughts of you nor anything else; a blank in the night staring out the dark windows into endless black space.

What matter anything?

I shake loose from the gloom of life and spin one up, put the lucifer to it and toke away...refill the bowl and watch blue smoke dancing on the windflaws...

Dreamy, filled with longing, aching for a break, THE break from dependency on others to the freedom only brought about by liquid assets...in the meantime these 'liquid assets' take the form of a six pack of Heineken dropped off periodically by well-meaning friends inadvertently feeding my fever, for which I am grateful beyond telling, believe me, even though I realize that at this rate I shall probably drink myself to death in a few more short years, but...

So what?

C'est la vie...

Perhaps I should make it clear...

…or maybe it doesn’t matter, but I realize NFTD spends an inordinate amount of time retelling a life of drunken, drugged-out behavior, although in fairness to me it is history, I no longer am a drunk...basically we’re talking 30 years ago in the halcyon days of my errant youth which I sometimes update so as to appear au courant…and I don’t do drugs, although I will drink a beer now and again and smoke a bone…

…mostly it – Subterranea, my pet name for the nether world - is where I lived for much of my life so tales from then I must recount because it’s all there is to recount…sleeping in rat-infested alleys covered with lice & eating from a dumpster was sort of the anti-acme in the nether world…being homeless was the pits and I love having a roof over my head so much now that I rarely leave it…I pass these sordid seamy tales along in the hope you’ll avoid that particular path on your trek through life, but you may not, the rebel in us is compelling, the voice of experience instead of being heeded may instead provoke, ‘O yeah! Well you just watch me…I’ll show you how it’s done…’ Well, have at it…

…plus, in truth it must be told, despite being in the aggregate sad, there were some very funny times, many poignant moments, and there was also fear & dread - along the Highway to Hell are strewn a wide panoply of emotions and experiences - ’…keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel…’

I would like to thank Jim...

...editor/publisher of Pills-A-Go-Go, 1202 E. Pike St. #849, Seattle WA 98122-3934, for the kind and caring letter he recently sent concerning my whiteouts, is what I call them, but which I'm told have a technical name which is TIA or `transient ischemic attack' and which, Jim writes, "...you should know that these always precede a more serious `cardiovascular event', like a heart attack or a stroke. When the event comes is partly up to you and it's because part of me likes you that I'm writing this.

"Dying of a stroke could be a pretty nice way to go, a sudden massive stroke probably doesn't hurt and can kill you in less than a second, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, then you'll get a stroke that's too mild and merely leaves you half-paralyzed, confused and drooling. You don't want that do you?

"Also, you may as well put off this event for a few years until you're nice and frail and can die more easily.

"So listen here: you need to be taking a few pills - namely an ACE inhibitor like Vasotec. This not only lowers your blood pressure but has a preservative effect on your kidneys and will spare your heart (esp. the left ventricle) a lot of work. You should also take vitamin C along with the bioflavonoid complex to help build up cardiovascular strength. Finally, a bit of aspirin is always good for almost anyone and for you especially. Just a half or a fourth of one a couple times a day should be sufficient. That'll thin your blood, among other things.

"Of course, they'll tell you to exercise but I'm talking pills here, not hard work. Please look into this...have a heart...Jim"

Right kind of you Jim I will look into it in earnest because I'm actually not too keen on dying right now and if what you say can help put off that eventuality, well I'm all for it.

E-Mail: nftdnotes@yahoo.com

It is my questionable privilege to have...

...the dubious distinction of sitting the longest in a bar - Carrie Nation's - in a week - longer than any other patron on record, but in those days of fierce, open drinking when you could drink as much as you could pay for or cadge with no due regard to drunk-driving laws or any other laws, well, competition was formidable, but my life was steeped in misery then, self-induced of course but real at the time while these other desperados trying to set a record were lightweights, kids showing off, but I, ah yes...I was sunk in the nether world of despair and felt little need to get a breather of fresh air now and then by taking a hike in the woods, o no, 'O bartender, Mark, s'il vous plait, another libation mayhaps and listen, ah...whisper, whisper...I'm a little light see, do you think you could spot me a pitcher or two, maybe couple shots of bar whiskey, throw in a burger...ah thanks Lad! Good fellow!'

