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.