Progress report

I'm kicking ass on this writing project, and it's kicking my ass somewhat as well. In the past two days, I've added 7,300 words, 4,300 of them today. My total is up to around 24,000 and it wouldn't be wrong to say I'm at least halfway done, if not more than that.

It's amazing how vivid 15, 16 year old memories are when you begin to explore them a bit. Certainly I have a world of documents to work from, but I can remember so much of this now that the wound has been reopened.

It was not a particularly pleasant time for me on the personal level, having been involved in my second DUI when all this was going down--indeed, I had to skip jail service one weekend just to write up a massive account before deadline. And there was a personal relationship that had gone Shitsville during the same period, which didn't do much to enhance things.

But what the hell, the fires of misery forge us into the steel-hardened individuals we become, eh? Or some such shit. All I can say is, there's been a lot of water pass beneath the bridge in the ensuing years and most of that might have felt right at home inside a septic line. But that's the way life goes -- first your money and then your clothes, as the old gambler's song goes.

At this point, I simply want to finish the rough draft as quickly as possible, because I intend to devote an inordinate amount of time to the rewriting, editing process. When I'm finished, this son of a bitch is going to be polished up like an apple you wouldn't hesitate to give to your favorite teach.

The way things go in school nowadays, the teacher would probably give you a blow job in return. Alas, I lived in a kinder, gentler age.

Just checking in, folks. Just checking in.

Sunday, Sunday

As I've aged, Sunday has become one of my favorite days of the week. No. I has become the favorite day. And it has nothing to do with religion, although I have nothing against religion.

It's a day you can kick back without feeling guilty about it. If God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh, then there is certainly nothing wrong with an old sinner taking a break from pecking a keyboard.

I daresay I'll never accomplish anything close to creating the universe; not sure that I would want to if I could, considering the direction humanity has taken over the ages. But we all live in little worlds of our own, surrounded by a galaxy of things that are important to us beyond that larger picture of chaos, madness. It's what we do in our own little universe that counts most in the mush between our ears.

I speak of "kicking back," but in truth the laptop and the pile of notes on the coffee table is calling my name right now at shortly after 10 in the morning. It will be difficult to resist firing things up and having another go at it today; I've fallen into a rhythm with the project, the kind of mental attitude that compels one not only to go on, but to want to go on. That's the place where a writer starts cooking in earnest. What could be drudgery becomes a pleasure. The once foreboding is accepted with open arms.

If only that would last. It won't. At some point, the joy will be replaced by agony. Those synapses firing all the good thoughts in need of immediate expression will be hijacked by little dark rebel notions lugging big loads of doubt and writer blockage. The glowing sun of creativity will set behind a dark mountain of gloom and despair.

Well, what the hell. Enjoy the ride while it's happening.

Doing it

The little mix-up in my work files yesterday has irritated me, although it hasn't irreparably ruined anything. The almost thousand words I wrote are all still usable, although it will require some shifting around and replacement. I would have sworn I had those galley pages in the proper sequence but obviously that's not the case. I'll have have to double check everything and the only real way I can do that is to borrow the hard-copy books from the newspaper's morgue, the four covering 1993 and 1994. Some extra trouble, but on a project of this nature you can depend on running into all sorts of unforeseen problems. It's the nature of the beast. Anyway, after this morning's writing session I should be closing in on 10,000 words.

I was telling someone yesterday that writing non-fiction is way harder than writing fiction. At least for me. That's not always the case, if you consider straight journalism as "non-fiction" (which ideally it should be, for obvious reasons), but that's a different matter. The on-the-fly news writing is fairly simply because there's a formula you follow, if you know what the hell you're doing. The hook, the lead (or "lede" if you wanna be Internet hip today), inverted pyramids. What gets the wood.

