Obama
Current mood: apathetic
Category: Life

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />.. ..

.. ..

.. ..

.. ..

NB188   Too Old to Believe

.. ..

.. ..

When I was a young man and full of hope for our country and its people, I thought <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />....America.... would grow and become even grander. Born just after the end of WWII in a time when the only manufacturing left on the earth was mostly in the ..US.. with Asia and ..Europe.. giant mounds of bricks and mortar. Any man that could do an honest day's work could afford a family and a house and get promoted over the years and have a pension waiting for him at retirement.

.. ..

Bobby Kennedy had just won the Democratic nomination for the Presidency and I was just sure that ....America.... would explode with opportunity for all people. Then in a second all was lost. Like his older brother, Bobby was dead from a gun shot wound. This country has been going badly ever since. Downsizing, stagflation, outsourcing, insourcing, flat world, NAFTA, and now the FED doing everything possible to devalue the dollar until the Peso looks like the stronger currency.

.. ..

Obama comes along and talks like Bobby once did, with all that hope and energy to change the world for the best, but I'm too old to believe again.   

3:13 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The big lie about Social Security
Current mood: aggravated
Category: News and Politics

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

NB178   Social Security is Not Broke

I've heard that Social Security is out of money. The Cold War was completely financed by the money withheld between 1946 and 1986. Trillions of dollars were taken from the general fund for spending on the military. By not isolating Social Security deductions from hundreds of millions of paychecks our elected leaders had all the money they needed to do whatever they wanted. If there was never a separate account – IT CAN'T BE BROKE! The beneficiaries of this spending were stockholders and upper management of the defense industry. Had this not happened, there would be a surplus so large it would pay larger checks with complete medical coverage and prescriptions for generations to come.

So what can we say about people that knew they were ruining our country while they passed their midnight acts where no could see what was going on?  For that matter why doesn't the government make sure their spending is below their income like we have to do all our lives. If they over-spend, all they do is ask the Federal Reserve to print a few billion and then agree to pay 13% interest. Wouldn't it be smarter to not over-spend? I'd go without a lot before I would borrow at 13%.

The corruption that builds up over 200 years is so entrenched that another constitutional convention is called for. It could take quite some time to develop an alternative to the current system but it would be well worth the effort. Something extreme needs to happen or ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America will end up looking like a fourth world country indebted to the world.

9:57 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Time to give some of that wealth back
Category: Blogging

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

Christmas is a good time to start giving

Seventeen weeks into the sale of the house and not so much as a low ball offer. When the president of Wells Fargo Bank says publicly that these are the worst times for real estate since the Great Depression, he isn't kidding. In fact, there's nothing funny about what's going on.

If this is some kind of pyramid scheme where a person buys their spot on the pyramid board and waits patiently for the blocks to fill in until they get their money back, we're just waiting for our turn. If prices fall to twenty year ago levels almost all of our retirement money will have disappeared in a single year. And we'll go from occasional volunteering at the local mission serving the homeless to standing in those lines on a permanent basis. Is this the future the New World Order has in mind for all of us with personal estates under $10,000,000?

We never had that much in life, going without things is the way we got by. Unfortunately if you're laid off at 55 years of age with seven years until the reduced social security checks, you'll find the savings so painfully put away each year will fly out the door in a single month. Thirty years of savings will only get you 30 months plus whatever interest the funds had accumulated. NAFTA is one of the direct proofs that our government has declared war on Americans by making moving production offshore so lucrative that companies have no rational choice but to do so. Corporations were the masters that ordered our "elected leaders" to draft the act originally so it isn't exactly a shock it makes big profits a cake walk, which they are allowed to defer the taxes on these profits.  

So it's not so much our government that is the enemy of the American people it's the corporations of this country who answer to the demanding greed of the investor class. These people demand 10-40 % return on their investments in a 3-5% inflation world. Unfortunately to get these outrageously high returns someone has to pay the price, that would be every hard working American that has to pay high rents, watch their wages get swallowed by millions of competitors swarming into our country, and still expected to spend every penny they have so the retail sector can stay healthy and prosperous.

