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, your's 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 broken 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.



...for in truth it must be said in no way am I deserving of this largess but what is a poor boy to do? Plus, I've yet to go down on my hands and knees and thank Whomever because it seems so totally hypocritical to thank The Lord when in the past I have been so obtuse as to pray like this, 'Look You Big Bastard, You don't scare me at all! You want prayer, I'll give You prayer: I pray You send me some money You SOB!' and I would shout and scream and weep and rave and fulminate against The Firmament for what was essentially my own undoing, so now, now the loot is in hand, the result of gambling for which Christ threw the gamblers and the money changers from The Temple, while I? I am reveling in my nouveau riche lifestyle, the end result of leading a life of dissolution! Go figure. It makes no sense & it ain't fair but we knew long ago that fair got nothing to do with it, luck does, in this case good luck…well, I've gone on long enough about it for now; you'll please understand it is difficult for me in this the first blush of my new wealth to concentrate on anything else and my writing may not be up to its usual (ahem) riveting and wondrous style.

I WANT TO GO BACK TO GREECE IN THE WORST WAY…

…two years I lived there…I left my heart and soul there in Nea Makri; I met my wife there in the Plaka, I haven’t seen my good friends there – Nikos, Iannis, Nasos and Costa - in nearly 50 years, they may all be dead! And poor Linda is dead.

…plus Nea Makri when I was there was a lonely outpost 26 kilometers north of Athens and there were goats everywhere eating the foliage from the olive trees. It made their coats shiny which was too bad for them because they soon ended up as shiny rugs.

…in the same place today there are high rise gambling casinos a la Atlantic City. Where Alexander the Great came ashore with his legions of soldiers in ancient sailboats and triremes, today gargantuan yachts of the world’s aristocracy now seek a berth in the huge marina built where once there was only the Aegean lapping the shore. It’s a very depressing picture.

IT OCCURS TO ME THAT BEER GOT NOTHING ON CHAMPAGNE…

…when it comes to yeasty eructations, powder river let ‘er buck, give it a rip dude…Budweiser, as it were, cannot hold a candle to a bottle of Australian Yellow Tail champagne when it comes to the belch-a-thon; Australians know about beer yes of course, but geez, what do Aussies know about champagne, for that matter what do I know about Aussies or champagne…well let’s find out…

…and speaking of which I just called my friend John and asked him if he was going out today would he be so kind as to pick me up a bottle (ok, ok, two bottles) of Yellow Tail – I refer to it as – crudely I know – kangaroo piss, and he said he’d be glad to do so and did I want orange juice to go with it to which I said no and he said, ‘No, that would be way too healthy.’

…from my 3rd floor aerie the other day I saw a woman in the parking lot, a woman I had seen a number of times and knew her slightly; as she walked beneath my window I called out to her, holding a bottle of Yellow Tail and two Ball canning jars cum champagne flutes aloft, hey you make do, I said, ‘Hey there, howz things going?’ She smiled and said fine and I said, ‘Want to join me in a bottle of kangaroo piss?’ For an answer I got a very puzzled look from her and a negative head shake as she walked away mumbling…

WHEEEW…I GOTTA LAY OFF THE YELLOW TAIL…

…Criminys, I’m beginning to carry things around in a pouch, I hop instead of walk and I’ve been eating a lot of eucalyptus leaves so I’m cutting back a few bottles per week on my bubbly champagne buddy from Down Under; instead of six a week we’ll try three & see how that works out...moderation in all things, including moderation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, therefore…I submit -

…it’s been a little cottage industry for several people. That guy selling this wine to the Harmonyville Store is going to get ‘Salesman of the Month’ at this rate, the kids who own the store will be able to go to Europe again this year and my friend John who’s been doing all the footwork is due for a raise…

…I’m not sure that I get anything worthwhile from it unless days on days in a daze counts…and if one persists in leading a life of denial you can get away with (and justify) just about anything…ergo, hold on Dude I gotta pour me a glass of Yellow Tail…

Aye Lad, things were going to be different as I recall; in my youth this is not where I thought I’d be…to think, just think of all the opportunities I didn’t take advantage of, missed completely…ah me…

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” John Greenleaf Whittier wrote more than a century ago, “the saddest are these: It might have been!’

NOW PAUL ROBESON - HE HAD CONFIDENCE

…and of course in his day was world famous for his singing, acting and stentorian voice but it all came to a dead end for the son of a runaway slave when the House Un-American Activities Committee kicked his feet out from under him for being a Communist or at least a Communist sympathizer back in the 1950s when in their zeal HUAC interrogated and ruined the careers and lives of 100s of very talented people doomed mostly to obscurity or posthumous fame; it was the end of Paul Robeson’s American career. In Europe he was still large, as he was in life.

To one member of HUAC who asked him why, if he liked Russia so much, didn’t he go there and live, the great basso profundo thundered, "Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you!"