But everything is modern now. Smoke-free news rooms, silent computers, decorum. No grouchy old bastards, fedoras cocked at jaunty angles, hunkered over huge manuals banging out raw copy on rolls of pulp paper jammed into platens. Bottles of bourbon in desk drawers. Ragged yellow light splintering like haze through battlefield smoke. I got in on a bit of the tail end of that era in the sixties, but it was well in its death throes by then.

What I'm doing with this book is certainly journalism, if of a different kind. And it's oral history too, because I experienced first hand almost everything that will be included in the book. It has to be correct, absolutely. There's no leeway for mistakes. That's why it's more difficult.

Well, what the hell. Anything too easy is not worth doing, generally. The more the effort, the more the reward, the sense of accomplishment. I feel a bit of pity for anyone who has never written a book because they will never experience that feeling when the last word goes down. Certainly, that elation -- followed by a odd sense of loss -- diminishes with each book, but it is still there.

Not like 1977, when I completed the first novel. I jumped up screaming, dancing around, laughing. That could have been partially caused by a little whiskey and a little Dexedrine, and maybe a couple other things. But within an hour I was in tears, feeling as though I had lost my best friend. Something had stopped, ended, concluded. It was just a process, but it became more than that in my mind. An addictive personality will get hooked on anything. Even a book manuscript.

Rain has started. A few minutes ago when the front first came in, the sky was dark as night almost, wind up. We have the possibility of severe weather today and tonight and will no doubt see some.

I'd best get my ass in the saddle, while electricity is available. That laptop battery is only good for a couple hours. (The one I'm thinking about buying has an 8-hour battery.)

Trying to stay on track

After a three-day weekend of totally screwing around and not writing a word on the book, got back into it yesterday with a bit more than 1,500 words. That put me somewhat beyond 6,000 words total. Very shortly I will sit down to the laptop, galleys on a writing easel and about 20 reporter notebooks and see what I can do today. I want to beat the 500 word minimum; in fact, I'd like to write 1,500 or 2K every day, but doubt I will and don't want to tie myself to that expectation.

At this point, I'm simply building the story block by block, from start to finish. When that is done, I will go back and create the "writing" in it. And yeah, some of that will be "fluff," no denying it. And some humor at points, where appropriate. This is a dark and tragic story at best, and a little mood-lightener at places won't hurt anything so long as they don't damage the credibility of the story.

As an example, I plan to give asides such as the one below, concerning the DA who prosecuted the case. This is from a section completed.

~~~

Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Cahill had handled the prior court actions in the case. Cahill was a good prosecutor who could get as tough as any of the boys when the going got rough, as she demonstrated many a time. However, with a case of this magnitude before the court, there was little doubt that the big gun himself, DA General Robert Gus Radford, would guide the prosecution with a personal hand. Thus, few were surprised to see General Radford seated on the state’s side of the table, flanked by Cahill and a stack of files.

“Gus,” as he was known to one and all, was a formidable foe in any court. A rather large man with a disarming friendliness, he came across to witnesses as a man ready to understand anything. He had a slight stammer and perhaps he used it to advantage at times, giving the impression that maybe he wasn’t keeping up with things well as he might have. But there was a steel-trap mind working all the time and, at the right moment, Gus would spring it and catch some witness under cross examination in a situation hard to explain. And he could come back with biting sarcasm when it was deserved.

Once, while questioning a woman whose husband, along with another man, was charged with robbing an elderly county resident, Radford inquired of whether or not she had noticed anything strange when she arose the morning after the robbery. The woman said she hadn’t really noticed anything unusual, although there were two sets of men’s clothing that hadn’t been there the night before in the middle of living room floor that morning. And also, she noticed a sawed-off shotgun on top of the refrigerator. That gave Radford a perfect opening, as he turned toward the jury and smiled.

“Oh, I’m sure we all understand that,” he said in all earnestness. “We all get up and find strange clothing in the middle of our living room floor and sawed-off shotguns on top of our refrigerator.” Several of the jurors unsuccessfully tried to suppress grins at that and at least one reporter struggled to keep from bursting out laughing. The witness could do nothing but sit there with a mortified look on her face.