When is enough, enough? If the top 1% of the population has fortunes so massive that their descendents can't spend it all no matter how wastefully they live, isn't it time to show some self control? Does ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America have to resemble some depressing sci-fi movie with masses wandering the earth in squalor, while the few live like kings of old? It's Christmas Day and an excellent point to begin the process of giving some of that extreme wealth back to the faceless masses it was taken from. With 90% of all wealth in their possession, they are the only people that can make life in America any better.

8:11 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lead Filled Toys
Current mood: angry
Category: Blogging

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

NB174   FDA Approved

According to Wikipedia, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is responsible for the safety regulation of most types of foods, dietary supplements, drugs, vaccines, biological medical products, blood products, medical devices, radiation-emitting devices, veterinary products, and cosmetics.

The FDA's federal budget request for 2008 totaled $2.1 billion, which seems plenty to protect Americans from dishonest providers of products. As I read all the departments involved and the scope of their responsibilities, it became obvious that there aren't resources to do the job.

The FDA was extremely slow in warning the public as to the pet food fiasco where many Americans lost their beloved pets before the recalls were finally put in place. I was lucky in that I wasn't buying any of the recalled list at the time.

All the effort drug companies go through to get FDA approval runs in the hundreds of millions so say nothing of medical equipment companies spend. So why do we have to buy test kits and rub various parts of toys to make sure we're not killing our children? It turns out that the trade agreements our government officials have signed have such low testing and anti-poisoning statutes, that it was inevitable that our kids would be jeopardized in the process.

Besides sending the manufacturing jobs overseas that are involved with toy production the trade agreements made toxic poisons a cheap alternative to safe materials. These cost savings not only made for much larger corporate profits that make the investor class smile, but allowed huge incentive checks for the management teams that authorized the dangerous materials. Makes one wonder if they bring any of these deadly toys home for their own kids, doesn't it.

7:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Christmas Finally Lands
Current mood: blessed
Category: Blogging

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

I'm getting old, haven't had a job in years, still using 401 money to get to 62, can't sell the house in this market, can't find toys that aren't made in China, everything thing points to that song, "Is that all there is?".

Then while listening to a couple of folk singers leading the crowd in various Christmas carols at a public market, it lands. Christmas, that is. I looked around and didn't recognize anyone but my wife next to me, yet people seemed as though we were all in this thing called life together. I felt protective towards little kids running around with their fresh eyes and high energy. I noticed mothers with young daughters as they shopped, both happy to be with the other. I saw old men in cheap suits walking as if there will be another day. I saw young families sitting at tables eating and talking as all families do. I even sang softly with others as the overwhelming sense of belonging to the community of people gathered there that day. I smiled at anyone who looked at me and got back same by young and old alike.

..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America is alive and well. People are more like me than different. We are all in this together and I wish them all the best. These feelings are strange after months of depression and disinterest in life. Life is worth living even for someone with old tired eyes and a rusty soul. God bless the children, mothers and caring fathers, and all with kindness in their hearts.

I'm so thankful Christmas arrived. I needed the break from my reality. I need Christmas. I love Christmas. I love my family and I'm looking forward to Christmas Eve and the entire scene that goes with the next day. I wish it could last all year long, not the shopping, but the sense of happiness and belonging to the world, of good will towards others, and of the sense of hope that everything will be just fine for our children's children.

7:13 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Made in China
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Blogging

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> During the eighties I'd read articles in the Wall Street Journal about jobs being sent to ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />China. I was in management in the sales arena of electronic components, even then I knew that wasn't good news for America. This trend continued through the nineties when off shoring became the battle cry of America's industrial might being handed the communist country. Now that I lost my job to a Mexican in Renosa for a tenth of what I was making it has become perfectly clear that manufacturing is essentially gone.

I went out to buy a desk lamp for a table I planned to do some doodle art (the only pastime I can afford these days) when I was told every lamp in the store was made in China, regardless of whether the company was Canadian, American or European. I asked the sales person if there was a store in town that might have exception to this reality. I drove across town and found a German halogen for $377.95 which I passed on. Then after a couple of second hand stores I found a lamp made in Taiwan for $39.00 and bought it on the spot, claiming victory after spending all day looking.