And so it went from Monday at opening bell - 8 ayem til closing at 1 ayem - 17 hours later, and only then did I totter away to the alley I called home and crash on the ripped sheet of wallboard I used for a bed under the porch of the Joy Chow Chinese restaurant with the rest of the stinking vermin.

...and Tuesday at 8 ayem I was back in Nation's again until one ayem, 17 more hours and so it went for the whole week until finally it was over and I had tallied up a grand total of 114 hours at the bar. What a success story, huh? Talk about overtime...and there was no real hangover because there was so little time to sober off.

Ah yes, there's not a lot I don't know about alcohol. You may think you're quoting Hamlet after about half a bottle of Jack but really it's no more than alco-babble. Anyway, some distinction don't you think? Falls a little short of summa cum laude from Brown but it'll have to do.

IT WAS A FRIGHTENING MOMENT AND I WAS TERRIFIED...

...when I suddenly took a breath and nothing happened, then another, still nothing, then a horrifying choking spell, each barking gasp unaccompanied by oxygen and I rolled off the bed onto the floor - I CAN'T BREATHE! - blacking out, clawing at the wall for air, and through the dirt on the floor I got a glimpse of darkness, like in a casket in the ground and when I finally caught my breath I breathed uneasily for half an hour, inhale, exhale, laying still unmoving on the cold floor, inhale, exhale, something you always take for granted, and later every fuckin' light in the house is on, I mean that was pitch black, death dark, no air and I was very nervous, figured I was dead.

My lungs didn't work?! Mercy! I'm cuttin' back on my dope...start eatin' the shit, never mind that smoking...trade-off liver for lungs...until this moment I prided myself in saying death did not frighten me - it doesn't in concept, but when you can't catch your breath, lungs bursting, BRAIN bursting! - I rethought the case. It is not death itself I fear, rather how I get there, and what's next if anything.

Well, ain't dead yet and another day has passed since the incident and my late-night fears are far less gruesome in the light of day, plus the resolve which filled me last night to cut back on my herbal intake wanes and I spin and burn one.

Dollars no longer accepted at Taj Mahal

…one of the Seven Wonders of the World, India’s Taj Mahal no longer accepts the American greenback, a very troubling sign of the cauldron bubbling under the United States economy and the world’s…our Achilles heel has been found, two generations from now the once-powerful, once-loved home of the free and home of the brave will be a second-tier player in the game of life – a victory for greed and avarice, a loss to all else.

...those grade B Sci-Fi movies depicting massive population shifts of millions of refugees will become/is becoming harsh reality…it is an implacable foe and an inexorable juggernaut…civilization is on the move from where life is hard to where life is easy, anyway easier…who has it easier than America?

The Revolution isn’t over, in fact has just begun anew. (Another NFTD Skewed-view synopsis)

Excerpts from your loving cards and letters...

"...I forgot! Thank you again for the fabulous description of your East Clintwood out to the sweet young thing's car & getting shot down. Been there, been there, been there. Screamed in laughter & pain. Also loved your Finlandia kitchen dance." - Susan Mueller, Wilmette IL

"...I am always delighted to find a penned note tucked in the pages of NFTD. Enjoy a good read when it arrives. We must have been in NYC around the same time - Allison Steele (The Night Bird) - I was a fan. Knives in the gullet, fear in the street & silent footsteps on the fire escape of my Hell's Kitchen flat, listening for the `all-clear' whistle from the bloke on the roof are all too familiar..." - Judith Linstedt, Fitchburg MA

"Not that it is news to you, but you are one prolific dude...it would be great if you could find the time sometime to do a list of books you've read - 5,000 books is an awfully impressive reading history, and any list that includes Frederick Exley, Edith Wharton AND Seth Morgan is a list I'd like to publish!"
- Mark R. Harris, Publisher, REDISCOVERIES
44 Howard Ave., Passaic, NJ 07055

"...again I'd really like to thank you for the kind words...the encouragement of friends is what keeps you going. I was very moved by your honesty a few issues back...if anyone has paid their dues THOU has...I'd like to think that once the Karmic debts tilt to OUR credit side, we can relax just a little. Poverty gets OLD, but seems to nurture my sense of humor..."
- Judy Miller, Sparks NV

Apropos of Nothing...

