bobberdilly.com

9/17/2008
Robert Joy
Let’s get out of here!

My wife’s brother’s common law spouse’s third child’s, first daughter, Gracie was given up and subsquently adopted by her second daughter, Jessie. The child being bounced around here, will be referred to as Hanna. Hanna Duemerry, Hackiedo and other last names, on and on until the details get lost in all the branches, sticks, foliage and bramble patch of a sorted and convoluted family tree.

Hanna’s first infant child is named Leana. Leana Hickman (another last name for the family jungle) is to have a first birthday party to be held in the Brit Saugh Zoo and Park of Great Bend, Kansas, on the 23rd day of July, 2007. We will meet at the North picnic shelter at 5:00 p.m. RSVP.

Please don’t ask me to go over all that again. It’s a mess and I don’t want to get lost in the family tree trying to explain it. I didn’t get very deep, because I wanted to spare everyone the sorted and convoluted details of the family tree. Anyway, there was this birthday party and it is worth mention, even if it beonly for its entertainment value alone.

I make no bones about it here or then. I didn’t really want to go. This was not some isolated incident that caught any of us in this family by surprise. It is like a giant hurricane bearing down on a small village. People can see the storm coming. The tide surge, the dark clouds and building winds, but who can stop it. The only sane thing to do is to run like hell. We were stupid (my wife and I) because we didn’t run away. We held our ground and now we pay.

This poor birthday child was the result of six dozen assorted boy friends, who knows how many one-night-stands, a couple of legal husbands that hit the road and got a divorce. And then the one idiot that got caught, because he made her laugh. She met him while they were locked up together in the State Mental Hospital, different wards of course, but through a through-the-bars romance they fell madly in love.

Then when they were de-incarcerated on certain legal specifications, they immediately coupled and created a new and soon-to-become a not-so-innocent, not happy, not centered and not well adjusted child. The man of her life, her dreams, her dilusions, Lloyd Hickman a man of living nightmares. The man that would provide her with a seed that would form into a perfectly formed and innocent child and then he would get himself re-arrested and taken back to the Hospital on a parole violation. Back in the slammer while Hanna stays at home jobless and hopeless to screw around with whatever she screwed around with and then in the middle of all the madness came up with the idea of a first birthday party.

Arrive at five o’clock the invitation read. So we went at five o’clock and no one was there. We drove around the park looking for someone that might actually have something to do with this party. We couldn’t find anyone. All the picnic tables were empty or occupied by people that couldn’t possibly be part of our party. We even drove across town to make sure we had it all wrong and the party was supposed to be at the Veterans Park. We couldn’t find anyone there fitting the description. We drove back to Brit Saugh Zoo and Park, circled the north picnic shelter like a couple confused buzzards, stopped the car, got out and went over to wait at the picnic table.

At six-fifteen (I have no idea why we waited on these idiots) the first car drove up and circled the area just like a buzzard. They eventually pulled into the parking space and got out. I had no idea who these people were. They looked normal and I was sure they were looking for someone else, but they weren’t. They were relatives of Lloyd Hickman, bless their hearts. They wanted to know if it was the spot for the birthday party. We answered that we didn’t know for sure, but we weren’t moving around any longer. We all sat down and waited.

Then Hanna arrives astraide a white horse… I mean a white rusted plymouth driven by another stranger. Hanna explains she had to get her neighbor to bring her down to the park, because she waited and waited and waited for her mother to come and get her, but she couldn’t find her, so she asked the neighbor to drive her over. Hanna didn’t seem to notice that there wasn’t a party anywhere and those people were waiting for something to happen. She’d brought Leana under one arm like she was carrying a sack of potatoes and before anyone could speak, Hanna exclaimed she needed to go back home, because she forgot to bring diapers and the baby bottle. Then in an instant, she’s back in the white rusted trojan horse and gone again.

More people arrive around 6:30. More Hickman relatives. There are no Duemerrys, Hackiedos, Spacks, and Wilmholts, but tons of Hickmans. All the Hickmans on the planet coming to see the birthday baby and to pray for a miracle that Lloyd might grow up someday, take responsibility and be a good father. Of course Lloyd was in custody at the Larned State Hospital for being a screw-up and wouldn’t be there. We all waited like turtles on a log.

There was going to be a hamburger and weiner roast, but there was no fire. I guess it was expected someone would just toss a cigarette butt on the ground and start a grass fire so we could cook our meat caveman style. We had plenty of cave men, but we didn’t have charcoal, because that little matter hadn’t been handled yet. The stuff for the fire and the stuff to cook on the fire and the stuff to turn the stuff cooking on the fire was still out there lost somewhere.

Then the meat comes up the park road in another white rusted car; this one belonging to the mother of the clan. It is now 7:00 o’clock.

Hanna comes back with the baby and a bottle. No one knows how to start a charcoal fire without matches. No one knows how to start those little unlightable bricketts and I wasn’t going to get involved with that. They have a gallon of lighter fluid, they have three bags of charcoal, they have a side of beef and twelve gallons of potato salad and beer. Hanna says she left the birthday cake home, because it was a Dairy Queen ice cream cake and she was afraid it would melt.

Happy, they call him. I think its short for Harold, but I’m not sure. The guy isn’t happy and I have no idea how he acquired such a title. Happy then, squirts at least a quart of lighter fluid on the bricketts and the thing goes up like a miniature nuclear bomb. I’m sure the stuff they have in that can is something other than lighter fluid. I think it’s really gasoline and for two good deductive reasons. The stuff exploded and singed Happy’s eyebrows and it smelled like gasoline. The Hickman family all jumped to their feet like the keystone cops and tried to fan the fire out of existence or down to something manageable. It was only reasonable, because the grass was on fire and heading for the leaking can of gasoline Happy had dropped on the ground. Uncle Hickman saved the day by swooping in and pulling the can out of harm’s way like a man jumping on a grenade to save his buddies. Happy didn’t even notice.

