Behind every great fortune...

…there’s a crime – think Oliver and Oakes Ames…say what? Who? The Ames Brothers? The ones who sing?

…nope, wrong part of the family tree, these two - Oliver and Oakes Ames, made their fortune on the backs of slave labor, for these Ames Brothers of Easton MA made shovels, shovels since the late 18th century up to today even, but along about the time of the Civil War they were so busy turning out shovels they couldn’t fill the orders; those shovels were worn out digging graves, while when the railroads were crossing the nation to meet in Utah, 100s of thousands of so-called Coolies were imported from China to dig a trench to lay steel rails on - up, over, across and through, the hottest and the coldest and the most treacherous places Mother Nature had to offer in the lower 48, all dug with an Ames shovel…millions of them.

…here in Townshend’s Oakwood Cemetery lies among many others the grave of Alexander M. Cushing who was from Newfane and got shot and killed at Antietam and whose grave no doubt was dug with an Ames shovel.

…here lies Alexander M. Cushing, shot dead at 39 and next him his dear Caroline, widowed at 39 and come to think of it she probably got buried thanks to an Ames shovel too…they didn’t have any competition…

…I move on, it’s Veteran’s Day, there are lots of Civil War vets in this cemetery and at least one from every war since…I check in on them now and then, we talk…well…ok, ok, I’m not that crazy – they talk, I listen…

Memory Lane is nowhere to hang out...

…there’s nothing left there; in many cases there was never anything there even when then was now…I race away from the past and return home to the present, the here, the now…I am on automatic pilot with tunnel vision my accompanist, looking neither backwards nor left nor right; I continue through the infinite mindscape at the end of which there is no light.

…say, how was that for a gloomy paragraph? Nice, no? - and verbose too, huh!? It’s what I do, Dude, I’m not really a gloomy guy at all, nobody likes to have a good time more than me, but neither am I one of those whistling grinning-ninny cheerio hey hey goody-goody two shoes…there’s little more annoying than a happy-go-lucky so and so to spoil the bittersweet melancholy of a lugubrious moment…

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

I OFTEN WISH FOR NOTHING…

…it’s all I really want, nothing, nothing in the sort of difficult to comprehend philosophical/physical nothing, like to have never been, to not be, to UNbe, not even a void where I was because I wasn’t…

…ah Nothingness, how I yearn for you…meanwhile, since I still do be, I decap a stout, spin and burn one and push the boat out; the closest I can get to Nothing is to drift in the hazy ephemeral cloud which is called Life…

AS A CALLOW YOUTH…

…my idea of academia was turtle-neck wool sweaters with leather elbow patches, herringbone tweed jackets, Florsheim wingtips, a tam, a pipe and an Austin-Healey Sprite…

…who knew there was a lot of work involved, which ultimately I did not take to so my academic life was brief if sartorially resplendent…from there it was all downhill for about 40 years, then as I approached the nadir of my non-intellectual pursuits and the end of my life suddenly I righted, took a look around me and corrected the course, sort of, color me a slow learner…

THE CLOSER TO DEATH I GET…

…the more uncomfortable I am with life; I was a recalcitrant neophyte and didn’t realize until this end of the cycle how much I had missed/am missing. Decades ago Curt said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing…’ Waaay too late I realized how right the old boy was…

PLUS IT’S A MISERABLE MORNING…

…no two ways about it; fogged in meteorologically and metaphysically; from neither is escape sure. What life turned out to be is nothing like what I had in mind, and it is not a refreshing spring-like mist cooling me but rather a thick miasma I am caught up in like a fly in a web (“…help me, help me…”)…I haff ta laff at this ridiculously verbose take on poor, poor pitiful; me…well, it’s how we (I) make (don’t make) a living…

No one has the right...

...to feel as good as I do today.

Or perhaps, everyone has the right to feel as good as I do today but hardly anybody really does, and why I do is beyond me except that it has something to do with the silence beneath the trees I'm sitting under, the slate gray of the sky, the lean of my gleaming black & silver Triumph, the robin's song, the mourning dove cooing.

Plus I got a pocketful of money which, let's face it, helps.

...and I'm a realist so I understand that at a moment's notice I could be
plunged into an abyss of despair, but meanwhile...what can I do with this new-found wealth? - out of nowhere appears 28 hundred bucks! (Well,not quite out of nowhere - I've had to sell this beautiful motorcycle which has me spellbound, staring at it as one might Manet's Olympia). Still, it's what I do - sell bikes - so if I miss this one after just having my last ride on it, I welcome the cash from it and I'm off to buy another.

So far my gambit to not sell bikes to younger people (with all due respect kids) has paid off; I wait until a young-old geezer like myself comes along and then I snare (her)him into my net, but I'm reluctant to sell these classic motorcycles to young people because young people tend to do everything at fast forward and I don't want her/him to wipe out and ruin my bikes, I mean I don't want them to get hurt...the older fellows I've sold bikes to - Lynn, Denal and Charlie - might still get wasted on their bikes, unseated and upended by a Peterbilt maybe, or a yuppie scum Volvo, or maybe even run off the road by a pack of shrieking Ninjas, but I don't think these three guys will be burning up the macadam hot patch.

I know, I know - tell that to T. E. Lawrence.

About yours I don't know...

...but my fantasies incarnate would land me in jail. However, illegal though they may be they are human and since we all have them - subject not to derision are they by others; strange they may seem, but with all (y)our pecadilloes -who's left to judge?

...still, knowing the inner self makes it often difficult to deal with the public persona...I mean I sometimes hear myself saying (or see myself writing)
one thing, possibly even very profound, rare though that may be, but midway through my professed profundity I find myself tripping and stammering over what I am saying because the Real Me Inside is saying, 'How DARE you say that knowing how you are behind closed doors alone?' So my speech trails off and what I was about to pronounce goes half-said then falls apart at the absurdity of this everpresent, relentless posturing one does to cope...

