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…’