God forbid, they made hand squeezed hamburgers and dropped them onto a shelf of folded foil even before the charcoal was hot enough to melt wax. It was not long after that, the charcoal seemed to be going out or it just hadn’t gotten hot fast enough, that Happy decided to apply more gas stimulant to perk up the fire. I could see it coming so my wife and I ran for a tree to hide behind. Happy squirts gas on those hot coals. To my astonishment, nothing happens. The fire sizzles like it was just evaporating water. I could even see steam rising from the hot bed of coals.

Happy walks up closer to see why things weren’t exploding as they should. He squirts more gas. Nothing. He steps closer and whoom! There is a flare that knocks the gas can right out of his hand and it tumbles end over end across the lawn spewing gas and flames. The Hickmans, the Duemerrys and Hackiedos and whoever else present were on their feet in a flash, trying to stop the spread of flames. In a few frantic minutes everyone, but my wife and I, were privately and quietly, laughing about the fireball. “They ain’t seen nothing like that before!”

That’s how the food went!

There wasn’t really a birthday party. There were presents on the picnic table and relatives having come from as far away as Denver to get a feel of things and I wasn’t sure if they were surprised or were prepared for the worst. They were surprisingly calm… I’m thinking they came to Great Bend, full of hope. Hope that Lloyd was actually getting his stuff together, now that he had a baby daughter to be responsible for. I wasn’t even sure if they knew he was behind bars again.

Of course it is a little too much to expect a one year old to tear into her presents, but they tried. Leana (The birthday baby) just looked at everyone. Everyone was talking at once as they all pointed at the wrapped up presents. Leana tried at least twice to run away from the mob, but both times she was forced back into the center of the ring of faces. She starts to cry.

Mother (Hanna) picks her up and that’s when she notices Leana’s diaper is leaking. Hanna discovers she didn’t bring any spares along. Leana is crying and then there is this crazy scramble to find a diaper. All the women are in their cars looking under the seats and in the trunks as if baby diapers will suddenly appear like manna from heaven. I mean, who in hell would keep diapers in their car if they didn’t have children. I didn’t run over to my car, because I knew I didn’t have any in the crack of my driver’s seat. I might find a quarter or nickel, but I don’t think I would ever find a diaper. But who the hell am I to judge these people. They are quite capable of bringing out a surprise at any time. Eventually everyone calms down and Hanna’s mother, Juanne Staub (another name for the branble branch on the family bush) decides to get into her car and volunteer to drive the two blocks to the supermarket to get some diapers, because no one else seemed to be dispossed to go do what has to be done.

She comes back with a package of Depends.

Leana is still crying, but a nice fresh Depend did the trick. They had to wrap the top around the kid twice to make it stay on. The rubber pants were the glue that held it all together. Someone else opened the presents and handed each thing, a book, a ball, a Gameboy control box, a thing that looked like a doggie chewy bone. Everyone clapped and Leana cried on and off, she loved the chewy bone the best.

That was the birthday party part, it dissolved into a contest from that point on. Hanna’s two sisters Kim, Jane and her half sister Carolyn are all pregnant at the same time. They have bets out on who will birth the first. The half sister, Carolyn is actually considering a C-section to increase the odds of being the first. They all have big round tummies and they came to the party just to show off how far along they are. Each of them wore something tight so as to enhance their tummys. Kim is not sure who the father is, but she claims her new boyfriend (he came along to the party) is willing to become the father. Jane has a boyfriend, but he had to go fishing and couldn’t make it to the party. Carolyn has her man beside her and all she has to do is point and he runs to get what she wants like a hunting dog.

Well they are milling around the tables talking to the Hickmans and showing off their upcoming babies when Kim starts to moan and groan. She sends her puppy dog man to the car for something while she moans louder and louder. Suddenly all the faces are looking at Kim. The boyfriend comes back with a bottle of water. Kim can’t undo the lid and moans even louder. The boyfriend opens it for her and she takes a drink.

Someone then asks out loudly if someone should call 911 and someone does. Maybe a couple of people did. Everyone seems to have a cell phone to their ears. Maybe everyone called 911. The moaning gets louder and in the distance I can hear the wail of the ambulance as it is now dispatched to the birthday party for Leana.

I’m watching all this and I feel a tug at my elbow. I look back and it’s my wife. She has the bowl of watermelon pieces in her hand she’d brought for the cookout. She tugs at my arm harder and I start to move with her. She says to me, “Let’s get the hell out of here right now, while we still can.” We tossed everything in our car and were driving out of the park when the ambulance went past us, going in to the circus and that is the story of Leana’s first birthday.

The End.

Supper’s Ready

It was turning fall. The air was crisp and raw even at seven in the morning. I was wearing a jacket in September and the month wasn’t even over yet. I wasn’t ready. The barn was a mess and I just didn’t seem to have time to get everything caught up with to deal with winter coming on early. I had to drain and clean the stock tanks and add heaters to keep them from freezing. I had to put up a mile of electric fence to keep the cattle near the farmstead. I had to get the antifreeze changed and checked in all the vehicles. I had a sick cow and the last thing I needed was to lose another one this month. The vet didn’t know what was causing the problems yet, but the cow was sick and I had to keep her in the barn and she was really making a mess of things. The barn was old and one end was leaning and that was going to be one of my major projects of this year, but I just couldn’t get to it and now it’s leaning even more.

It’s Sunday and I’m not supposed to work according to the bible, but the bible isn’t the farmers’ almanac. The bible isn’t the weather bureau and while it’s called the good book, it isn’t much good when there is nothing on the table to eat. I’m not excited about roasted bible or tossed bible salad. I want food and the only way to get food these days is to work, work and work on Sundays if need be.

The Reverend and his wife are coming for supper today. It’s our turn. I or the misses didn’t invite him. He invited himself, but it wasn’t something I was unaware of. Our name is on the list and no one stood there forcing us to agree to the yearly visits. No one came by and threatened to let our cows out while we slept, but the implication was there and the peer pressure in this town certainly makes it impossible to avoid the obligation.

