Poems A Dead Boy Wrote

Last night was the final night of the Theatre Oxford production of A Streetcar Named Desire and Shelly and I were in attendance.  The babysitter arrived on cue at 6:15, giving us time to dine at Thai restaurant, Rice & Spice, one of our favorite spots.  I had the Red Curry with Tofu and my date had Pad Thai with Shrimp.  The first time I had Tofu, I was living in Martin, TN and in the same apartment building as a Japanese woman who occasionally made Won-Ton stuffed with Tofu along with some kind of Asian soup with the spongy curd.  She may have been Chinese...or Korean.  Anyway, I recognized the coolness factor of Tofu immediately and about once every 10 years, when I am at my most fraudulently hip (such as when attending a local theatre production),  I order something with Tofu.  Once every 10 years, I regret it.

The play started 10 minutes late and ran on about an hour too long.  Some of the blame for this must go to Tennessee Williams, the author whose Columbus, MS childhood porch I once sat upon, but most I assign to me, for being old and tired.  The actor (Alice Walker) who played Blanche DuBois did a fabulous job and the "Stella! Stella" of the earnest thespian (Gregory Earnest) with the impossible task of following Brando, was delivered admirably.  I haven't seen or read Streetcar in many years and I had forgotten how beautifully it is written.  Or maybe I am better able to appreciate it now that I am long of tooth and beaten. 

There are many memorable lines in the play but my favorite is Blanche's description of the yellowed letters kept in her trunk as "Poems a dead boy wrote."  I could live a whole year of my life powered merely on the beauty of that description.  As a matter of fact, I believe I will.

Move In Day in Oxford

Oxford has been filling up with people all week and today the crowd is peaking.  Yesterday at lunch, there were no parking places at the University Ave. Newk's and today it is like that all over town.  There are small packs of families prowling the sidewalks.  Many are of the conventional variety - husband and wife with a college age child and another younger child or two.  Others with just one parent, usually the Mother, or maybe just with the one child.   I wonder if they are the only child.

My daughter is driving from Humboldt with a friend and this will be, by far, the longest distance she has ever driven.  They will stay until Sunday.  This should be a good weekend for them with all the energy and excitement.  We will go out to dinner on their arrival and be prominently out and about the remainder of the weekend.  Breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast at some point; The Journey on Sunday morning. Hopefully the weekend will help motivate them for their respective senior years in high school.

I've had an interesting couple of weeks.  I spent three nights in the Smoky Mountains (see prior post), attended Shelly's 20th high school reunion (more later), took a day trip to West Tennessee to appraise the rental house my renters ran out on (She praised God on Facebook all the while), and aided in lots of Nicolas's activities.  Soccer practice, Tae Kwon Do, Allergy shots....I took him to get a shot yesterday and he informed the nurse that he had just completed his 11th day of First Grade.  On the job front, I spent several days putting together a packet for a job at the University and then the job was abruptly pulled from the website today as I was about to send it all in.  It appears they put it up the mandatory minimum; the fix was in as it so often is. 

On the other hand, I have been hired to do some contract work for a criminal defense attorney who knows his stuff.   I intended to approach him but he beat me to it and came to me instead.  We will be working on a post-conviction appeal which will probably necessitate my visit with our client in prison.  I have a feeling about this position and where it might lead.  That is, other than prison, where it might lead.

A larger pack just walked by the window of the coffee shop.  Four children in all, three boys and a girl, with the parents walking behind.  It looks like big sister will be staying in town.  The father, like so many of the fathers of the young girls, looks tense but resolved.  That's a look that I understand.

Gatlinburg on Moonshine.

My best friend Butch and his family invited me to come stay with them in their Chalet outside of Gatlinburg, TN this week and I took them up on it.  As I got out of my car on arrival Tuesday afternoon, I was nearly mauled by a mama black bear and a pack of rabid bear cubs.  They were standing in the drive-way of a neighboring chalet and charged me with homicidal abandon when I opened my car door.  I jumped back in, slammed and locked the door, and threw a bag of Honey-Baked Cashews out of my sunroof and into the woods. The gluttonous mama bear abandoned her juveniles and ran off after the nuts. Given the opening,  I stepped out with my 38 to ice the little nuisances but it jammed, preventing a certain blood bath.  I froze in terror as they circled and moved in for the kill.  At the last moment,  several of my gracious hosts and their dogs charged out of the chalet and chased the vicious carnivores off in shame and horror.