After the lead paint found in much of the Chinese made products with the direct knowledge of American executives fiasco this Christmas, I had driven my personal stake in the ground – no more "Made in China" products. I wasn't sure why corporate CEOs were knowingly trying to kill off our young, but I suspected it had to do with being traitors to our people by giving our enemies our jobs and now working with the enemy to kill our children. We're still in the cold war only now the communists have powerful friends in Washington and board rooms all over our country.

I don't care how many things I go without until I die. I still won't kill my granddaughter off for corporate profits and the exploding wealth of the investor class in our country no matter what.

5:24 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Possible collapse of the US
Current mood: anxious
Category: News and Politics

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

The Perfect Financial Storm? Worries of a seller in a housing slump

When I was a boy all I ever heard was how great ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America was, how lucky I was to be born here, and how lucky for the world America was there for it in WWII. This self worship still can be found in many if not most places in our country. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't live anywhere else. But I'm afraid we're about to get our "comeupins".

Many things had to happen before the US would be vulnerable enough to get really hurt bad in the next few years.

            1) Since WWII Americans have had the good life, first from being the only factories standing after most of the world had been blown to bits, then by borrowing money and spending it as if there's no tomorrow. Now we're upside down on many of our homes and into the credit cards in a big way.

            2) In an attempt to mine the human wealth of Asia, US companies as well as European ones has devoted enough capital, plant and equipment, and management to revive our countries twice over to build up a producer/consumer block so powerful as to dictate the US foreign and fiscal policy for decades to come.

            3) A refusal of the petroleum industry for the last 40 years to build more refinery plants in spite of increasing demand then say at this point they can't reduce prices, it's a demand problem of emerging nations needing more oil.

            4) The formation of the Euro, the first megacurrency capable of providing world liquidity if called on to do so. The Europeans are super savers compared to the US and therefore a tight fisted approach works well for a steady currency. One point to remember is their CEOs don't make 100 to 1000 times an average employee.

            5) A cold war/ arms race that ended up destroying the Soviet Union, we ended up a debtor nation by the way in the same war.

It used to be not that long ago that "if America coughed the rest of the world caught a cold" now it's more like "if America has pneumonia the rest of the world would suffer from sniffles." It's easy to point out various bad guys in this situation but we all had something to do with if we're honest about it. Dropping my asking price for my house each month in response to others dropping their price, I wonder what will this all come to. Since 70% of our economy is American consumers, what would happen if we can't borrow on the equity in our homes? What spending will I do if I can't sell the thing for more than I owe, forget having a down for another place? If China backs off buying US T-bills and gas prices go to $5.00 or more, the world just might get the last laugh after all.

1:20 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

When can politicians pray?
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Religion and Philosophy

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

Prayer in High Office

"In God We Trust" is engraved on every coin of the realm these days, put there during Eisenhower's administration to differentiate the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />United States from the evil empire of the Soviet Union. I guess the powers that be thought it important to clearly mark the good guys from the bad ones. This is interesting because it was western capitalists that financed the Bolshevik Revolution for a mere twenty million dollars. Pretty cheap set up charges to create the boogieman that's behind every tree so the military-industrial complex can charge the America people trillions over the next century to protect us from their evil offspring.

God has also been said to be on the side that demolishes other people in His name sake. "God, help us do thy will" was part of the prayer said on both sides of the line in the Civil War. God reportedly has directed Islamic warriors to "Kill the Infidel." The Israelites were convinced God wanted them to have the land of Canaan (Palestine). Pretty much when ever ambitious men decide to take land from another they evoke the will of God somehow to cleanse what they are about to do. How many Protestants died for blasphemy in the dark ages, 50 million or so?

The founding fathers were so concerned that the Church of England not become as powerful in the colonies as it was in England, they put the separation between church and state phrase into the Constitution. This basically said there couldn't be an official religion for the country. It did not say one in high office couldn't have a personal belief system just that he couldn't elevate that religion to being the official one for his constituents.

