SNOOKIES

A few doors down from our house was the pool hall, TV repair shop, and variety store. Snookie was this medium tall, slight built man in his 40's, enigmatic, sold candy in the front and had a nickel pop machine, Nehi orange and Mason root beer, fixed TV's in the back. Us kids would peer over the counter to see our neighborhood idols playing pool and drinking beer. Young toughs, James Deans, in blue jeans and white tee shirts, cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves, like Tommy Bolton, who lived across the street, his 57 Chevy parked out front. Snookie had some kind of kinship with them that I was too young to understand.
Strange how memories can swell up, especially this time of year.
Merry Christmas

PAVLOV

I don't respond to honks or buzzers or bells. The nuns would march us into church every day, two single file lines, boys on the right, girls on the left. First grade in the front pews, eighth in the back. Sr.Doreen would then snap her clicker. We'd genuflect together, make the sign of the cross and kneel. Maybe that's part of why I recoil at regimentation.
When they tell me that an I-phone is an absolute necessity in my life, or show Brittany Spears in a suggestive pose holding a can of coke, excuse me if I don't salivate.

ROCK AND ROLL

Recent announcement of the hall of fame inductees resurrected memories. Quite an eclectic group.
Madonna, talented, no doubt. Precursor to the Brittany-like shallow, shadow reflections.
Mellencamp, I saw Johnny Cougar in 73 at the Blue Bird in Bloomington, before Jack & Diane when he was still playing small college clubs. He was great when I was 22, and so was the acid.
Leonard Cohen I discovered earlier in 69 when I was a seminary student at a southern Indiana benedectine monastery. He was primarily a poet in the late 50's then realized that with his baritone voice he could put music to them and reach a new audience. He reached me with Suzanne, whom I later learned was a real person living as described on the St Lawrence. The second verse, ironic that a Canadian jew could so completely embrace the humanity, leaving aside divinity and salvation, which is a matter of personal faith. I'm sure he and John will find the most in common. Both bards and both still going.
Dave Clark Five I only saw on American Bandstand but I'm sure they deserve it.

Like a bird on a wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried, in my way,
To be free.

BRIGHTWOOD

I now live just a mile from where I grew up. Brightwood was a small town in the 50's & 60's. Working class railroad town where neighbors knew each other. My grandfather was the brakeman on the Indianapolis-St Louis run. He'd go to work through our back yard and the gap in the lumber yard fence, flag down the train as it pulled out of downtown. We built a clubhouse in the deserted Big Four yards, played around the torn down roundhouse pit, our moat.
Main street, my dad worked in the drug store at Station and Roosevelt. Saturday mornings, I'd get a hair cut at Harold's, the old men would say, "Well, there's little Jimmy," my dad's name.
Stop at the library, maybe bowl a game at the Moonlite, end up at the drug store fountain, where the girls, especially Dot, would fawn over me, best milk shake anywhere, ever, say hi to Dad and hand him a dime for the latest comic book. On the way home stop at the butcher shop and buy a couple pounds of hamburger with the dollar my Mom had given me.
My Dad owned a small apartment building at Roosevelt and Lasalle. Two three room apartments downstairs, I think he charged $40.00/mo. We lived in six rooms upstairs. My sister had her own 6x10 room off the stairway. My brothers and I shared the same room till I was 12. I know now we were poor, but I didn't then. Always food on the table. They sacrificed to send us to Catholic school. We had a console radio and TV. What else was there? Brightwood died, was torn apart in 1967 when Mayor Lugar routed I70 through the poorest parts of town.
My parents got the same price they had paid in 1950, $10,000. I still see Brightwood people.
There's a special bond. Dispersed, like refugees from a war zone. Scattered, but many, like me,
congregate back on the fringes.

CONGRUENCY

Poised upon the sword

pain is superior to doubt

So where is the joke?

only Job would know

It might be morning,
bright wood shining

Persimmon row

blackthorns, gravel road

Midsummer breeze

through corn fields and cottonwood trees

Concrete furrow, inner city burough

Gravity
They spin test tubes to separate masses
They spin lies to do the same
Fractal geometry
Feed the number back upon itself
Beauty and infinity

SAD LAMENT

For the working poor:I am single, work for the state at the lowest level, live alone in an eastside double. My monthly cost, rent and utilities, around $600. My monthly take home-$1000. That leaves me $400, $100 per week for gas, food, cigarettes, beer. I live humbly and not complaining. I'm used to struggle and survival, don't do well in plenty, but neither should I be in fear of dropping from sight. A 1.5% raise this year. That amounts to $15.00 a month for me. Hooray! I can go to McDonalds. Rich get richer, poor get poorer. The gap grows wider, may split this country apart. Sad lament.

FIAT LUX

'Light for a while'. It dims so fast. Use it well.