There were five canines and nine humans already assembled at the chalet before I made my arrival.  After the sickening rebound from the intense adrenaline rush of the bear attack hit us, we decided to stay in for the evening.  We sent out for Local Organic and Sustainable Black Bear barbeque and Ole Smoky Moonshine and feasted mountain warrior style until we collapsed on the stairway, porch, and on and under the kitchen table, amongst several other locations sprinkled in and around the chalet and adjoining grounds..  The wildest dog, Maggie, got into the Black Bear BBQ, caught a scent of the marauders, and, overcome with blood lust,  leaped off the back patio in the midst of the celebration.  The patio was at least 25 feet off  the ground but she hit the ground running and we heard her frantic barking in the distance throughout the evening.

On Wednesday morning we called the Game and Fish Commission on the bears and headed up the mountain to commune with nature at the Chimney's Picnic Area.  We needed two picnic tables but we couldn't find two together in the whole picnic area.  We found one with a fairly vulnerable looking bunch on the adjacent table and then we broke out the shine and got busy.  Thirty minutes later there was no sign of the interlopers so we spread out like royalty. We had Brazilian Steak, Paraguayan Corn on the Cob, and Giant Irish Potatoes smothered in Lamb Butter with  plenty of Organic and Sustainable Sea Salt to go around.  It was perfect.  Around nightfall, several car loads of Park Rangers (Not that many, the poor guys are driving Prius') descended on us and they suggested we leave.  We were out of hooch anyway so we saddled up the Palomino and headed into town.

Ole Smoky Moonshine opened sometime between 2007, when Zoe and I last visited the strip in Gatlinburg, and last Tuesday when they loaded up on Clear in anticipation of my visit.  The moonshine is distilled in an open area where you can see the vats and stills through genuine screens.  There are huge padlocks on the entrance doors and snipers overhead.  They have flavors such as peach, cherry, and apple and then the two I like, the two that will get right on down there and get the job done - Clear and Smoky.  They have a tasting booth but I skipped that part and went right for the jars. I have a hazy memory of riding up the ski-slope beside a giant, lip-stick-smeared, stuffed black bear.  Toward the end, I remember seeing my and Butch's reflection in the plate glass window of Ripley's Believe or Not as we walked by.  I had on full Indian regalia and he was wearing nothing but motorcycle chaps and a coon-skin hat.  The women had abandoned us long before and the young adults had split off for the Hard Rock Cafe  "when we got that gleam in our eyes."  I came to before sunrise on a bench outside the Aquarium with a recently diceased Sting-Ray on my lap.  Butch was leaned up against me, wearing a pair of binoculars and holding a map of the Appalachian Trail.  We rode the Trolley to the base of the Chalet Road, hiked up and they let us in.

I intended to head back early Thursday morning but thought better of it.  We stayed in bed until noon and then spent most of the afternoon in the hot tub on the back porch, drinking straight from a water hose.  We swore off Moonshine forever and mapped out our workout and nutrition plans for the immediate future. We were sufficiently rehydrated by the time of the debate but they still weren't saying much to us in the living room so me and Butch sat out on the porch and watched Newt Gingrich dominate on my laptop until the Bat showed up and things started getting interesting again.  That's a story in itself and is best saved for later. 

Monday Morning Coming Down

There is a suspicious looking man with a swarthy beard and a Columbia t-shirt sitting across the coffee shop from me.  Ivy League Columbia, not Belk Columbia.  He is sitting in one of the leather chairs in an irritating lotus-like position.  I am killing time while the tire shop diagnoses the rhythmic noise in the Camry; the noise that has been been the bane of my existence for the last two weeks.  I don't do well with unnecessary noises.  This man has several books strewn about over there and if I  find out that one of them is by Paul Krugman, I will challenge him to a fist fight right here in this coffee shop. Right here in the middle of Oxford, MS.  There is a local newspaperman in here as well so it will be publicized and if they find out I am a Conservative, I may very well be vilified on MSNBC.

Oxford, MS is really a Disney Small Town Resort.  I have done quite a bit of early morning running in this "town" and I have seen the maintenance workers out in the golf carts and  the actors coming into the back gate all together early in the morning.  It is like when I sold popcorn and cokes out of a red wagon at the wrestling matches in the Old Gym in Humboldt, TN when I was about eleven or twelve.   When I first witnessed a bad guy drive up in the same car as a good guy, something inside of me died and I vowed to never trust another human being again.  It scarred me for life and I have been paranoid ever since but I took that nickel profit on each cup of coke or box of popcorn and I built it into the financial empire over which I rule today. 

I haven't been in many of the stores on the Square but I am pretty sure there is nothing but the facade on several of them.  It's like a western movie set but with  boutiques and restaurants and all the women extras inject Botox right out in the open and all the men have Justin Beiber hairstyles.  All ages, it doesn't matter.  An out of town merchant opened a store on the Square that offered quality designer dresses at very reasonable prices and he was bankrupt within six months.  An Oxonian, who is familiar with local custom, bought the store and inventory, raised the prices by 300%, hired a couple of anorexic 40 year old sorority girls with breast implants as clerks,  and now it is being franchised in college towns throughout the south and California.