~~~

That kind of thing. Back story and reference in some parts, personality stuff. You can't just lay down the utter bleak details without some kind of cushion, it's too dry and uninteresting.

Oh well, enough talking about how to do it. Time to do it instead.

The day of reckoning

You can only avoid it so long. It builds up and up and at some point, action simply must be taken. It's always a dreaded day, but it's always lurking out there, staring one in the face. You know it's coming and you shiver and dread it, but like death and taxes, it can't be stopped. Finally, the day arrives.

You have to do the laundry. That happens because all the many, many socks, Jockeys and T-shirts you have amassed are nearly depleted. Well, truth is, I have probably 15 or 20 pair of underwear I've never worn and don't ask me why. I just don't get around to them because, by the time my T-shirts are depleted, along with button-ups, the old ones get washed and they're "broken in" and more comfortable, so to speak.

And I have socks galore too, many not worn in years. When I was preparing to go to the funeral last week, I was searching for a pair of dark dress socks to go with the navy blue pinstripe suit and found a brand new pair still in the binders, never worn. If a funeral didn't come along, they'd never be worn.

Back in the day, I used to be a clothes horse. I bought clothes left and right--at the men's shops, not the discount stores--and got into the habit of dressing in suit and tie, or sports coat, for work. I didn't have to, it just made me feel good to spruce up like that. It becomes a matter of pride. And too, I had a 32 inch waist back then and clothes hung on me nicely. Now, with this "Dunlap disease" (my belly dun lapped over my belt), I look like a slob in anything.

Back then, there were a couple of dapper fellows involved in the court scene where I went twice weekly at least and it became something of a game to see who showed up with the neatest new silk tie or pair of Italian loafers. That went on for several years until I finally said hell with it and went back to the Dockers.

Not long after my mom died, I went through all the clothing and gave away 60 plus shirts and 40 some-odd pairs of pants, most of which I had outgrown. There were a couple of suits I could still wear, but didn't need or want. A young guy who sometimes works for my brother around his farm got the clothes. A really poor kid who never had much of anything. Jerry said he was strutting around like a peacock with those clothes on. All of them were still good, not worn out or shabby. When you have that many clothes they don't get worn often enough to get threadbare.

I just hope he doesn't wear that camel YSL double-breasted, two-button, side-vent with the big legs because that's way too seventies-eighties. It looked fine it its time, though.

I don't have a lot of clothes nowadays. Not nearly enough outer wear. I have a handful of trousers and regular shirts. I need a new wardrobe and undoubtedly will have to purchase one before I go to California in November. Nothing fancy for damned sure. A few pairs of khakis and a few shirts.

But getting back to the laundry (damn I can get sidetracked!), the wise thing to do would be to do it some cool night. But no, I have to wait until a day when it's going up into the nineties. That's because my dryer doesn't have a vent through the floor and out of the house. The house is too close to the ground there and really no way to install one, unless a willing midget could be located.

So it has a lint bucket that attaches to the end of the hose. You put water in the lint-catcher. Talk about throwing out some humidity! But the water catches the errant lint, even if the inside of the house steams up like a freaking tropical rain forest.

I suppose I'll sit here and think about it, as the August sun climbs in the sky and it gets hotter and hotter. Around noon or so, I'll probably start throwing the stuff into the washer. I figure three big loads should do it.

Praise the Lord and pass the cold beer. The day of reckoning has arrived.

Getting down with it

Whee doggie, did 600 words yesterday and 770 today. All together, with what I had written in the past, up to a little more than 4,300 words now and I've just scratched the surface.

Don't know why, but anymore when I decide to do any serious writing I do it on the laptop in the living room. I have the whole damned coffee table covered with files and galleys and notebooks. I try to keep it all covered over with a towel when I'm not working, but hell, who puts a towel over a pile of stuff on their coffee table?