...what a mistake I've made!

Wasn't thinking at all...

A magazine out of Annapolis called Alive, an area entertainment tabloid with a circulation of 15,000 calls me and wants to know if they could print an article I had written. Alive is distributed throughout the Annapolis-DC-Baltimore Beltway and I smelled money with this big Yankee snout of mine and so I said to the guy after rudimentary discussion, `Well how much are you willing to pay?' and he remarked he would have to go and discuss this with his publisher and would call me back, and so that is how it was left. We hung up.

Immediately I called my Boss and said to her, Look Boss this could be bigtime for me and I need to know what sort of a ball park figure I might accept and after talking it over I decided I would ask for a hundred, hope for 75 and take 50 minimum (if you got half of everything you wanted you'd be happy right?), then I called the editor of Alive back and he said that after careful consultation with his publisher they decided they could afford to give me...

Ten bucks.

My alarm system went off. `Ten dollars! Why don't you just slap me across the face you cheap bastards! What a friggin' insult! Go %&#@ yourselves!' And I slam the phone down, fuming and gasping for air. `Ten dollars! You cheap #$%&+#@ pricks...you'll get nothing out of me, EVER!' I wing it on home and mope about the house in a blue funk.

Ten bucks.

Then I get to thinking it over.

Jeez so what if it's only ten bucks? 15,000 (!!) people would have read an article reprinted from "...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." That's a lot of people and if only 20 of them decided that NFTD was worth a subscription that would have been $400 to add to the empty coffers...

So I sit down and write them at Alive, telling them how sorry I was for my outburst (`Not all Northerners are so rude,' I sycophantically intoned) and tried to put a little joke-type spin on the whole thing then posted it to Annapolis and waited for the all-forgiving call which of course never came.

I can see the editor and publisher now: `HA! This creep! Throw that crap in the wastebasket...who needs him!" Thus ends my career down South.

"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." - by Terry Ward

WHILE MR. BOJANGLES DANCED FOR DRINKS AND TIPS...

...I sign painted my way from bar to bar, midway to midway, painting signs along my itinerant route for many years, for drinks and tips, one time accidentally painting 'The Silver Dollar' on the door of 'The Golden Nugget' but Ray - the cook known as Foggy - thought it was funny and never told me until I was done, nor did anyone else, the laugh's on me, big joke, and it was to me too because when I was done and went up to the bar for my remuneration in the guise of a couple more pitchers of beer, double shot o'rye neat & chow (the greasiest baconcheeseburgers the world has never known) well everybody was laughin'...

...Lucille was leavin' Kenny Rogers on the jukebox, usually that kind of tune means that a barful of sots are blubbering, but laugh? Soon I found out.

Chuckling, Foggy handed me my pitcher and burger, my shot of rye and bade me do it over again, this time with the right name on the door, which I did and after which he bought me another round, bid me adieu and I stumbled off blinking into the hot afternoon sun (to a drunk the worst time of the day is a 3 pm bright August afternoon when you have to leave The Nugget and stagger down Center Street past shops, shoppers and the working throng, in order to get to the railroad tracks and disappear into the protection of The Weeds) but anyway - off I was to 'The Tom Thumb' restaurant at the fairgrounds to see which of its signs needed upgrading...it's all so long ago and far away, but then this morning seems light years away too.

42 Years ago on a cold dark night...

(Sung to the tune of '10 Years Ago')

'...two guys were killed just taking flight. Their two-seater A6Ashot off from the deck, then blew up in mid-flight and left them for dead. I stood on the bridge and imagined their plight, as the poor bastards exploded and disappeared outta sight...'

It was a somber ship dropped anchor in The Bay of Naples next day, two of our comrades lay at the bottom of the Mediterranean, their unsuspecting wives waiting eagerly ashore for their celebrated and long-planned arrival party, soon to become a wake and then a sad funeral at sea.