They should be coming in a couple of hours and in the mean time I was going to do as much work as possible in the barn so as not to feel guilty for not doing anything. I had my own head to live with and god would have to wait his turn to make me feel bad about shifting my obligations. I had to move the sick cow from one stall to the next and it wasn’t easy. The cow wanted to be sick out in the herd and not cooped up in a barn stall. She wanted to go out the outside door and I wanted her to go out the stall gate and into the one across the aisle. Size is what matters in this situation. She didn’t want to go and no amount of whipping and kicking could get her to budge. It took a peat fork to persuade the stubborn bovine to move by a good hard jab to the loins. She bellowed and jumped right into the next stall, but was so mad at me I had a hard time getting over to shut and lock the gate, even after that she kept trying to knock it down to come out and knock me down.

Thank god I had the good sense to put on my overalls. I was covered in cow crap. I should have put on my rubber boots, but I wasn’t thinking and now I’d have to find a way to hide my shoes or clean them off so they won’t be noticed in front of the company. I was going up in the loft to pitch down some hay to make old bossy happy, but I found the hay by the drop area to be moldy. I spent over an hour hauling fork after fork over to the front door to pitch it out into the yard. I didn’t want that next to my good stuff. I was running out of time and expected to see the Reverend’s car to come up the driveway at any moment. I was determined to keep working right up to the time I would be forced to stop.

This farm was my dream. Marlene was never happy about it. She told me over and over again she wasn’t going to be happy, but she would go along with my dream only if I was serious about it. She said she would get used to it, but she wasn’t going to pack and move and pack and move, on and on and on. I had to be serious enough to see it through just like marriage. “Do you take this farm to be your beloved farm and hold on to and protect it forever, so help you god” and I said, “I do!” And she said, “Go for it!” So here I am and I’m struggling not to break that promise, even if I have to fudge some on Sunday.

I took off my neck tie and put on a bandana. I get mud and cow crap on my shoes and I only get a hair cut twice a year. We drive the kids to school, because the school system decided to stop the busing. We get stuck in the driveway every fall, spring and winter or whenever it rains and it seems to rain all the time in these parts. The tractor and the implements seem to break down constantly and especially whenever we need extra money for an emergency such as when my mother had her stroke the day before Easter, two years ago and we had to drive the four hours to be by her side. When the well dried up and the fire got started in the barn and destroyed the back half. When high winds brought the one hundred year old oak tree down on the oil shack and set off a spill of weed killer from the stuff I’d stored inside. It was a farm to the core and I’m a farmer to the core… Anyway I sure hoped I could keep it that way.

I was pitching out the last of the bad hay and I could see the preacher’s car coming up our drive way. I pulled the hay loft door shut and started back down the ladder to change out of my filthy overalls and meet our guests. I must have gotten caught in the rung of the ladder to the loft. It was that split part I’d been fixing to repair. I lifted my foot and the boot was snagged by the lace or the soul and I lost my balance. I tried to catch myself, but only managed to tumble head long into the stall right under the ladder. That was all I remembered. I don’t remember the black covering my eyes. I was told I fell into a nice bed of hay that broke the fall and prevented me from becoming very injured. I landed on my side and rolled over on my back with my straw hat tilted down over my face. My wife said that when I was found, I simply looked like I was sleeping on the job.

The Sleep
I may have looked like I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. I remember the fall, but I just got up off the ground with a small knot on my head, but nothing worse than when I’d fallen out of the apple tree. I found myself outside under the mulberry tree in the back pasture and I was twelve years old and didn’t know I was a child again nor did I care. I’d always been on that farm. I’d always been a child. I was born there in the house. Dad was out in the nearby field with the old John Deere tractor with its Pop! Pop! Pop… With the old green bean can dancing up and down over the vertical exhaust pipe.

Dad waved at me on every pass and I would wave back. Things worked on my daddy’s farm. I can’t remember even one time when daddy was distraught over a blown crankcase or bent twine on the hay rack. Things just worked and we were always happy. Every fall when daddy put up the hay, it just happened. The hay was cut and put in the barn and that was that. When daddy went out to cut the milo, he just took the combine and cut it and hauled truck load after truck load to the elevator and picked up his money. I can’t remember once when dad said he didn’t get what he expected.

Mother would always come to the door and shout for everyone to come in and wash up for supper. Daddy would stop his tractor and walk in to the farm yard and leaving this small cloud of dust just like the trucks make as they pass on the county lane next to us. I remember mother as clear as day light. She would stand in the back door smiling and saying, “Breakfast is ready” in the morning. “Dinner is ready!” at noon, and “Supper is ready,” for the evening meal. No, I wasn’t sleeping, because I remembered all that, just like it was yesterday.

We’d always have a great big meal. Mother made corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, batter fried Squash, fresh sliced tomatos, cucumber pasta salad with Italian dressing and a nice big portion of batter fried liver and onions. Sometimes it was chicken, liver sausage or meatloaf. She always made more than anyone could eat and she’d put the leftovers in the refrigerator and use them in the lunches for school or when we were out working in the field with dad. Those left over lunches were just the ones I’d hope they would have in heaven.

No one had a television, but everyone had a radio. I could remember always running home from school to listen to Bobby Benson and the B-bar-B Ranch, Sky King and my favorite, The Lone Ranger! I’d pull myself up on the kitchen cabinet, dig two cookies out of the cookie jar beside me and listen to the stories. If mother didn’t catch me, I’d dip my hand into the cookie jar at least a couple times more.

It was a perfect life on the farm and it was a perfect place outside that farm. There was no war anywhere that I know of. I don’t think I had any uncles who were in a war or even remembered a war. There were no wars to study in school. I thought there was no such thing as war and strife. I thought neighbors helped one another, strangers stopped and gave rides and the riders were grateful when they did. I thought it was just right and proper to speak to strangers and treat everyone with respect. I thought people paid their bills on time and if they couldn’t, some one came and helped them out. I thought everyone was rich, because everyone help everyone else just to keep folks even. I thought there were no bullies, or bank robbers. I never once listened to a story when the Lone Ranger had to shoot someone or arrest them for a misdeed. I thought the police were out on the city streets to help people. I thought the Sheriff was out on the county roads to tell farmers the cattle were out and to stick around to lend a hand in gathering them back up and herding them to the pen.