Obviously, I do. I'm not much into what's proper or not. I don't expect a visit anytime soon by Good Housekeeping -- though I wouldn't be too surprised if "Better Hovels & Garbage" didn't contact me about doing a feature spread. That could be about as close to fame as I'll ever get.

I've thus far resisted beginning the edit/rewrite process on the book I loosely call the vampire novel. I know I have to do it but I'm not in a big rush. Probably in the next couple weeks I'll apply an hour or so a day to that. Don't wanna get carried away and lose my "retired" status. I worked too hard to gain it.

Don't know why, but I've been fighting the urge to buy a new laptop for several weeks. Came very close a couple times, especially last weekend when the state was holding a sales tax holiday for certain things--including computers up to $1,500.

I don't really need it as the (three year) old one I have is working fine. I bought it when my mom was in the hospital; well, actually the last night I stayed there with her, which was the next to last night of her life, I had it there. She was transferred to hospice and died after one night in the nursing home.

Looking ahead, I have a trip to California coming up in November and that will be somewhat expensive. I'd be well advised to save my money for that. When I go somewhere I don't like to play the pauper. My first wife used to chew my ass constantly about grabbing the check every time we'd go out partying with friends and for some of the massive tips I left. I didn't think $50 was too much tip for a $60 meal, especially not after I'd just won about a grand at the dog track in Yuma. Share the wealth, that was my motto.

Another time, a TV news anchor friend of mine had a booze bill of $185 for his table sent over to my table as a joke. I smiled over his way and threw $250 on the girl's plate and refused to undo the joke when he rushed over and tried to reimburse me. I guess I liked to play the role sometimes, but I was making good money at the time.

Fortunately, my wife didn't see some of the spending when Kenny and I would take the girls from the Country Boy over there for an evening of dog races and party-hearty. The girls loved it, of course. They got betting money, drinks, big steaks and prime rib and whatever else their pretty little hearts desired. A couple of them were my lovers during that time. I'd give anything to see them now, after all these years. One is dead, so I'll never see her again, but I think her sister is still alive and well. I might find out when I go west, being the sneaky old devil I am.

Ah, the trouble with old guys like me is that we live too much in the past. That's understandable, since our future is so limited. The good times have come and gone for the most part. Young women look right through us anymore. They don't even see us. We are invisible.

Not to the older women, apparently. I talked to a bunch of them after my brother-in-law's funeral last week. A couple of them weren't bad looking. Widows probably with some change in the bank. I was talking to my sister today and she told me those old gals were really impressed with me, said I had "personality" and all. One of them (might be the one I was flirting with a bit) said I was. "cute." *L

Oh, well. Shut up and have another beer, Jazzbo. Thank you very much, don't mind if I do.

Gearing up to do battle with the Muse

A bit of gibberish here before I launch into the morning serious writing project, which should produce the desired minimum of 500 words. Yesterday was the real beginning of this effort and I wrote 545 with no big problem. In fact, I have so much information at hand that I could probably do 5,000 words a day if I wanted to fight it and try to prove something. But I don't. I plan to take it slow and easy and get it right.

Having too much information can be more of a pain in the ass than not having enough. With too much, there's the problem of determining what to tackle next and getting it in the right order. You have to watch out for redundancy as things gather and build, too, because sometimes a bit of information can fit in several places. And indeed, can be properly used in more than one spot, though the wording must be changed.

This is the kind of tale that won't be written straight through from beginning to end. Indeed, I didn't even use that technique with Parallel Blues, but instead wrote it in chapters here and there and then determined how they fit together. A few places I had to come up with transitions to make it work. And I did write the last three or four chapters in sequence.

With the vampire novel just finished, I started on the first line and went straight through to the end. I found that worked real well and I'll probably write the next novel the same way, unless it's too complex to do so. The vamp thing has a limited number of characters and settings, thus it wasn't hard to keep from getting confused. And, I'm using Rough Draft instead of Word for the initial draft. It has a nice note column to the right side that's handy for including bits that you will need to refer to later.