Ah me, the vagaries of this inexplicable life are so frustrating. But whatta ya gonna do? Couple days later we pulled the hook and floated away off to Malta, ah yes Valetta, what a port'o call is Malta with her narrow streets and winding waterfront, with the gondoliers, the matchless pride of these stalwart people and the lovely women and handsome young men, something for everyone on Malta from trinkets and souvenirs to waterfront dives or pricey 4-star hotels.

Me, more a loner even than Craighead, slept in the bow of a gondola as the gondolier poled me out into the current and then started up a side-mount Evinrude and motored me back to the fantail of the USS INDEPENDENCE (CVA62) where the Ship's Bosun - Bosun Bowman, read me the riot act after being returned to the ship a) inebriated and b) in an unauthorized craft and c) out of uniform as somewhere along the Liberty Route I'd lost my jumper...

...can it be possible these events are 42 years ago? How is it possible that 42 years have slipped past and I never even noticed. Where have I been? I'm almost 65 and have little to show for it (excepting my clever and droll wit and continental/cosmopolitan manner, not to mention my erudition and modesty, my keen intellect and, well, I could go on...) but a head full of jumbled memories bumping into each other, ahhhh me...

So right away this morning I bury myself in Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau and his `Confessions' about which I've heard so much over the years but never until now had any truck with...

...why am I compared to him I ask myself and before long I see why with a quote like this:

`My passions are extremely strong, and while I am under their sway nothing can equal my impetuosity. I am amenable to no restraint, respect, fear or decorum. I am cynical, bold, violent, and daring. No shame can stop me, no fear of danger alarm me. Except for the one object in my mind, the universe for me is non-existent. But all this lasts only a moment; and the next moment plunges me into complete annihilation.

'Catch me in a calm mood, I am all indolence and timidity. Everything alarms me, everything discourages me. I am frightened by a buzzing fly. I am too lazy to speak a word or make a gesture. So much am I a slave to fears and shames that I long to vanish from mortal sight. If action is necessary I do not know what to do; if I must speak I do not know what to say; if anyone looks at me I drop my eyes. When roused by passion, I can sometimes find the right words to say, but in ordinary conversation I can find none, none at all. I find conversation unbearable owing to the very fact that I am obliged to speak...'

A man after my own heart I must say but I'll have to read on further to see if his life's confessions and mine are compatible beyond these rather dubious distinctions...

The lawyer Albee's client was screwed...

...before court ever came to order...

...you could feel it in the air and in a few minutes you would see it...

...a semi-simple B & E in the nightime - this lame second story man was not too bright (you don't has to be a rocket scientist versed in quantum theory to steal sleeping bags like my friend Ernie was doing, or so the state claimed).

& Ernie was so, so goofy (basically harmless too) that after he'd packed all the swag he'd just stolen from the sporting goods store he went back in for a second peek around, sat down, fell asleep, got caught on the premises by the heat was trundled off to the lockup arraigned etc and now several weeks later he was fixing to have his day in court to explain his side of things and with a little luck, hopefully, count on a little leniency from the judge but as luck would have it the judge sitting was decidedly not a friend of the lawyer Albee's nor was the DA - the DA!! He was SUCH! an asshole!

I swear...how I would love to put his real name right here ____________________ but the dirtbag would likely have me knee-capped...If it wasn't for the fact my friend Ernie was about to get sent away on a
habitual offender rap I would have laughed aloud at that asshole of a prosecutor. A true buffoon you are James...

Here is one way I could see Ernie was fucked: When the prosecuting attorney (James...) came into the courtroom he had one of his lackeys dust the chair he was going to sit on! Can you believe it? I mean this sycophant whipped out his linen and dusted the place this fat-ass was going to sit.

I wanted to hurl myself at him and fling him to the floor but I didn't and I was right about Ernie - they got him on habitual the poor bastard and lo these many years later Ernie is still locked up. His youth is gone, old age has set in and the prison lines in his sad, tired countenance might as well be etched in granite so permanent are they in his once beautiful face...a young man living in an old man's body.