It's not easy being me.

How about you? Hard to live with yourself? I can relate...but you can't get away so you have to deal with it...nu? Who knew...the truth hurts doesn't it?! Only kidding...only kidding, Friend; you're alright in my book - and never mind your quirks. Say did I ever tell you about...

I've had a lot of fun today (from NFTD Archives)

...bear with me, let me explain...rewind...at six o'clock yesterday morning (6/28/98) I bought three $3 instant scratch tickets and went to have a coffee with a couple friends. Sitting at the kitchen table I scratched first one, a loser, and slid it across the table to Larry, 'Nope Larry, yours is a loser.' Now Joyce's, same thing, sorry Sister you're a loser too...well, your ticket is, you're not...and then...

Then I scratched the third ticket, mine. The instructions read something like match any one of your numbers to any one of theirs and win prize indicated. One of their numbers was a 2, so was one of mine, and the prize for me matching their number was: $50,000. I passed the ticket over to Larry. 'Does this say what I think it says?' 'I think it does...' Joyce? 'Absolutely, you got a 2, they got a 2, the prize is 50 grand!' A flurry of excited activity ensued, then 'I gotta go!'

I flew back to Linda at the Jiffy Mart who only moments ago had sold them to me, her first customer of the day. I gave it to her. 'I'd like to cash this in,' I told her, knowing you can only cash up to 599 dollars without going to the Lottery Commission. She took the ticket somewhat ho-humishly and ran it through the computer which popped up with the information that the ticket was legit and $50,000 with my name on it was in a vault down in Concord! Then things got a little animated...I can't stand still but neither can I go to Concord to claim my prize because it's Sunday and they don't open until Monday at 8 - 24 hours I am walking around with a $50,000 ticket in my pocket so of course I can't sleep nor eat and feel that somehow there's been an error and tomorrow my little balloon will burst...a restless night…as happens, morning came and by 8 I was standing tall at the lottery office where I said to Fran, the woman at the front office, 'I'd like to cash this in...' and she looked at it, eyes agog and said, 'Yes, yes, I should think you would,' and began the process of shelling out 50Gs to me!

HERE IS HOW THAT GOES…

You don't get 50 grand. They take out Uncle Sam's right off the top so you don't forget to mention it to the IRS, and after they had done that Fran and someone else from a big suite office came out, shook hands all around and presented me with a certified State of New Hampshire Lottery Commission check for (be still my heart!) 36,000 dollars, a good return on a three dollar bet.

I am directed to the Bank of New Hampshire in downtown metropolitan Concord and when I get there and present my check, once again the camaraderie and pleasantries begin, everybody in the bank is watching what's going on. The teller - her name was Leigh, told me after punching up a few keys on the word processor and consulting with a couple bigger wigs, 'We don't have enough money to cash this...'

I was thunderstruck - I've broke the bank! The esteemed Bank of New Hampshire doesn't have enough money to cash a $36,000 check!? Whatever will I do? I had to borrow 20 bucks to get here...they graciously come to terms and it went like this: they gave me $9,000 in cash and one of their checks for $27,000 which I can deposit in my bank and spend three days hence when it clears...no sweat...and then they are kind enough to count out 90 - can you believe it, 90 $100 bills, new ones, all in sequence and this done said to me, 'If you would like to count it again we have a private room for you...'

I seem to have moved up a tax bracket...

...and a caste in one $36,000 check - suddenly a bank which yesterday would have wanted me deloused, today fetes me as if the sudden acquisition of money was validation of one's true worth. I had to laugh. In I went...I am absolutely astonished at my good fortune and everybody who has heard has been wonderful about it, and such comments: 'Tuffy, can I have a beer?' 'Sure you can, they're in the van; you may be rich but you still gotta go get your own...' From Frankie who I owed a lot of money for a long time as I walked into his garage, 'I heard you'd be coming to see me...' From my dear Aunt Gogi, 'Dear Terry, I want you to know I am sorry for the time you had a penny in your mouth and I made you do a somersault and swallow it. I think you were 3 years old...your loving Aunt Gogi' - or, as I walked into Town Hall to license my new-to-me 1978 Triumph Bonneville, Earl Luther followed me to the Town Clerk's office holding a chair, 'Would you like to sit down Mr. Ward...here have a seat...' How sweet is Lady Luck realized? Very.

…O, o, o, I tell you I am having so much fun! I am debt-free for the first time since about 1957, it is an extraordinary feeling I never thought I'd experience and I mean to be very careful about getting into that five decades long situation again...fast forward several days...so many many times in the last, let's see how long has it been now, today is the 6th of July, I'm way late in publishing this issue but winning like this is a serious distraction, anyway I can't tell you how many times in the last few days since hitting this pot of gold I have heard people say 'It couldn't have happened to anyone more deserving' or variations of it but in MY mind it couldn't have happened to anyone LESS deserving, however...it's your basic simple twist of fate & like I said, I'm having a ball!

...and incidentally, long-time readers might recall one of my daydreams has been to have an inch-thick stack of crisp $100 dollar bills? Well, I had it, actually I had (have!) several and the thrill of riffling through it and knowing it was mine, however circuitous its route to me, put a five-inch smile on my gap-toothed puss, and - and - you are not going to read: 'Sorry, only kidding...'

...because I am not kidding. In a millisecond (however long it takes to scratch a ticket) my life went from poverty to wealth and a week later I am still dumbfounded, dazed, elated, saddened & gladdened and I expect I shall be shaking my shaggy head in bewilderment the rest of my life.