But with this non-fiction thing, that approach won't work as well for me going in and I know it. I've already finished a segment dealing with a subpoena I received in an attempt to compel me to testify to sources for a news story I had written that turned out to be wrong. That won't come into play in the very early part of the book, but I'll know where to insert it when the time comes.

I began with the idea of doing it in named chapters, but have just about decided to do it in parts -- maybe three of them. The murder, the trials, the aftermath and what has happened since. I may do a rough outline once I get past this early writing, when the chronology is very obvious and necessary to properly build the story. And I've already written the "hook," a little foreword briefly detailing the occurrences and designed to grab the reader and keep them turning pages. Learning the necessity of such things is another benefit to having worked in journalism, where you have to grab the reader by the collar immediately before their eyes flicker off to the next headline and opening paragraph.

Hell, I've done my 500 words today already. Unfortunately, they are right here, which doesn't contribute to the cause. So, I shall can the chatter and get my ass in the wind, do some writing that counts. Later.

Mellowing out

My sister said something the last time we spoke on the phone that got me to thinking. She mentioned how much nicer a person I am now, how I have changed, and she said that everybody noticed it. I'm just more pleasant now than I used to be.

Well, she picked up on something there but she didn't say what she could have: that I'm no longer so egotistical, arrogant, full of myself. Yeah, and selfish. What we would normally define as an asshole.

I was all of those things at one time, in spades. I may still be to some point, I don't know. But I know my thinking has changed a lot in the past few years. I damned sure don't see myself as the center of the universe or expect everybody to cater to me like I once did. The world will keep on spinning long after my old ass has been vaporized, which is something I now understand, but that wasn't always the case.

For most of my life, I've been particularly thin-skinned. I was quick to take offense, in all settings. It didn't matter if family or friend said something I didn't like, I'd blow up. If some stranger did it in a bar--or even looked at me crooked--I was apt to go off and start a big melee.

Of course, that's a big symptom of basic insecurity, perhaps mingled with a little paranoia. Being nuts runs in my family, so it could well be a little more of the latter than the former. The idea has always been, them ol' Chandler boys will just fuck you up if you mess with them. They don't play no shit games.

Nowadays, I try to rein in the more erratic notions when I'm offended or bothered by something, for two reasons. Number one, it's usually pretty stupid to get upset over something someone has said or done. It's done and it is what it is. Number two, at this point going into ass-kicking mode is impossible and I do not relish the thought of getting stomped on a parking lot somewhere. My only hope in a fight would be to get that swift and true blow in to the trachea and then kick the fucker in the nuts and head before I ran out of oxygen. Otherwise, it would be bye-bye ass.

Fact is, I think age mellows us all out. The old competitive thing gets a little pointless finally. And you realize finally that it doesn't cost you anything to be a little nicer and more pleasant to people, especially to friends and family.

After all, they're about all we have when you look at the reality of things.

Let the healing begin

The almost 800 mile total ride, and the tension in between, damned near got me down. Either one would have done me in almost, but combine the ride with the sadness and damned if it wasn't almost more than I could take.

But Kenneth had a wonderful funeral, if indeed such can be said about any service designed to pack one away for eternity. His grandchildren eulogized him in brief remembrances of their "Poppa" and his daughter, Kimberly, did him proud with her remembrances of her dad.

It's great to be a good man that such kind things can be said about without lying. I've heard eulogies when I know the speaker had to expect God to reach down and strike them dead at any instant for telling such tales. But with Kenneth, the good things said were true. He was one of the most decent people I have ever know.

My sister had said that earlier she had thought she wanted me to give a eulogy, but through prayer determined that I probably could not do it. She was right, as I told her. I get far too emotional at such times. The only person I could eulogize would be one I didn't know or love or have an emotional attachment to. What would be the purpose of that?