The awakening
I wanted to go on, but the boyhood was interrupted by someone kicking at my foot It didn’t seem like a dream, but my dream dissolved and I found myself on the barn floor with my hat over my eyes and my back hurt and one arm hurt and I could feel someone nudging at my foot with their foot. I reached up with my right hand and pulled back my hat and here was my wife, the Reverend and his wife standing over me looking down. I was confused and I was hoping I wasn’t enclosed in a box while folks filed past with tear filled eyes. No one looked surprised to see me move. No one jumped back in staggering fright. They were smiling and laughing as if they thought I was just sleeping. Maybe I was. I heard my wife, Marlene, remark, “There, there, you sleepy head. Our guests are here and supper is ready.

The End.

I have been fortunate to have in my possession, two pieces of art. One is signed,but I can’t read it. It is a portrait of a young girl with flowers. It’s a numbered print and I bought it from the Goodwill in Great Bend for $7.00 would you believe it? This other painting (oil) was found in a house over on West 2nd street in Ellinwood, KS. It’s somewhat damaged, has no signature, but I think its wonderful. I’m going to get it cleaned up and framed. Both are worth keeping.
I thought I would just share them with you and impress upon you to check the trash and keep a good eye out at the Goodwill. Robert Joy

9/13/2008
Robert Joy “I’m sick and tired of the bullshit.”

The first thing I heard after being dumped off in the middle of the campus was “Have a good time son. Get good grades and write home once in a while.” That was the first thing and the last thing I’d hear from my parents until I’d go home for the holidays. The next things I heard was how bad the dormitory food was and to keep your windows shut at night, because the college was replacing the screens and the bugs will eat you alive while you sleep.

This big ole kid with a puffy red face had to show everyone the bottoms of his big walrus feet to prove his point. He was slouching back on the overstuffed divan in the commons area before lunch. Everyone was new in this dorm… Well except this one guy who claimed to be coming back to college after he had a round in Vietnam. The big red faced guy named Albert pulled off his shoes and socks and stuck his big feet up on the coffee table to prove the bugs had lunch while he was asleep.

“Keep them windows shut,” he warned. Them damned bugs… I don’t know what they were… They make a croaking sound and they fly around the room like a giant locust or something. I pulled my blankets up to keep them off my lips. They kept landing on my lips, man. It was hot as hell under those covers. I forgot I had the window open. When I opened it I noticed there weren’t no screens, but I didn’t see no sign until morning… Anyway my feet stuck out, because I needed to keep my head under the covers and the damned bugs ate them up. Look man… Look what they did!”

Personally, I had no reason not to believe the kid and I didn’t open up my windows. It was hot as hell, but I didn’t have any B-52’s flying around in my room trying to land on my lips. Personally, I think the guy was full of crap. His goddamned feet looked just like his face. I think the idiot would drop dead if he were to get a look at his face and at his feet at the same time.

The room was just one big empty shell. Two single beds pushed up against the opposite walls. Two metal chest of drawers and a doorway to the hall. Just like in camp, the mattresses were rolled up like a giant snail sitting there waiting for the new occupant to decide which side to put down and which side to sleep on. I didn’t look that hard, because there were old stains I didn’t want to analyze too deeply. I just pulled the wound-up thing down and let it flop out straight. I made my bed, put away my one bag of things and went downstairs to see if it was time for supper.

It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as bad as the stuff we had in high school. We didn’t get a giant glob of peanut butter from some army surplus drum shipped back from a warehouse in Tokyo, Japan. We didn’t have a peanut butter sandwich with the peanut butter mixed in surplus honey, in which I had acquired a profound distaste. We didn’t have macaroni and cheese… I could live the rest of my life without any more macaroni and cheese, believe me. We didn’t have any stewed tomatoes in bread or tomato soup. If things went this way and without all those aforementioned foods showing up on my tray, I think I could live with the food.

I got back to my room and the new guy had arrived. He had more stuff than Doctor Livingstone must have had on his trek across the wilds of Africa. How in hell he got all that crap up to the room in the time while I was out to lunch was beyond my comprehension. He called his mother “Mummsy” and waved his limp little hand around as he talked. He said he was from Salina and he was going to be an accountant. He didn’t introduce himself and I didn’t ask him anything more than was absolutely necessary.

His name was Chester, because I saw it engraved on the side of each of his bags, on the labels attached to the cardboard boxes piled in the middle of the floor and behind the door on my side of the room, on his towels spread out on the bed and on every thing else he claimed to own. Chester Gilbreath!… His majesty, the son of some very self-important accountant from Salina. I was so impressed that I wanted to puke and between that and wanting to run away to Tibet, I was hoping and praying he wasn’t really my new roomy. I dreamed I was dreaming and all this would just go away after he discovered he was in the wrong place. My luck would not have it that way.

The second thing I heard, was which classes to take and which professors to avoid and which ones were hard and which ones were puds. Which classes were mandatory and which you could avoid if your daddy’s name was Chester Gilbreath the second and you lived in Salina, Kansas. I heard the fat chubby red faced kid tell everyone about the worms that crawled across his ceiling in his room and would drop down on his bed at night and he would find at least a dozen on him in the morning. The next thing I was doing was looking up at the ceiling before turning out the lights.

The classes started and I was majoring in Creative Writing. I had to take all the required classes like Algebra, European Literature as long as it was German. I took this one class in the introduction and the history of writing under a professor Higgins, Dr. Leonard Higgins. Chester reminded me of all the mistakes I’d made the second I told him what classes I’d chosen.

Higgins wasn’t so bad. He told jokes on the first day out. We didn’t do anything but listen to his jokes and I got a good feeling about the choices I’d made. The next day, Higgins spread his plan out on the chalk board. At first I didn’t take much of it serious, but I suddenly got the feeling it was all just a big illusion and that I better start paying attention. I started writing everything that came out of his mouth. Higgins got deeper and deeper and piled on more and more stuff we were to accomplish in his class. He told lots of jokes, but fewer and fewer of us were laughing. I missed most of the punch lines, because I was still writing what I tried to remember he’d said before the joke. His class was like a tickle torture. We laughed, but it was painful and I knew I wasn’t going to get an “A” in this class. When I got back to the dorm, I didn’t say a word to Chester. The next day the class was only half full.