Recently the governor of Georgia held prayer services off state grounds to pray for rain. This act has caused some serious concern in various circles. I don't see the problem. He has that right as a citizen to pray to his God. The fact that he did so at a announced place and time is unfortunate, but still his right to do so. The time to get really concerned is the day a national Sunday law is passed where all citizens are required to worship on Sunday, that they will not be able to buy or sell on that day and people are urged to report any and all violations. That's the kind of thing the founding fathers were greatly concerned about, not whether some governor of a drought plagued state offers up a prayer.

The fact that over an inch of rain fell the next day is beside the point.

6:03 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Memories from childhood in a big city.
Current mood: complacent
Category: Life

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

078   Summer in the City

The July heat started early, by seven it was 92 degrees and 92% humidity. I was on top of my bed with just my jockeys. The sheets were damp as usual and I could taste stale beer from the night before in my mouth. I loved Saturday mornings, a whole two days before I had to go back to that boring school where everyone just hung out. Shashana made life worth living but her father said I was a loser and had to see at school only. I could hear my mother snoring in the next room, her and some guy that went by PJ, I assume because that's all I ever saw him in was his pajamas. I'm told he looks a lot like my real dad, some fast talking smoothie that got her pregnant 15 years ago. I've seen a couple of pictures in her top dresser drawer, went off to sea as she tells it, I just think he went off period.

The sweat slowly crawled down my forehead and joined a pool of sweat already forming around my eyes. I'd wipe my eyes but they would just as wet in a couple of minutes. The old, tired window air-conditioner droned on in the distance, a kind of rattling stutter announcing how hard it was working. I suppose it dropped the temperature in the two bedroom apartment by two or three degrees in the hot part of the day, but it didn't seem to matter if it was on or not for the most part. I liked the sweat trickling down my head, it tickled in a nuisance sort of way. My brother, Aaron, was only ten and looked up to me. I had to run fast to lose him to be alone in the city, my favorite pastime. The city was source of endless pleasure for me on the weekends. I couldn't see my girl so I was free to walk the streets until well after dark and see what there was to see.

Enough for tickle sweat, it was time to get out there before anyone else got up. The shower was slow to get hot and I was shocked into wakefulness by cold pipes which I could not imagine where they ran that they would be cold in July. As I pulled up my best dirty jeans, I had to smile at what a handsome devil I was. One final check on the do and I was off. Early in the morning was a completely different world than the one at night. Only early risers were up, you know the type, the "Isn't it a great morning?", cheerful, up-beat, smiling greeters that make you respond in kind and by doing lift your spirits as well. I like the mornings the best because of them, no other time of the day do people put themselves out there like that.

The store fronts form a line of wrought iron that if it were in a different location would make as fine a fence as any mansion has as adornment on its perimeter. But with cigarette ads and hand-written daily specials it reminds you that the neighborhood is rough and night time is the time of opportunity for thieves. I'm always looking at the sidewalk when I walk, not only to avoid uneven sections that can make the coolest guy trip and look stupid, but to find what others drop. Since I was a small boy I have found enough stuff to fill the average apartment to the ceiling. Of course I didn't keep all the "treasures", usually trading or giving them away to my brother or friends. I include alleys when I say sidewalks, really anywhere I walk, in buildings, elevators, hall ways, stores, banks, busses, taxis, anywhere really. People lose or drop all kinds of things. Wallets had proved to be the biggest disappointment of all. It seems that either the wallet had practically nothing in it except photos and a driver's license, hardly worth the time and trouble in returning it, or I got a nice thank you after handing over hundreds of dollars. I never thought once about keeping the money and tossing the wallet, guess mine is too important to me to keep someone else's.

Everything besides a wallet was fair game though and I have made plenty of money selling off the treasures or better yet trading for something I really wanted for a long time. Jimmy "payday" Booker had a tigers skull I wanted since I was eight years old, so when I found a box of old baseball cards behind an apartment building with at least six cards he didn't have the trade was on. I even managed to hold back many of the best ones for later deals in the neighborhood. I know I could have asked around the block about losing a box of baseball cards, but I didn't and I've never felt guilty about it. Mom wants me to get rid of it, says it creeps her out but I insist it has a role in my future and bad luck will follow me the rest of my life if I let go of it. She knows I just make things up to get my way, but is proud of how elaborate the stories are I come up with.