We had the food after the funeral, as I predicted. Tons of it. Of course I ate too much, just as Ed and I had taken advantage of the free hot breakfast offered at Comfort Inn that morning. I sure as hell didn't won't anything to eat when I got home a little after 10 last night.

I met a lot of their friends yesterday and all them were nice. Not phony nice as people sometimes are at such times. But really nice.

I can read people better than that, I know who's being sincere and who is blowing smoke up my ass. Part of that is natural talent and part of that comes from being a longtime journalist. And no small measure comes from having blown a little smoke myself in times past.

Things will get back to normal as things always do, even after the worst intrusions into our peace of mind. Life is damned good at throwing us curve balls we can't hit. You can't win 'em all.

Getting ready to head out

I'll be heading out to Ohio in a bit. It's a trip I'm not looking forward to, but a necessary one.

I was a lot happier the last time I was in West Chester, on the tail end of my "Poetry Road" trip. That was in October 2006. I had made that 2,300 mile drive and videoed all those poets and felt I had accomplished something.

Turned out, it wasn't that big a deal, even if it took me a solid year to glean out two hours of video from the dozen or so I had. I learned just how little I knew about putting something like that together. And I also learned that I would never again take on a project that long, though I enjoy shooting shorter stuff.

I feel lucky that I managed to get a smoking room at the Comfort Inn where I'll be staying tonight. They are becoming more rare, as some chains have stopped offering them altogether. So I'll get to burn a few and will probably hook up the laptop for a dose of that complimentary wifi. Who knows, I might even have a couple of brews, it's possible.

My brother Eddie and I are going up today and then coming home sometime tomorrow afternoon. The funeral is at 11 tomorrow morning, so we'll have plenty of time to hang around some with the family afterward.

Of course, there will be a lot of food after the funeral, that's something we Southern people (even those transplanted to Ohio) put a lot of stock in. I think that's pretty common in a lot of cultures, because food is one of those "comfort" items. I used to treat food strictly as fuel to keep me going forth, but now, as I've aged, it has gained much more importance. That happens with older people, the replacement of other joys of the past with food.

I remembered to stick my cell phone charger in the bag. I'll probably do a lot of texting today during the ride and will no doubt put the whammy on the phone battery. I just got into texting the past few weeks and it's fun, though I'm slow as molasses in January.

Wrap this up. I might post an entry from Ohio this evening, depends. Hope everyone has a good day and adios until later.

One man's suffering finished

Ken passed on last night shortly after 9 my (central) time. I had spoken with my sister less than an hour before this and she said at that time that lividity was already taking place, blood pooling in his back. That was an indication that he would not last long. He expired while the family was gathered around him praying, his long ordeal finished.

I remember talking with him just before he had his cancer surgery. He wasn't sure what the outcome would be, as many people die from that kind of cancer. But he was philosophical about it.

"I can't lose either way," he said. "If I survive, then of course that's good and I go right along with my family here. If I die, I get to see my mother and daddy and my sons again. How can I lose?"

I suppose that's a good way to look at it if you're a true believer as he was. I am not especially afraid of death, though the process itself is a little intimidating. But I'd like to stay around as long as I'm functional and not a burden on others.

So I will find out later today about the funeral arrangements. I suspect it will be either Friday or Saturday, so my brothers and I will probably make the six hour drive either tomorrow or the next day. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's just one of those things we have to endure at times.

And as if compounding the problems yesterday, we had very bad weather last night. At one point, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for McKenzie and the siren up the road was going like hell. I got out and shot some video of the ugly clouds before the rain started. I have it on Facebook but I think only members can see it. I might later upload it to YouTube and if so I'll add a link.

(Where the hell is my brain? I can upload it here directly and here it is below.)

One of those days

Damn, this is one of those days when things seem to heap up on me and I can't get much acomplished. They always seem to come at the worst times when they're most difficult to deal with.