In fairness to him, because he was enamored of Communism in theory at least (which isn’t considered all that bad now that it’s not the bugaboo it was during The Cold War, discounting a billion Chinese…but that for later, “Let,” as Napoleon said, “…the Tiger sleep, for when she awakes the world will tremble…”) he, like most of us then, wasn’t privy to the horrors of Stalinism.

Only after his death were the enormities of Stalin’s atrocities brought to light. In fact he was responsible for more heinous crimes and murdered more millions than Hitler, kindred spirits he and Stalin, two archfiends, the Genghis Khans of the 20th Century.

…now what was I prattling on about…oh yes, Poor Paul Robeson. Well Brother, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time but you did the right thing and often when one does one pays a price.

…RANDOM NOTES FROM WRINKLED SCRAPS…

AS I STEPPED FROM THE PORCH…

…and walked over to my truck Irene followed me out to the door and holding it open with one hand and shaking her other fist at me said, ‘…and, you fat-ass son of a bitch, it better not be another year before you get back over here you bastard, you hear me…don’t stay away so gawddamned long…’ and from inside the house I hear her son Ronnie say, ‘Jesus Ma, a simple good-by would do it…’

THEN THERE’S THE FLIP SIDE OF THAT…

…I ordered a foot long from Wacky Willy’s Nearly World Famous Hot Dogs in Claremont NH and also, from his partner Sonya, got a container of the world’s hottest salsa…as I walked back to my truck Sonya stuck her head out the window and said, ‘Terry, wait…don’t go…’ to which Wacky Willy immediately amended to the delight of a dozen onlookers, ‘…bet you don’t hear that much…’

THERE’S AN ATTITUDE OF REPOSE…

…one must assume in a bar if the day’s catch is to be made…certain protocols are necessary if one is going to successfully spend the day cadging drinks and dope in a dump like Carrie Nation’s, then the world’s best watering hole; now, like many of its worthy patrons from nearly forty years ago, dead.

…well that’s the way it goes. I lived in the place, literally; I was proving my father right, my father who had said to me once, ‘Son, if you don’t change your way of living, in ten years you won’t know where your family is…’ He was half-right, only took five years.

…there’s a visceral appeal to the netherworld, Subterranea…one more of those places/things you realize you should avoid but can’t, the draw is fraught with intrigue and dazzling possibilities and surviving danger is the biggest adrenalin rush of all…on a number of occasions I should have been dead but luck intervened and here I still am…it pays to know people in low places.

…I have to be in a certain mood to write - melancholy works - and some of J. S. Bach’s many concertos and choral works are as melancholy as it gets and helps a lugubrious guy like me cope…I wouldn’t say I’m a crybaby or overtly sentimental nor do I look at it as neither a boast nor complaint to realize after nearly seven decades that I am an emotional, philosophical, fiscal and physical basket case, and the vainest of narcissists. Who knew? I haffta laff…

IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT “…NOTES…”

…you know how self-centered it/I is/am…(I don’t understand why anyone would be interested in reading about what I do when I’m sure what you do is far more compelling, but anyway – he went on with another maddening interjection)…me is what I do, it’s all I know and not so well at that. Some people like it some don’t, so it goes…you know that even though Kurt Vonnegut used ‘…so it goes…’ long ago in Slaughterhouse Five, doesn’t mean you can’t use it now and again. I mean he didn’t have residuals on the phrase…anyway, where was I before I interrupted myself…o yes, as usual babbling along ad infinitum ad nauseum…

…over the years from various media outlets – People Magazine, The New York Times, NH Public Television, and a raft of local, statewide and ultimately nationwide reviews in newspapers and magazines - NFTD has had basically rave reviews; here at home we/I know better; you don’t have to be around me in real life very long to see that the me in NOTES is nowhere to be seen, in fact doesn’t exist, is a self-made, self-serving myth…I suppose one way or another everything in NOTES is at best embellished truth and at its worst out and out fabrication, lies.

…the truth lies somewhere in between and in large part as life wanes I cannot always discern what I think happened and what happened. Doesn’t seem to matter…nothing else matters when you can’t breathe.

…I dissolve into the ever-ready abyss of despair and wail off a few lamentations at my self-wrought plight, such an indignity, such an ignominious end to a wasted and largely vainglorious life…not to put too fine a point on it…

…awash in lassitude a latitude wide, drowning in ennui, staggering from vertigo, clambering for purchase – did I forget anything? – o yes, wallowing in self-pity! I find only NOTES FROM THE DUMP ever-present and unquestioning; in it I create a world I wish might have been but wasn’t and will never be. In it, NOTES, as in me, a touch of humor to ease the nearly insufferable pain.