Yes, I've found money. Lots of it, almost everywhere I go I see pennies dropped or thrown down because of their uselessness. But three five gallon water bottles in my closet would argue they do have value. I counted one once, $367.21 was inside. The third is three fourths full and some day I'm going to use the thousand for a special purpose. I'd put it in the bank to earn interest but as we all know numbers on paper spend much easier than hundreds of pounds of copper colored zinc. Then there are the nickels, dimes, and quarters, that's in another bottle that I spend when it's full, there are all kinds of rainy days between it getting full. Bills too, I don't know why anyone would let a twenty or even a dollar bill blow down the street but it'll never get past me no matter how much soot has accumulated on top of it, or debris on top. I pride myself on being able to spot money green if all I have is a sixteenth inch square spot to see.

The sun wasn't in the sky yet just its effects. My T-shirt was already soaked under my arm pits. So was everyone else's so it didn't seem to matter much. There were plenty of times growing up that I swore I would leave ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Kansas City and move to Anchorage when I got old enough. The Fourth was last weekend and I had plenty firecrackers with fizzled fuses to collect as I walked along. Later I would re-roll the powder into one inch diameter Kraft paper kegs for my steel pipe cannon. The cannon had been welded onto a twenty pound base and have a hole on one end for lighting. I kept it hidden deep in my closet to ensure Aaron didn't find and kill himself. The tiny fuses were put in a soup can and lit causing all kinds of miniature rocket firings that Aaron could watch.

I had a ball of string in our room that was higher than my mattress off the floor. I keep it sprayed with coatings of watered down Lysol to fight its natural tendency to smell like gym socks and sewer water. I've no idea what use in the future the Ball of Mystery will play in my life but still I add new pieces after almost every walk, and today is no exception as I pick up a waded up piece with dirt and an old straw tangled up with it. I once tried to think of how I could collect straws, but gave up after I found there was a limit to how many times you could one inside the other. Gum wrappers are quite another story. They can be folded so they form interlocking chains and our bedroom has one that covers almost the entire ceiling, held up in place by push tacks. The last time I estimated the length, since there is no way I'd take it down to accurately measure it, it was over a half mile, somewhere around 2800 feet. I haven't added to it since I was 12. I figure Aaron is old enough to take over where I left off and have already shown him how to fold the wrappers. He hasn't been bit by the bug yet, but I still have hopes for him.

After a few blocks I had both my front pockets full with bottle caps, at least the ones without cork inside, those I had snapped as I found them. Snapping was an art form and if you put your hand just behind your ear and snapped your thumb and middle finger just right, you can make a cap sail twenty sometimes thirty feet through the air. My record is 46 feet but that was with a wind in my back. Six pack plastic holders, a pencil with a point, a rain- soaked grass-stained hard ball, A KC A's baseball cap that reeked of beer, a quarter and six pennies, a losing raffle ticket stub from April, various washers and nuts mostly quarter and three eights inch, and the handle of a broken baseball bat.

I used to pick up unidentifiable pieces of plastic but after a large box had been filled I just couldn't think of a single use for all the colored pieces so I threw it in the dumpster. There were other collections that died off from disinterest. Rocks, pitch and tar chunks, empty beer cans, roofing fragments, chipped pieces of brick, and broken glass but not until I was convinced I couldn't heat them up enough to reform them into works of art.

By noon I was hungry and returned to hide from the afternoon heat waves. You know, the ones that make people and cars look like fun house mirrors of wavy, distorted versions of themselves. When I was younger I actually got two eggs to fry on the sidewalk outside our house after I scrubbed the cement to get the grit off. They were overt easy and were delicious with a little salt. But mostly on the weekend afternoons we all spent the those hours in mom's room, hoping some of that tepid air dribbling out of the window AC would somehow roll far enough to touch one of us on the floor. The only other place was in the basement where the storage bins were. The air was stale and smelled like rancid water but slightly cooler than mom's bedroom floor. Definitely where Aaron and I disappeared to when PJ was in a romantic mood, icky.