Started off bad with me sleeping too late; it was almost 8:30 when I arose, which is unusual since I'm usually awake by 5:30 or 6 at the latest. But I was up in the middle of the night taking seltzer for a bad case of indigestion, which was brought on by some of the pizza left over from Sunday. I'd ordered one of those big specials from Mama Ilios and no way can I eat a whole one of those, good as they are. (I DID eat a whole 20-incher a few months ago and it almost killed me.) But they always give me heartburn too and especially if I eat it too late.

I need to run by city hall and pay my water and sanitation bill, go by the bank and deposit some checks, and go shopping. All this while waiting for the coming bad news on my brother-in-law. And adding to the misery is the fact that for several days I've had an infection in my left eye. Appears to be conjunctivitis, which I haven't had in many years. Toss into the mix that after an unusually cool and wet July, summer has returned with a vengeance to the rolling alluvial plains of northwestern Tennessee. Hot and humid and we're expecting storms later. And, just for another concern, I have yet to do my daily dose of writing on the Brooks murder book. Oh yeah, I'm almost out of cigarettes, too.

Oh well, I did manage to get the lawn mowed yesterday. I didn't mow it, my yard man came after I called him. I hate to have the damned thing mowed because it costs me about three cases of beer every time. I don't measure costs in money, but by the beer standard.

What the hell. It's just one of those days.

Waiting for the bad word

Sitting here today facing another imminent death in the family. That is always rough, though at this point it's a given, seeing as how we are all getting older. That knowledge sure as hell doesn't make it any easier, however.

This time around it's my brother in-law, Kenneth, who is at death's door. Ken is two years older than I am and we have been friends since the mid-fifties, when I returned to McKenzie after years in Middle Tennessee and on the pipeline earth in various places. Though his mother was a school teacher, he didn't fare as well in his studies as he could have and we ended up in some of the same classes and soon became fast friends. In fact, he met my sister because he was hanging out with me and a few years later they married.

He had a '56 Ford and many times we raced other cars on the long, straight stretch of Highway 79 South out through Jarrell Bottom. Not only did we race at speeds up to 110 mph, very frequently one of the other crackpots (sometimes Billy Scates) and I would be sitting on the front fenders at that speed.

Riding out exposed in such a wind blast is very difficult; the only way to do it is to lean as far forward as possible and put the top of your head straight into the wind, relying on the back pressure--and that tiny handhold on the hood ornament--to keep you aboard. You can imagine what might have happened had the brakes been applied with any degree of pressure. There would have been fresh road-kill all over that blacktop.

Ken went into the Air Force about 1957. He gave me his old Famous James motorcycle shortly before he left for basic at Lackland AFB, Texas. It was the first of many motorcycles I would own during my life. I had a ball with that little 150 cc English monstrosity. It had both a hand clutch (left side) and a hand shifter on the tank (right side), which was really unhandy. I later had an old Indian Chief, a honking big sucker with a 74 inch engine, with the hand shift in the same place and a foot clutch on the left side. They called those clutches "suicide clutches" for damned good reason, as anyone who has ever driven one knows. It's engaged or disengaged, little slack to play with. And keeping the left foot off the ground at stops is a pain in the ass, because if you get a bit off-balance the bike will fall over. They are extremely hard to pick up when they do.

I wrecked the little bike numerous times, in one accident ripping the hand shift lever and linkage rod off the bike. I discovered, however, that I could use the heel of my right shoe to change the small nub sticking out of the transmission case. The thing ran real well until I tore down the transmission to overhaul it. When I put it all back together, I discovered I had nothing left but high gear. That made it necessary to get the bike running and then push it as fast as I could run before leaping on and building up steam slowly. It was a bitch to ride around town, more work than I'd be up for today.