Professor Higgins drifted off course like a sail boat without a crew. He jumped from the history of writing into a mini course on creative writing. He started talking about writing stories and assignments involving creative thought. The student, including myself were becoming bewildered and the numbers waned daily. Three-fourths of the class simply stopped coming and it was only into the first week. Undaunted, Professor Higgins plodded on despite the desertions of the crew.

Professor Higgins told his fifteen minutes of jokes every morning, some of them for the third time, still that was always the best part of the class. Today he said he was going to dismiss early, because we were to have our first assignment and we’d needed the time to encounter the subject. No subject; what the hell was that? The man wasn’t assigning a subject. We were to leave the classroom and “encounter” the subject as he explained. We were expected to go out to the campus hallways or sidewalks or downtown or back to the dorm and simply “encounter the subject.” We were to listen and the first complete thought or statement we “encountered” from some other person would be the subject of our first story in the history of writing class.

Professor Higgins said he’d know if we fudged. He said he’s been in the business long enough to tell if we cheated on the assignment. He wanted completely spontaneous stuff and he wanted something he’s never read before in his whole life. If he reads one line of something he’s seen before, the paper is going to the trash and the would-be writer will become an instant failure and would receive an “F”. Professor Higgins, stopped talking and looked at us and I believed him.

What the hell was I going to do? I wasn’t prepared for this stuff. I was living in a jungle at the dorm. I was living with Lord Chesterfield, the king of smug one bed on the opposite side of the room. The dorm cafeteria food was the only thing I had going for me. The only way all of this could possibly get worse, was for the fat red faced guy to move in my room and we’d both be counting worms on the ceiling.

What the hell was I going to do? I wasn’t going to run around eaves dropping on everyone in the hallways trying to encounter a subject. Why in hell didn’t the old fool just give us a subject like we got in high school speech class? What if the first thing I head was something obscene. What would I do then? I couldn’t be writing words like, “That f—ing prick” and stuff like that. If I’d written stuff like that in high school, I’d been sent straight to the office. I gathered my books and departed the room. The instant I entered the hallway a woman walking past, talking to another woman, said loud enough for me to hear “I’m sick and tired of the bullshit!”

A whole mountain may as well have fallen on my head. I woke up in a dark room with a headache. I could hear screaming from outside the door and down the hallway. I’ve heard it all before, but this time I was numb. My head was spinning, Chester was snoring like some old man, something was on the walls or ceiling crawling, because I could hear the little feet or claws scraping the surface looking for hand holds to grip. I didn’t want to sit up or go back to sleep. I looked over at the glowing dial on the clock. It was three or four o’clock… I couldn’t really tell, because my eyes refused to focus. I didn’t give a crap, because it was too early for breakfast, too early to get up and go outside for a walk, because the campus cops would be on the prowl.

“Screw the grade!” I shouted to myself. Chester moved, snorted and turned on his side. The snoring stopped, thank god. “Screw the grade!” I shouted to myself again and Chester moved again. I did it again and Chester reacted. I had something here, but I couldn’t focus on it. Here I was on the verge of a telephonic levitation process breakthrough and I had to concentrate on a story from the words of some stranger or get a big fat “F”. I kept thinking a big fat “F” would be the very reason the Selective Service would find it in their big hearts to select me for the next round of draft into the United States Army. College was the only thing between me and wallowing around in a Vietnamese rice paddy with Vietnamese bullets flying over my head. I couldn’t screw the grade. I needed the grade.

I couldn’t get Dr. Higgins assignment out of my head, but I couldn’t do anything with “I’m sick and tired of the bullshit.” The paper was due in one more day and I was stuck. What the hell was there to write about? What the hell was bullshit anyway? I was going over to the campus library and check out all the books I could find on the subject of bullshit. I was going to just drop the class like about half of the kids already. I was going down to the lounge and wait for the cafeteria to open. I was going over to strangle Chester if he didn’t stop snorting… I did the next best thing, I went over to Chester’s chest of drawers and turned all his underwear inside out and rolled all his socks into groups of three. I turned his alarm off, hid his comb and left the room.

The lounge was a large, mostly unused room. Only the newbees or the guys waiting for a ride somewhere inhabited the lounge. It was under constant surveillance from the house lady. There was no screaming in the lounge and it was far removed from the chaos on the second floor. I could feel a nice breeze coming through an open window with screens on it. I made a quick prayer for screens before I went back to my worries.

Maybe I could just write the sentence down and start a story from that. Wow! Wow! My brain was working for the first time in days. It felt like a giant flush and the bowl was clean again. My thoughts were swirling around in my head in the direction things swirl in this hemisphere… But then what? What’s bullshit? I’d have to come up with a tub full of it. I was never good a bullshitting. I was always good at being direct and maybe that was one of the reasons I got beat up allot in school. Maybe that was what high school was all about and I missed out on it. Maybe bull-wacky was the reason for twelve years of schooling and I just never caught the drift. It is quite possible that the woman speaking in the hallways was a teacher fed up with the system and was out to change it.

I ate breakfast and I went off to class. I thought of a million things I should write, but before I could lift my pen, I came up with a new reason not to do it. The longer I tarried with the subject the less I wanted to write. My mind was going dead like it was running on cheap batteries and I didn’t have the money or energy to go down and get some fresh new ones.

While I was sitting in the cafeteria eating supper I saw Chester enter the room. I tried to hide, I could see he was looking for me. Then I see he sees me and starts in my direction. My mind starts to whirl again to come up with some excuse about his stuff. I know it’s about his stuff, because I’ve worried all day long about what he said or thought when he saw what happened. He flops down at the table across from me. He drops his tray on the surface and attracts the attention of everyone in the vicinity. He looks over at me with frustration all over his face. He looks just like a king that has lost a battle or a kingdom. I ask him what the matter was, as if I had no idea. He sighs, he looks down at his tray and picks up his fork to drag his green beans around in the little slot. He sighs again and looks over at me like a big puppy that was kicked outside in the rain.