The tire guy called.  They put on two new front tires and did a front brake job.  I don't think I am going to be able to handle it if I pull out and hear that noise again.  All I can say is that if I hear that noise again, I am coming back down to this coffee shop and I am going to look at those books over there and if one of them is by Paul Krugman, you will hear about it.

Performance Art Piece as a Law Student (My real law school story) - Part One.

I visited New York City in the late 1970's in order to study Method Acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio.  Because I didn't want others to realize that I was acting in many of the subsequent roles I played, I kept it a secret from all but a few close friends.  At the time, I claimed that I had attended an Ayn Rand's Objectivism convention.

While the vast majority of my actions since beginning training have been sincere, on occasion I have gone  into character for an isolated event or, more than once, an entire relationship.  The time that I almost married the habitual liar from Dyer County because I was convinced, at least initially, that God had sent her as an answer to my prayers and then I was too ashamed to admit she was actually a sociopath after having bragged so much about her - Acting.  Another notable performance in which I relied heavily on my improvisational skill for a specific event, was when I decided to see what would happen when I tried to go back to my girlfriend after having vanished for three months.

I decided to take on the role of "the repentant boyfriend" shortly after last call at the Amvets early one summer morning. Upon arrival at my girlfriend's apartment, I found the lock on the front door had been changed. Committed to the role, I went around to the back of her apartment and began pulling myself up to her  bedroom window.  I found the window unlocked and after quietly raising the window and parting the curtains, I found her lying with another man.  For a moment I was stunned because this was so out of character for her and I struggled for an appropriate response.  I slid down from the window and started walking back around the apartment to my car.  Then, suddenly struck by improvisational genius, I wheeled around and charged back to the bedroom window!  Regardless of whether the others broke character, I would remain faithful to the muse!   I leapt back up to the window ledge and crawled partially through the window.  The window opened right behind the headboard, affording me the opportunity to immediately start choking the gentleman while declaring with loud and colorful language my firm intent to kill him.  For dramatic effect, I tore the curtains down on top of both of them and then resumed my effort to get better leverage so as to apply maximum pressure. When through the woman's desperate screams, I was finally able to ascertain that this was not my girlfriend with another man at all, but a woman and her boyfriend who were house-sitting for my significant other while she was out of town, I instinctively feigned a drunken stupor, slid back out the window to the ground, and left without even a mumbled apology.  I consider this to be perhaps my finest "event" performance.

Through the years I did roles as diverse as:  late-night bartender; roustabout on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico; an admittedly disastrous performance as a juvenile probation officer; and, most famously,  a six year run as a finance manager in a Ford dealership.  There were many others. In 2007, wanting to shake things up a bit, I posed as a lesbian to increase my chance for a role as a Starbucks Barista  but I was unable to get past the second interview.  Dejected, I took a trip back to NYC for a refresher at the Studio. While running along the East River early one June morning, the seeds were planted for my most challenging role. (to be continued)

The Sad Decline of My Hometown

I entered the first grade at East End Elementary in Humboldt, TN in 1965.  There was a Kindergarten in the community building at Bailey Park the prior year but I did not attend.  All through elementary school there was little change in the student body.  A few kids moved in, a few moved out, but it was pretty much the same children each year.  There were a handful of black children at East End Elementary during my years there so it wasn't completely segregated but it pretty much was. 

In the fall of 1970, the Humboldt white and black school systems integrated into one system. Also in the fall of 1970, Old Hickory Academy (USJ now) opened in Jackson, TN.  The new school was about 13 miles away from Humboldt and many of the children of the more prominent families in Humboldt transferred to Old Hickory.  Some of the leading families, such as the Jones and the Stallings, kept their children in Humboldt but there was a definite mass exodus from that side of town.  It was decided by the new consolidated school system in Humboldt, that the Stigall Hornets and the Humboldt Rams would now become the Humboldt Vikings. 

When I graduated from Humboldt High School in 1977, there were twelve members of the graduating class at Old Hickory that I had gone through grades 1-5 at East End Elementary with. All of these students were white, of course.  There were similar numbers of Humboldt children in the other grades at Old Hickory at that time. So you can do the math and see roughly how many children (and families) we lost in 1970.  

Milan, TN is about 12 miles northeast of Humboldt and 20 miles from Jackson.  The city of Milan has roughly the same population as Humboldt and they are both in Gibson County.  They went through the same consolidation of school systems along the same time lime as Humboldt did.  Curiously, a much smaller number of the Milan children left for Old Hickory Academy during this period.  Also, when the Polk-Clark Buffaloes merged with the Milan Bulldogs, the school system chose to keep the Milan Bulldog mascot.