Ken came home from the Air Force, already married to my sister a couple years before. I won't go into details (too long) but in 1960 Billy Scates and I went to Miami on one of our wild road trips and wound up visiting Kenneth at Homestead AFB south of Miami, a SAC base where he was stationed at the time. We all went out and had quite a few adult beverages and Ken drove us on the base hidden in the trunk of his car. We spent the night there and he slipped us out the same way next day.

Anyway, we were working at a local furniture factory in '62 and one morning decided to quit and go to California. We informed the foreman that we'd be leaving at noon and not coming back. "You cant do that!" he exclaimed. "Watch us," I said.

Thing was, I wasn't going west for several months, though I did quit the job. Ken and my sister went and he got a job in a machine shop. And then I followed later, lived with them and went to work at Wayne Sweeper in Pomona, making about four times more money than I'd made at the furniture joint. I though I'd died and gone to heaven.

I lived there with them, even after I met a girl and got married. When I was able, I moved out but we still all spent a lot of time together, playing poker and just hanging out. Kenneth, who had been a jet engine mechanic in the AF, went on and got a job with General Electric at Edwards Air Force base. He moved to Lancaster, up on the high desert northwest of LA and lived there until the mid-eighties, when the company transferred him to their Evendale, Ohio facility. There, before his retirement, he worked his way up to a suit-wearing, briefcase-toting executive with the company.

He suffered a lot of bad misfortune over the years. His first son developed a disorder in childhood that was later diagnosed as Frederick's ataxia. Terry died in April, 2006 in his early 40s, having been bed-ridden for many years. His only other son, Mike, who was an engineer with GE aircraft, was killed in an auto accident two days after Christmas in 1999.

About that same time, Ken contracted neck cancer and had the radical and mutilating surgery necessary for that particular disease. He and my sister bore up through it all because of their strong religious faith. You can knock organized religion, but it gives people something to fall back on during such times of grief and pain.

It's hell to write, and think, of somebody in the past tense even though they are still technically "here." Kenneth really started leaving here several years ago when he was struck with the cruelest blow of all, Pick's disease. It's something like Alzheimer's but generally runs a more rapid course. Always the nicest kind of guy you would ever want to meet, he began doing things just totally out of character. I won't listed them here, but his actions were not what the level-headed and kind Kenneth I had always known would ever do.

Now, it's just a waiting game. My phone has rung twice this morning. Both times I expected it was my sister calling with the coming bad news. It was not, though both calls related to his situation in another way.

My brother, Jerry, and I plan to make a flying trip up there just for the funeral when that becomes necessary. No overnight stay, none of that, just get there in time for the ceremony and leave shortly after. It's about a six hour drive each way but we should be able to do that without too much problem. I didn't get to go when Terry died because I was tending my very ill mother who herself died a little more than two months later.

If one lives long enough, there's a lot of this shit in life. Add to that the knowledge that someday, loved ones are most likely going to be sitting around half glum waiting to receive such a phone call about you.

One of those things about life that goes in the negative column.

New writing project set, already have publisher

Well, my next project is all set -- a true life story about a gruesome murder that occurred here in Carroll County in 1993. Three young county residents, two males and a female, hijacked a 19-year-old when their pickup broke down on a county road late one night. They shot him twice with a shotgun, once in the lower belly and, when he began screaming too loud, once under the chin. They then chopped his arms and legs off with an ax, cut his penis off and put it in his pocket and, as a final indignity, cut out his heart and passed it around, all kissing it. When they were through playing with his remains, they stuffed it all in the front seat of his pickup and burned it.

The guy for whom I worked 16 years in the newspaper business has a publishing company and he will publish it. I know it will sell like hot cakes in this part of the county because it was the most grisly murder ever to occur in these parts. And, a guy with three newspapers can promote the hell out of it.

I figure it will take me until the end of the year to write it at 500 words or so a day. I'm coming out of the chute blazing come Monday and I still should have plenty of time to revise my vampire book. I'll still post here occasionally, should have time for that, too.