“I am so glad to see you. I missed my first class today. I woke up an hour late and I didn’t make it on time. I lost thirty points and the professor won’t let me make them up. I don’t know what happened. My clock has never failed me. It just didn’t go off and I didn’t wake up until eight-thirty and I didn’t have time to get dressed, eat breakfast and get to class.

Then the laundry turned all my underwear inside out and put my socks in threes and that really put me behind. I have to go through everything now to see what’s wrong with it. I don’t know what to do now if I don’t have a laundry that can follow the simplest of orders.”

I shook my head in mock disbelief and told him how terrible it must be to have one’s underwear turned inside out. How embarrassing it must have been to run around with underwear turned out wrong to the wrong side. I even said how horrible it would have been if he’d had a car accident and the EMT’s got a look at him in the ambulance? I mean I just went crazy. I was so out of my mind with all those crazy made up lies that I just couldn’t stop myself. To tell the awful truth, it all felt so good.

I just sat in front of that guy and made everything up. I looked him right in the eye and lied like a dirty dog. As I lied, I began to realize what power there was in all those lies. I was guilty and I was the prime suspect, anyway I should have been the prime suspect and I was able to convince this poor chump of a royal prince that I was innocent. I looked like the lost puppy at the door whining for a hand out, for a new home. Wow, what power there was in all that. If I could just harness a small part of all that, I could go anywhere. I could be the world’s greatest used car salesman. I could go into real estate, I could sell swamp land in Florida to innocent old people and by the time they found the land they’d bought a swamp, it would be too late. I could even go all the way. I could run for President of the United States and I could win. I lied like a dog and I’d gotten away with it. I was still young and I found the secret to the universe. I knew then, if I maintained my cool and kept my face straight, I could boldface my way into and out of anything.

That evening I wrote the paper entitled, “I’m sick and tired of the bullshit.” I got on the typewriter and I pounded the keys for three solid hours until I had a brilliant paper. It was a story about a woman who went to work for a major university and confronted the “Good ole boy system.” She puts up with the gender bias crap at work every day and comes home to a very demanding and snooty roommate, she’s agreed to share an apartment with to save on rent. She’s stuck between a rock and a hard place and has considered the idea of packing her stuff and moving back home with her parents.

Then that evening her room mate makes a pass at her and this really shocks her and pisses her off. She tells her roommate she doesn’t want a relationship, just a person to share an apartment, but the roommate is very aggressive and keeps up the assault. The roommate (I named her Fay), becomes a real problem after that. The crap goes on and on until the woman (I named her Mildred) starts getting back by messing with the roommates stuff before going off to work. You know, the turning underwear inside out and changing the time on the clock and things like that. Stuff she knows will drive the woman crazy and in the hopes that this royal pain-in-the-ass will leave and go somewhere else to live. Well, it didn’t happen the way she expected it to happen and suddenly Mildred found herself in the driver’s seat. The roommate turns out to be a whimp and soon Mildred has her in the palm of her hand. The roommate is transformed into a maid and is forced to do housework, laundry, running errands or she can expect to be sent home to live with her own overbearing and demanding parents.

I couldn’t believe I actually wrote that story from a simple statement I heard in a hallway. I read it over again and I couldn’t believe it came out of my own head and from my own hands. There it was, the story of my life and the solution to all my problems. The next morning I took the cap off of Chester’s fountain pen and put it back in his clean white shirt pocket. I put real tight knots in his shoe stings before skipping off to breakfast. I went to class with a smug little smile on my face.

I’d turned into a smart ass and I knew it, but I had cause to be confident. I skipped into class and waited for the bell, but this morning was different. A new person entered from Dr. Higgin’s office door. A new person was to become our new professor. This man was named Doctor Dailey. He had a horrible speech defect worse than a foreign accent. I couldn’t understand a word the man was saying. He jabbered on and on and didn’t bother explaining why he was suddenly our new professor in this creative writing class. I tried to take notes, but I couldn’t keep up with his insane muddled jabber. I tried to put down my pen and just listen, but my mind wasn’t ready for this. I hadn’t switched over from smug to humble and I was starting to feel faint. I was starting to feel insecure and hopeless. I wanted to run. I wanted to run back to the dorm and save the poor hapless royal Chester from his pending fate, but I noticed the time on my watch and knew it was too late to save him from my evil acts.

Surely this was some sort of joke, surely some sort of cruel, evil joke like the crap I’d inflicted on poor sleeping Chester. Maybe Dr. Higgins has a magic mirror in which he watches all of his students and he knows when we’ve been bad or good. I wanted to throw my hand in the air and put a stop to this imposter’s mumbling diatribe and send him back from whenst he came. I wanted to get to my feet and yank the mask off the man in front of the room to reveal to the class that it was, in fact and indeed, the one and only Dr. Leonard Higgins just performing one of his morning jokes in the form of theater. I wanted Higgins to be in control… No! I wanted to be in control.

As it turned out, our old professor, Dr. Higgins had died. The old fart had the last laugh. He told his last joke and our beloved professor of one glorious week, was gone. He’d had a massive stroke in the night and had died that very morning. He was no longer the man in front of the class and now the man in front of the class was Dr. Dailey. Dr. mumbling, serious, uninspired Dailey and he wanted to teach the History of Writing. I knew the class would fill up again. All the complaining deserters would be back from exile and I didn’t want to be surrounded by deserters. Dr. Leonard Higgins had taught me all I needed to know in the history of writing, so I deserted.

I started treating Chester better. I let him be his own personal pompous self-ful self. I stopped screwing with his shaving cream and setting his clock back and jacking his bed legs up on glass marbles. I stopped messing with Chester, because I knew I had power over him and so he couldn’t bother me any longer. Real power (according to Oscar Schindler) was knowing you had the power, but choosing not to use it. Chester eventually changed rooms to another aristocrat, a person of breeding, more to his liking. I changed my major from creative writing to art. I started my first class in art history and in less than a week, I received a letter from home informing me that I was to report for my first military physical in January.