Humboldt and Milan were very similar communities in 1970 but  the two towns are markedly different today.  I have lived in each city for a substantial time within the last 10 years and I found noticable differences in the general quality of life between the cities .  I wish it was not so but I can't deny it.  By anyone's standards, the Milan School System is  more successful than the Humboldt School System at educating their students.   The proportion of white students to black students remained about the same in Humboldt for several years after 1970 but then more and more white students began to leave, both proportionately and in sheer numbers.  Milan may have lost some of their white students to private or neighboring public schools through the years but nothing like Humboldt did.

Was it just the 8 more miles of driving that the Milan families would have had to navigate that made them stay in 1970?  Was it a difference in the attitude of those in leadership when integration was implemented?  Is is possible that just a few key people in, or not in, positions of leadership in their respective communities made all the difference? Did the compromise on the mascot in Humboldt versus the keeping of the mascot  in Milan signify something much more significant about the character or attitude of the communities at that time?

I don't know why there was such a different reaction by families in Milan and Humboldt back then but I'm sure it was due to a combination of factors.  In almost all things, there is more gray than black and white.  I do believe that the exodus of so many of the children of Humboldt's leading families marked the beginning of the end of Humboldt's best days.  Many of the parents of those children, particularly the mothers who were more likely to be stay-at-home moms for socio-economic reasons, would have been leaders in supporting the Humboldt schools and school and community activities.  These parents generally had more time, resources, and even more education that would have enabled them to lead and help to keep the standards up by serving in the school system and on the school board.  They would have been involved in more general community activities in Humboldt, as well, if their children had stayed in Humboldt Schools.

Don't get me wrong, Humboldt had (and has) plenty of good parents left and many fine people supported us, educated us, and volunteered to help us in our schools and community.  I am very grateful for the people who supported me while I attended Humboldt Schools and while I "attempted" to grow up in Humboldt.  I should also point out that many of the private school parents remained active in our churches and in community events, especially with the Strawberry Festival.  That said, I've come to believe that this singular event, the mass withdrawal by so many of Humboldt's leading families from their hometown school system, was a blow that the town of Humboldt has never recovered from.  It wounded the community and, furthermore, it set the stage for the systematic white flight that  followed and which has left the town a shell of the Humboldt I was fortunate to grow up in.

I can't find a job so I am starting a blog.

Contemplating the Juris Doctor

In 2007, I was in the car business and I was unhappy about my career.  I fell into the car business while buying a car in Texas in 1991.  I had dropped out of an Experimental Psychology graduate program at the University of North Texas in Denton for a variety of reasons and I had gone to work at a Circuit City in Dallas.  I went to buy a car when the air conditioner on my worn out Toyota Tercel would not come on despite my pounding on the dash - a tactic which had always worked before.  They offered me a job at the end of the deal and I was so flattered I took it (a recurring theme).  I made $6000 my first month and I thought I was The Natural.  You can be a ne'er-do-well and do well enough in the car business and although I fell out of love with the business quickly, it paid the bills.  That is, it paid the bills when I applied my check to bills rather than to the exploration of altered states. I could never predict what was going to happen when I got paid.  After I stopped drinking, several years later, I moved into more responsible positions in car dealerships but I was never comfortable with the work.
 
Along about 2004, people I knew began dying at an alarming rate.  My friend Craig was one of the first and this period culiminated with my step-son and my father both dying in the same week of May, 2006.  I suspect that all this dying triggered the excessive ruminating on my own death that I did during this time. Sometime in early 2007, I specifically wondered how I would feel if I found out that I only had one month to live.  Although my life looked pretty good on the surface (sober 10 years, running marathons, beautiful teenage daughter, nice home, etc...)  during this time, I was terrified when I considered this prospect.   I was living a lie, at least  two-thirds of my life was past, I was definitely going to die at some point regardless, and  I was working in a job that I was ashamed of and not taking any real steps to change this.  From that point forward, I knew that my car business career was "dead to me now" and I scheduled a trip to NYC for my daughter and me while we still had an income. 

We saw Mary Poppins, Spring Awakening, A Chorus Line (all excellent) and a Mets/Yankees game at Yankee Stadium among other things.  I ran a 5 mile race on Father's Day in Central Park.  We stayed at a cool little hotel (The Pod Hotel) around 51st and 3rd and we rode the subway everywhere and walked in the neighborhoods.  While running along the East River early one morning I decided I was going to go to law school and move to New York City.  Just like that. 

I graduated from law school in December, 2010.  Some other things have and haven't happened. I'm still thinking about New York City.