The worst was over by six as the braver of the residents came out to get errands run before dark. Darkness was the world of the bad men and boys that would grow up to be bad men. I knew who they were and had always declined their invitation to join their gang. That had its down sides, because if they didn't have anyone else to torture they looked me up. I ran track at school and had developed one of the biggest sets of lungs in the mid-west, when combined with long powerful legs you have the perfect get away. I guess breaking past the iron bars wasn't good exercise for chasing me down the street. Either way I never got caught even though I was cornered plenty of times. I think they just didn't try that hard or I'd have bruises all over all the time. I had talked to them one on one at various times and we had much in common, but when they got together it was like we had never talked.

I would walk the streets at night occasionally and see a whole world that never shown itself in the daytime. The gang leaning on the cars along the sidewalk making for an uneasy passage for everyone except the bad men carrying guns and back slapping any of the gang that looked at them. The men walking their wives to the laundry mat carrying the huge baskets. The loners drifting down the street, avoiding all confrontations and were unusual enough that everyone let them be. I wanted to grow and be one of them, they had complete freedom of the night without being targeted. The older women with the rouge and red-red lipstick calling out to men passing by wanting to know if they had the time or asking if they wanted a good time. The younger girls with the short skirts leaning over talking to the guys that never got out of their fancy cars. And me the skinny kid no one bothered with as I slipped through the underbrush of city streets, stopping to pick something up that reflected light of the dingy street lights.

But most nights I was on the roof, a safe place where the gangs were too bored to hang out among the vents and still warm pitch of the flat roofs. Up high I could feel whatever wind there was, unblocked by brick and cement canyons below. There the faint star would flicker its message of hope for a better life. There I would test my bravery by walking along the six inch wide wall that formed the outside of the building façade. My manhood was proved over and over again as a rush of adrenaline raced through my body each time I lost my balance and nearly fell to my death. I never told anyone about my passages to manhood, especially Aaron, I would never forgive myself if he died at what I almost died from.

Midnight on a Saturday night I got down off the wall and returned to the sweltering apartment where Aaron was sleeping, a radio played soft music in mom's bedroom where I heard her soft voice giggle from time to time, a lullaby I'd fall asleep to soaked in my own sweat on top of the bed in my jockeys.  

11:17 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Memories from childhood in a big city.
Current mood: complacent
Category: Life

..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

078   Summer in the City

The July heat started early, by seven it was 92 degrees and 92% humidity. I was on top of my bed with just my jockeys. The sheets were damp as usual and I could taste stale beer from the night before in my mouth. I loved Saturday mornings, a whole two days before I had to go back to that boring school where everyone just hung out. Shashana made life worth living but her father said I was a loser and had to see at school only. I could hear my mother snoring in the next room, her and some guy that went by PJ, I assume because that's all I ever saw him in was his pajamas. I'm told he looks a lot like my real dad, some fast talking smoothie that got her pregnant 15 years ago. I've seen a couple of pictures in her top dresser drawer, went off to sea as she tells it, I just think he went off period.

The sweat slowly crawled down my forehead and joined a pool of sweat already forming around my eyes. I'd wipe my eyes but they would just as wet in a couple of minutes. The old, tired window air-conditioner droned on in the distance, a kind of rattling stutter announcing how hard it was working. I suppose it dropped the temperature in the two bedroom apartment by two or three degrees in the hot part of the day, but it didn't seem to matter if it was on or not for the most part. I liked the sweat trickling down my head, it tickled in a nuisance sort of way. My brother, Aaron, was only ten and looked up to me. I had to run fast to lose him to be alone in the city, my favorite pastime. The city was source of endless pleasure for me on the weekends. I couldn't see my girl so I was free to walk the streets until well after dark and see what there was to see.

Enough for tickle sweat, it was time to get out there before anyone else got up. The shower was slow to get hot and I was shocked into wakefulness by cold pipes which I could not imagine where they ran that they would be cold in July. As I pulled up my best dirty jeans, I had to smile at what a handsome devil I was. One final check on the do and I was off. Early in the morning was a completely different world than the one at night. Only early risers were up, you know the type, the "Isn't it a great morning?", cheerful, up-beat, smiling greeters that make you respond in kind and by doing lift your spirits as well. I like the mornings the best because of them, no other time of the day do people put themselves out there like that.