The End

Have you ever lost your glasses?
Robert Joy
9/11/2008
Have you ever lost your glasses in the morning and you know the silly things are somewhere in the house nearby. You know they’re around the house, because you just got back from your morning five mile walk and you had them right on your nose at that time. You know they are just setting in some silly place you laid them down on or in and then forgot.
I lost my damned glasses somewhere and I can’t find them. I can’t see without them, so you know the fix I’m in. I know they are in some stupid place I never normally put them. Just setting there in plain sight laughing at me every time I pass close by. I can hear them snickering at me and that really gets me upset.
I can get out of bed in the morning and in a completely darkened house, I can walk right up to them setting on the table in the living room and pick them up. I put them there every evening after Seinfeld, just before I go into bed. I think it’s that silly sitcom that’s screwing up my brain lately. A show about nothing and I’m addicted to the stupid thing. I actually find myself liking that idiot Cramer. I weaned myself from the Tonight Show. I stopped watching it cold. A couple of times I’ve accidentally wandered into it while channel surfing, but I never went back… Not even of the “Headlines” part I really enjoyed. Now I’m hooked on Seinfeld and I can’t find my glasses.
It’s been happening more and more lately. For a time I thought I was suffering from the initial outset of Alzheimer’s syndrome. Isn’t that the way it all starts? One day you can’t find your glasses and the next day you can’t find your wallet and one day the cops pull you over on the highway for drifting over the white line. You try to explain to the idiot who doesn’t give a shit about your excuse and wants you to produce your drivers license, proof of insurance and registration. You find the registration and the proof of insurance, but you left your wallet on the bed after you changed your trousers, because you dropped paint on the cuff and the leg was too wet from cleaning it off with the water hose and they had to dry before dumping them into the laundry basket. Try telling all that to a cop who just wants to write out a ticket and be on his merry way. Try telling some snot-nosed kid with a badge and an attitude, that it was all just the normal sequence of being alive and that you wouldn’t just be making all of it up, because you’re losing your mind.
I looked all around my big chair. I got down on my knees and groped around the bottom like a dog looking for his chewy bone. I felt up under the skirt like I was some perverted school boy with a buck toothed girl backed against the stairwell wall, so desperate for attention from any boy, she let him get away with it. What the hell would they be doing there anyway? I never put them on or around or near the big chair. I sit down in that chair to write my letters. I sit down in that chair to draw my drawings I send away with the letters. I only wear my reading glasses around my big chair. I always take off my regular glasses and put them on the table next to the big chair. They should be on the table, but I can’t find them.
I have lifted up everything on that damned table at least six times by now. I’ve taken everything out of the box where I keep my ink bottle and syringe to fill it with. I have to fill my fountain pen at least once every day and a half. I write all the time and the pen needs refilling constantly so I use a cattle syringe to put the ink back into the small plastic cartridges and it saves me a bundle. I feel like a cocaine addict when I’m over at the kitchen sink “shooting up” as my wife so colorfully puts it. Why in hell would I put my glasses in the ink box?
I retraced my steps. I went from the back door and reenacted the same moves I’d make if I were coming in from my morning walk. I do all the same things I do every morning and I can’t find them anywhere. I know I had them on my nose and over my eyes when I came in the house. I had to have had them at that time. I’m sure, I’m not so far gone that my glasses could fall off on the sidewalk and I wouldn’t realize it. Maybe that’s the second sign dementia is setting in; stuff just falls off and you don’t realize it until the that big van comes and the men take you away to the big white house with white rooms and bland food and people in white coats who talk to you as if your out of your gourd.
Well… I’m talking to myself while I’m reenacting my walk from the end of the driveway into the house. There is no way in hell I lost my glasses out on my morning walk. There is no god damned way my glasses fell off while I was walking. I’d know it and I’d go back for them and that is that. I tell myself that over and over and then I realize what I’m doing and then I realize I may be displaying the next symptoms of “Old Timers” disease and I make myself shut up. The worst part is when I catch myself actually looking back toward the street making sure the white van wasn’t sitting there or the neighbors weren’t looking out the side windows shaking their heads and muttering. I caught myself, but I was doing it again as I entered the house and walked through the kitchen looking at the floor and up against the cabinets and around the edge of the kitchen trash container. My wife standing over and stirring a pot of hot cereal answered with a “What?”
I mumbled something and went on. She knew what I was doing and tried for a short time to help me. She looked in places I would never put my glasses in a million years and it really frustrated me to watch her looking in the top drawer of her sewing machine table. It was frustrating to watch it and I lost my temper. She just stopped helping and went about her normal duties and let me fret. Every once in a while she would make a suggestion where they might be and where I should take the effort to look. She thought it would be a good idea if I looked in the laundry dryer. She said she just put a load of my stuff inside and maybe my glasses would be in the pocket. I ignored her, because I knew if I said anything, it wouldn’t be a pleasant thing to witness. Why in hell would I have my glasses in a pocket of my shirt that was going into the wash? Surely my glasses would have fallen out in the washer if that would be the case.
That’s when I remembered changing shirts when I got back from my walk. I wanted to toss in a load of my clothes while I was taking my morning bath. My wife and I both do our own laundry and of course we both take our own personal baths (just a bit of humor injected into this frustrating report). Maybe my wife was somewhat correct, so I went to look. There were no glasses at the bottom of the washer.
I remember taking off my shirt and I remember putting it in the washer. That was distinct and clear. I went over it again just to be sure I was sound of mind. I remember and that was that. I looked in the bottom of the washer again and I even ran my hand around the bottom edge and up against the agitators. I didn’t find them there and sighed a sigh of relief of being right about something and not having to admit that my wife was right again. I was still very frustrated not being able to find those damned glasses.
Just to be absolutely sure I was right… I went over and opened the dryer. The shirts were still there and still a bit damp from the first cycle. I picked them each up and shook them hoping my glasses would show themselves. Nothing happened. I had all my shirts out and hanging over my left arm as I peered inside to see if my glasses could just possibly be inside. I knew they weren’t there, because anyone whose owned a dryer knows what a racket things make as they tumble around and around. I looked just to be sure. I wanted to be ready for my wife’s question… “Did you look in the dryer?”
I love that woman, but I hate being wrong. She never judges me, but I hate it when she’s right and she always seems to be right. How can someone be right all the time. She doesn’t even get a big head about it. She’s right by being right. She says it’s where it is and makes no big show of it. I find out how right she is and that’s the way it is.