…fact of the matter is I wish I was dead because this isn’t living; enslaved to a bunch of pills, tethered to a noisy 24-7 machine, in and out of hospitals, surgery, can barely breathe, can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t even pace the floor (with apologies to Ruth Brown). And can dance neither vertically nor horizontally…

…but you can’t just give up the ghost, you’ve got to struggle on, it’s a struggle to be sure; life is not a walk in the park for anyone, rich or poor, known and unknown, so I’m apt to grouse about it at length sometimes when it’s particularly virulent like a plague bacillus instead of nice and comfy like we’d like, but I’ve lived large in nearly seven decades; until recent years I had an easy life and I know I know so and so has it a lot worse than me okay, I feel bad, but I’m stuck with me, ergo so are you, lucky you! Actually, lucky me to have you in my life, Dear Reader, even if I don’t know your name or if I do!

NOTES FROM THE DUMP, NFTD, think about it - world-class writing for world-class readers…wheew, speaking of world class I’ve got a world-class headache which I’ve probably given myself, I’m kind of hard to take sometimes – I’ve had a couple other people in this world tell me I gave them a headache too…it’s a thing of mine…

Unlike the valiant soldier slain in battle...

…my untimely demise I fear, when it arrives, will be as I am ‘relaxing’ at cribbage with the computer, in sets of 100, and I’ve no doubt played 100,000 games of this antediluvian card game and after setting the computer to play its hardest against me with an aggressive optimal defense, we are fairly evenly matched. It – the computer which I have named Kalo Feelosmoo, Greek for 'my good friend', comes with chatter and bells and huzzahs and what-all paraphernalia to make it seem there’s someone here in reality but it is that very someone I DON’T want around with all the blather and drivel between deals etc and re-playing each card (with me nodding sagely in agreement with whatever was being said like I cared but really I wasn’t there and I wasn’t listening), whereas you can shut the program up by a toggle switch which I do and then it is silence reigning as the cards rain down…6, 8, A=15/2, 10, 25, 6= 31 for 2 and when I am whipped into submission by Kalo Feelosmoo(as opposed to sitting across from a humanoid which would be bad form and could get you hurt) I can give full froth in venting my anger and hostility at ‘Kalo Paythee’…no more Mr. Nice Guy, o no, now in this neurotic world in which I dwell, the hostile air is sprayed with vituperations %$#?!&*$, venom, ?%$!##$% and aspersions on Kalo Feelosmoo's mother, character, and his pedigree, all of which bellicose dissembling combined, I believe, is going to send a #1 jolt to the ticker as I croak in the middle of a volley of expletives directed at a machine. A machine for crying out loud…

Pretty ignominious death when you think of it. I better chill out, find something else to ‘relax’ with. Maybe take up basket weaving.

There's a number of things about dying...

…which do not hold that much appeal for me, indeed to none of us, but must be dealt with, so let’s cut to the chase…you and I both know that one of the main reasons the nursing home looks so grim in your mind’s eye is because, a) somebody’s got to wipe your ass and brush your teeth, and b) rarely do you leave the place except in a pine box…so part of the dying process is, unless you get it over with quick like a heart attack or somebody puts a round through you, you gotta move out of your cozy little apartment and into a room with a stranger who wants to talk, and who stinks. All nursing homes stink and you know why, no need to get too picturesque…

Many, maybe even most of the people who work in nursing homes and hospice care are loving and dedicated but in every one of them there’s a virago with a rectal thermometer, an attitude and your morphine so you’ve got to kiss a little ass even on your death bed fer Cris’sakes; for comfort one finds solace in the fact that the poor dear spends all day looking up/down and sideways at assholes; if you are not the lead dog in the traces what are you looking at?

NOT SURE I CAN TELL THIS RIGHT OR IF YOU HAD TO BE THERE…

…but it goes something like this: Some friends went on vacation one summer and had me look after their home etc. and as such I was afforded the use of a shower out of which I have just stepped and noticing a summer heat rash at the top of my legs – let’s get the anatomy out of the way here – the crotch, front…a drainpipe, a scrotum and the twins dangled there – so I saw in the medicine cabinet some cream and put it on…as I dressed, my groin area began to tingle and get warm, then warmer, then warmer - now hot and hotter - the twins are burning up and I begin yelling and yanking my clothes off – thank heavens no one was there – to touch this tender area with this cream on it is like putting a Zippo to my flesh and it’s burning me so badly I am no longer shouting but shrieking in agony – it was at this juncture in my life when I realized that the celluloid heroes who holler manly and shout like stentorians to the very end, actually scream in ear-piercing, off-the-charts, high-pitched decibels; no heroic roars here Dude, o no not this boy - and jumping up and down and racing from room to room – bareass mind you – suffering the worst agonies I’ve ever known…nothing physical before or since hurt that much! Think H2SO4…

O man, had anyone happened through the door they would have seen a raving lunatic yowling in pain and leaping up & down in-place while pointing at his bouncing gonads – funny visual no? Two more showers and one hour later the blaze was out. Lesson learned: Desitin yes, but never put Desenex crème on your nuts…

(I have a beloved Aunt Gogi who loves me but quit reading NFTD many years ago after I told a number of my homeless-covered-with-lice and living-with-rats tales…I wonder how this one would go over…)