The store fronts form a line of wrought iron that if it were in a different location would make as fine a fence as any mansion has as adornment on its perimeter. But with cigarette ads and hand-written daily specials it reminds you that the neighborhood is rough and night time is the time of opportunity for thieves. I'm always looking at the sidewalk when I walk, not only to avoid uneven sections that can make the coolest guy trip and look stupid, but to find what others drop. Since I was a small boy I have found enough stuff to fill the average apartment to the ceiling. Of course I didn't keep all the "treasures", usually trading or giving them away to my brother or friends. I include alleys when I say sidewalks, really anywhere I walk, in buildings, elevators, hall ways, stores, banks, busses, taxis, anywhere really. People lose or drop all kinds of things. Wallets had proved to be the biggest disappointment of all. It seems that either the wallet had practically nothing in it except photos and a driver's license, hardly worth the time and trouble in returning it, or I got a nice thank you after handing over hundreds of dollars. I never thought once about keeping the money and tossing the wallet, guess mine is too important to me to keep someone else's.

Everything besides a wallet was fair game though and I have made plenty of money selling off the treasures or better yet trading for something I really wanted for a long time. Jimmy "payday" Booker had a tigers skull I wanted since I was eight years old, so when I found a box of old baseball cards behind an apartment building with at least six cards he didn't have the trade was on. I even managed to hold back many of the best ones for later deals in the neighborhood. I know I could have asked around the block about losing a box of baseball cards, but I didn't and I've never felt guilty about it. Mom wants me to get rid of it, says it creeps her out but I insist it has a role in my future and bad luck will follow me the rest of my life if I let go of it. She knows I just make things up to get my way, but is proud of how elaborate the stories are I come up with.

Yes, I've found money. Lots of it, almost everywhere I go I see pennies dropped or thrown down because of their uselessness. But three five gallon water bottles in my closet would argue they do have value. I counted one once, $367.21 was inside. The third is three fourths full and some day I'm going to use the thousand for a special purpose. I'd put it in the bank to earn interest but as we all know numbers on paper spend much easier than hundreds of pounds of copper colored zinc. Then there are the nickels, dimes, and quarters, that's in another bottle that I spend when it's full, there are all kinds of rainy days between it getting full. Bills too, I don't know why anyone would let a twenty or even a dollar bill blow down the street but it'll never get past me no matter how much soot has accumulated on top of it, or debris on top. I pride myself on being able to spot money green if all I have is a sixteenth inch square spot to see.

The sun wasn't in the sky yet just its effects. My T-shirt was already soaked under my arm pits. So was everyone else's so it didn't seem to matter much. There were plenty of times growing up that I swore I would leave ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Kansas City and move to Anchorage when I got old enough. The Fourth was last weekend and I had plenty firecrackers with fizzled fuses to collect as I walked along. Later I would re-roll the powder into one inch diameter Kraft paper kegs for my steel pipe cannon. The cannon had been welded onto a twenty pound base and have a hole on one end for lighting. I kept it hidden deep in my closet to ensure Aaron didn't find and kill himself. The tiny fuses were put in a soup can and lit causing all kinds of miniature rocket firings that Aaron could watch.

I had a ball of string in our room that was higher than my mattress off the floor. I keep it sprayed with coatings of watered down Lysol to fight its natural tendency to smell like gym socks and sewer water. I've no idea what use in the future the Ball of Mystery will play in my life but still I add new pieces after almost every walk, and today is no exception as I pick up a waded up piece with dirt and an old straw tangled up with it. I once tried to think of how I could collect straws, but gave up after I found there was a limit to how many times you could one inside the other. Gum wrappers are quite another story. They can be folded so they form interlocking chains and our bedroom has one that covers almost the entire ceiling, held up in place by push tacks. The last time I estimated the length, since there is no way I'd take it down to accurately measure it, it was over a half mile, somewhere around 2800 feet. I haven't added to it since I was 12. I figure Aaron is old enough to take over where I left off and have already shown him how to fold the wrappers. He hasn't been bit by the bug yet, but I still have hopes for him.