I can remember the time I locked myself out of the car. Well… I thought I locked myself out of the car, but my car was locked on a dark parking lot and I couldn’t find my keys in my pocket. I looked into the window and I couldn’t see if the keys were in the ignition. I couldn’t even see with the penlight I had in my pocket. I tried for over a hour to try to get the damned door open with everything from a bent coat hanger to a piece of flat metal like the cops have. I’d resorted to using profanity at the top of my lungs when my wife drives up in her car. One correction here… She wasn’t my wife yet, because I hadn’t asked her to marry me yet. I was at the end of my rope and would have gladly taken help from the Zodiac killer at his point if he’d offered to me.
She reached in her purse for a small flash light which I told her would do no good, because I hadn’t been able to see anything with my own, so she goes to the trunk of her car and brings out a spot light someone would use in a coal mine rescue operation. She put that up against the window and in two seconds I knew without a doubt, the keys were not in the ignition. She starts asking me questions about where I’d been and where I could have possibly misplaced my keys. She had me down on the pavement looking under the car. She used her spotlight to make sure the keys weren’t still on the seat. She grilled me until I realized I’d seen my keys while I was in the performance. I remember taking them out of my pocket while I searched around for my small LED light to read the program. I remember putting them back in my trouser pockets. I remember putting them in my pocket, because I distinctly remember getting them caught on a piece of the fabric and having to pull them out twice before they dropped inside.
I checked my trouser pockets again and they simply were not inside. I pulled everything out and put it all on the hood of the car. I felt like I was in a traffic stop search by the cops. My wife (girl friend) sifted through my stuff with the end of a ball point pen as if she didn’t want any of it to touch her skin. I didn’t say anything about her methods, but it was very disturbing. She told me to check my trouser pockets again and I did. Nothing inside and in fact I enlarged a hole in my pocket by digging around. I leaned back on my car completely frustrated and defeated.
Then my detective girl told me to check my pockets again. I told her they weren’t inside and it was a waste of time. I just wanted to go home and stew about it until the next morning when I could get a locksmith to come down and open the doors or I could get a mechanic to hot wire the car or get me a new set of keys. She told me to recheck my pockets and I did and found nothing as usual. She stood right there looking at me and looking down at my pockets and back up at me. “Did you check all of your pockets?” she asked me.
I checked all my pockets. I ran my hand completely around my trousers, both fronts and both backs. I even took my hands up and went over my shirt pockets… Nothing! She reached down and gave me a frisk. She ran her hands over both of my trouser pockets at the same time. She went up and down like a jailer looking for contraband. She rubbed all over both sides and on the right hand pocket she lingered. She rubbed hard at the top of the pocket, then she started fidgeting around and … Pop! Out come my car keys just like the performer at a magic show.
“Voila!” She shouts like a bull fighter. She dances all around the parking lot with my car keys dangling from the tips of her fingers. She’s acting like a darn fool and people are stopping and staring at us. I accuse her of some sort of cruel trick. I told her it wasn’t funny and that if this was her idea of a joke it wasn’t very nice. Most of all I was embarrassed as hell.
“It was in your watch pocket” she sang as she danced on her third victory lap around my car.

“Did you look in the dryer?” I just knew she’d say it. I was ready for her. I’d practiced for it. I’d gone all over the house while I looked for my glasses saying to myself in her very tone. “Did you look in the dryer?” I looked in the damned thing three times. I felt all over inside even though it was very well lit and I could see every crack and cranny. I even searched around for a watch pocket. I even checked the watch pocket in a pair of trousers I had with the load. Nothing! I picked up that pile of shirts two dozen times and shook them over the bed hoping my glasses would miraculously appear. I looked around the bed on the floor, under the edge of the bed spread and I even crawled around on the floor around the dryer, but nothing showed up. I finally flopped down in the big recliner totally frustrated.
“Did you look in the dryer?” It came at me like a teacher running her finger nails down a blackboard to get the attention of the class. I looked up and she was standing in front of me waiting for the answer. I told her I looked everywhere… “I looked everywhere!”
“Did you look in your shirt pockets?”
I told her I picked up the shirts in a pile and shook them over the bed. I’d taken each shirt separately and shook it over the bed. I’d run my hands over the shirts trying to feel any hard places and the glasses simply were not there. She doesn’t say a thing. She just walks away and goes into the spare bedroom where the shirts are spread out on the bed. In less than thirty seconds, she’s back standing in front of me at the recliner and holding my glasses out at arm’s length. I’m dumbfounded. All I can utter is… “Where did you find them?”
“In your shirt pocket!
“What shirt pocket? I checked everyone of those shirts and it wasn’t in any pocket!”
“They were wrapped up in a handkerchief and in your shirt pocket. They were wedged in very tight and I had a hard time getting it out.”
Crap… Crap… Crap! I remembered being very upset with the fact that my glasses were getting small scratches on the lenses from being unprotected in my pocket so I tried wrapping them up in a small handkerchief when I was wearing my reading glasses. They kept falling out when I leaned over, so I stuffed them down in the bottom sideways until they were snug. Then I forgot… I forgot… I forgot… I forgot!

The End.

I’ve looked all over the internet for a good map of Dong Tam, vietnam where I was stationed from 1968-1969 as a member of the 162nd Aslt Hel. Company. I found the web site of the 162nd Aslt Hel Co., but I couldn’t find anyone who could help me get this map on the site so here it is on my own blog. Maybe someone will find there way here. This is my map, I drew it. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than anything else on line. Also I have a drawing of our company area in the north-east corner of Dong Tam. 162nd Aslt Hel. company compound.
Click this PDF below.

Changes or suggestions:
If you have any changes, corrections, additions or errors I have made, please write me by e-mail at Bobberdilly@Juno.com.

map-of-dong-tam.pdf

map-of-the-company-area.pdf