After a few blocks I had both my front pockets full with bottle caps, at least the ones without cork inside, those I had snapped as I found them. Snapping was an art form and if you put your hand just behind your ear and snapped your thumb and middle finger just right, you can make a cap sail twenty sometimes thirty feet through the air. My record is 46 feet but that was with a wind in my back. Six pack plastic holders, a pencil with a point, a rain- soaked grass-stained hard ball, A KC A's baseball cap that reeked of beer, a quarter and six pennies, a losing raffle ticket stub from April, various washers and nuts mostly quarter and three eights inch, and the handle of a broken baseball bat.

I used to pick up unidentifiable pieces of plastic but after a large box had been filled I just couldn't think of a single use for all the colored pieces so I threw it in the dumpster. There were other collections that died off from disinterest. Rocks, pitch and tar chunks, empty beer cans, roofing fragments, chipped pieces of brick, and broken glass but not until I was convinced I couldn't heat them up enough to reform them into works of art.

By noon I was hungry and returned to hide from the afternoon heat waves. You know, the ones that make people and cars look like fun house mirrors of wavy, distorted versions of themselves. When I was younger I actually got two eggs to fry on the sidewalk outside our house after I scrubbed the cement to get the grit off. They were overt easy and were delicious with a little salt. But mostly on the weekend afternoons we all spent the those hours in mom's room, hoping some of that tepid air dribbling out of the window AC would somehow roll far enough to touch one of us on the floor. The only other place was in the basement where the storage bins were. The air was stale and smelled like rancid water but slightly cooler than mom's bedroom floor. Definitely where Aaron and I disappeared to when PJ was in a romantic mood, icky.

The worst was over by six as the braver of the residents came out to get errands run before dark. Darkness was the world of the bad men and boys that would grow up to be bad men. I knew who they were and had always declined their invitation to join their gang. That had its down sides, because if they didn't have anyone else to torture they looked me up. I ran track at school and had developed one of the biggest sets of lungs in the mid-west, when combined with long powerful legs you have the perfect get away. I guess breaking past the iron bars wasn't good exercise for chasing me down the street. Either way I never got caught even though I was cornered plenty of times. I think they just didn't try that hard or I'd have bruises all over all the time. I had talked to them one on one at various times and we had much in common, but when they got together it was like we had never talked.

I would walk the streets at night occasionally and see a whole world that never shown itself in the daytime. The gang leaning on the cars along the sidewalk making for an uneasy passage for everyone except the bad men carrying guns and back slapping any of the gang that looked at them. The men walking their wives to the laundry mat carrying the huge baskets. The loners drifting down the street, avoiding all confrontations and were unusual enough that everyone let them be. I wanted to grow and be one of them, they had complete freedom of the night without being targeted. The older women with the rouge and red-red lipstick calling out to men passing by wanting to know if they had the time or asking if they wanted a good time. The younger girls with the short skirts leaning over talking to the guys that never got out of their fancy cars. And me the skinny kid no one bothered with as I slipped through the underbrush of city streets, stopping to pick something up that reflected light of the dingy street lights.

But most nights I was on the roof, a safe place where the gangs were too bored to hang out among the vents and still warm pitch of the flat roofs. Up high I could feel whatever wind there was, unblocked by brick and cement canyons below. There the faint star would flicker its message of hope for a better life. There I would test my bravery by walking along the six inch wide wall that formed the outside of the building façade. My manhood was proved over and over again as a rush of adrenaline raced through my body each time I lost my balance and nearly fell to my death. I never told anyone about my passages to manhood, especially Aaron, I would never forgive myself if he died at what I almost died from.

Midnight on a Saturday night I got down off the wall and returned to the sweltering apartment where Aaron was sleeping, a radio played soft music in mom's bedroom where I heard her soft voice giggle from time to time, a lullaby I'd fall asleep to soaked in my own sweat on top of the bed in my jockeys.  

11:17 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment