insearchofbud

Dan Struckman,  foolish ranter.

January 25, 2077

Sixty-one years ago Daniel Struckman sat in his basement where his house used to stand in Billings.  Now?  A pocket park, deep in the heart of Old Billings.  As it is properly called, Old Billings has some of the sites of the original neighborhoods in the Senior High School District.  Of course, Pioneer Park continues to attract many during all of the seasons.  It has it all:  skiing, frisbee golf, tennis, a wading pool.  All of the things that people enjoyed 100 years ago in 1977.  People still walk their dogs in Pioneer Park.

The world of 2077 is better than a hundred years ago in 1977.  For one thing, people feel like dancing in the streets.  For another thing, the problems caused by misanthropy have been abolished.  Hatred and love were discovered, scientifically, about 10 years ago in the 2060s, to be two aspects of the same thing, emotionally and intellectually.

For many years the two, hatred and love, were thought to be polar opposites, but more recently, they have been shown to be two aspects of the same thing.  In other words, identical because of the passionate attachments!

Thus,the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy, or indifference.

What a revolution in  popular thinking this produced!  After this revelation, it was discovered that apathy could be changed to love (or hate) by stirring it with a powerful feeling, such as fear.  Using standard propaganda, this was seen as eminently achievable, using ordinary methods.  Good results could be engineered!

SO:  In 2016 a more rational approach to government gained foothold when Bernie Sanders was elected President and many Democrats from Northern States took charge of the Senate and House of Representatives.  This helped change the policies of the United States from being guided by unkindness and fear and racism to more humane, and loving diversity;  courage to move forward.  Courage and faith in regular people!

Such courage is also known as progressiveness.  Humaneness is also known also as kindness.  Many religions espouse such.

The fearful, unkind, hating Southern racists have been held under the benevolent control of the more enlightened, better educated, people of the North.  Thus, things are going well.  Everyone benefits.  In 2077.  Even those from the South.

January 25, 2016

Russell Rowland held his writing workshop tonight.  I am inspired to write something new!  With surprises.  With realistic dialog.  Using characters drawn from life downtown.  Whoh!  My dog Gunther is about to take a shit on the rug.  Gonna write tomorrow.  Yup, I promise.  New.  Surprises.  Realistic.  Characters.

Dan Struckman, September, 1979

This picture was taken in the late summer, when my family and I returned to Missoula to take care of my brother’s possessions.  The houseful he left after he dropped suddenly dead after a brief period of heart failure following a myocardial infarction.  My oldest son scraped Tom’s body off his kitchen floor, maggots, stench, juices.  Nobody has been the same since then.

Lately, I’ve asked scores of people to be my Facebook friends.  To those who have accepted, I say simply, thank you.  I am almost 67.  I’ve been aspiring to be a writer since the 4th grade.  I am still aspiring.  Still learning.  I pay Russell Rowland to attend his writer’s workshop in Billings, Montana.

Writers?  Hah.  Should be called a “reader’s workshop.”  We take turns reading each others’ work.  That works out to reading ten pieces of theirs for every one piece they read of mine.  Still, we can learn a great deal from each other.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

*Bullets are one great way to write something.  I learned this from Jerry Holloron in Missoula in 1977 in journalism school.

*Don’t use passive verbs.  They sort of march in place, instead of drive things along.  Be bold.

*One should develop ideas fully.  Our group keeps asking me for ‘more, more!.’  Especially, one should try to paint word pictures of the places in the narrative.  To throw word pictures onto the imagination of the reader.

*Sentence fragments?  You know the answer.  They can be okay.

*Take chances.  Push boundaries.  Talk about stuff polite people wouldn’t.

*Write naturally.  Your readers don’t give a shit about rules.  On the other hand, consider the concept of ‘grace.’

*Scholarship and care.  Use ’em.  Facts are awesome.

Thanks, idle readers.  I hope you will also write things I will want to read.

I’m not sure where this photograph was taken, or by whom, but the pair are my grandparents, Ellen Margaret Wichstrom Bonde and Carl Tosten Bonde.  She got a certificate to be a teacher at Valley City Normal School in North Dakota, and I’m not certain about Carl’s education, but he probably finished high school.  He was fluent in Norwegian and had excellent handwriting.  My aunt Corinne told me that Carl learned handwriting from Mr. Palmer himself, of “Palmer Method” fame, in which students filled pages with O’s and L’s and the like to develop a flowing cursive style.

I’m guessing this may have been taken by their son, Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr., because he was an ardent photographer while in high school at Flathead High in Kalispell, Montana.  He graduated in 1941.  Notice that at least two light sources, judging from the shadows, were used for this night time indoor photograph.  Carl Jr. developed and printed his own photographs.  As a child I played with Carl’s Kodak 120 camera.

Alternatively, the photograph may have been taken by my father, Robert Powers Struckman, although he usually used a larger format camera, such as 4 x 5 inch Graflex.  I inherited several film holders for a Graflex.

Daniel Struckman, one of the Fake Hippies of 1967.

Tonight P. and I have a date with Kim Thompson.  Yes, the Kim Thompson, the same one alert readers will remember from a few posts ago when I wrote about the “fake hippies of 1967.”  She was a regular, sitting at the communal table down in the dining room in the Lodge at the University of Montana.

Anyway, P. and Kim and I are heading downtown to the Pub Station here in Billings to listen to some reggae music.  Most of what I know of reggae comes from a local public radio program hosted 20 years ago by Todd Eagle.

Some of my many readers, well two of my tens of readers had asked me what became of the hippies from the fabled Lodge.  Well, as you recall, we ate our meals in a huge dining room that was a daylight basement in the student union building, aka the Lodge.

You entered through the red-tiled hallway, down a short flight of stairs, showed your student ID to another student, then grabbed a tray and dishes and silverware, and went down a cafeteria line.

We hippies always ate together, and usually we sat for hours.  Our table was in the center of a sea of tables, so you couldn’t miss us.  We looked funny.  Unlike the mass of well-groomed people, our hair stuck out.   We smoked cigarettes and drank gallons of coffee.

I lost a bet with John Herman once, and I stood on the moving dirty tray conveyor, riding it until it disappeared through a square window, while I played a blues harp.  We all had them, in a variety of keys.  Mostly we had them in a key compatible with someone playing blues in E.  Of course, nobody had a pitch pipe, so E was whatever.

Where are they now?  Did they become successful adults?  You decide.  My friend John Herman is the only one I know who perished in his struggle with mental illness.  I’ll write about him later, as he was a close friend of mine.

*Kim Thompson became a damned good registered nurse and educator.  She is retired.

*Larry Felton finally got a bachelor’s degree in Mexico and recently retired from a career working for California state government as an archeologist.

*Bill Yenne has written scores of books about subjects like beer, the railroad, and Chief Sitting Bull.

*Steve Spoja sails boats in California.

*Virginia Baker recently retired as a registered nurse and college educator.  She has been married more than 40 years, has at least two grandchildren.

*Skip Reising is still an accomplished guitarist.  He joined a labor union as laborer, retiring with a good union pension.

*Scott Hendryx is a well-respected leather craftsman in Nevada.

*John Herman drove truck for North American Van Lines.  He committed suicide about 20 years ago.

*Linda Sheble’s whereabouts is unknown to me.

*Becky Cuffe married and has children.  They lived in Northwest Montana last I heard.

*Brenda Fleming retired from teaching and at this moment is exploring the world with her husband of nearly 50 years.  She has at least one grandchild.

*Allen Lenhart is retired from roofing and plays guitar in a mega-church in Paulsbo, Washington.

*Steve Franklin changed his name to Steve Starr and sold antiques.

*Jonna Rhein is a psychiatric nurse in Missoula.

*Mark Fryberger has held a variety of jobs, including chair of the Missoula Housing Board, regular writer for the Portable Wall, blues guitarist, table tennis champion, and groundskeeper for the University of Montana.  He recently retired.

*Jerry Berner traveled the world, finally settling in Big Timber, Montana, to farm herbs and spices.

*Gary from New York.  Don’t know.  Can’t even remember his last name.

*Bob Verduin, I don’t know.  He famously said, “fuck the draft,” and legend says he got drafted into the army.

This is an actual photograph of the interior of a Craig Hall dormitory room, taken years after it became co-ed.

September, 1967, University of Montana in Missoula

My mother insisted on helping me make my bed to get me settled.  I was a freshman in 1967.  Mortified that my mother was there, helping me move into Craig Hall.  Then it was a men’s dormitory.

“Please mother, don’t,” I begged her.  “Just leave me here!”

For background, I must note that there are grand old dormitories at the university.  But Craig Hall doesn’t come close.  It is ugly, plain and square, like it has a military crewcut.  It stunk like a locker room.  Sweat, only mingled with the odors of shoe polish and Brasso.  The R.O.T.C. guys were always shining their brass belt buckles.  Lots of guys didn’t change their underwear very often.

I was familiar with all of the dormitories because, as an adolescent growing up in Missoula, I explored the university buildings every night after school.  I did so for at least two years, hundreds of forays into the unknown. I knew secrets about the buildings.  I had crawled through tunnels connecting the buildings.

But god! in 1967, as a freshman, I was lonesome!  I had lived in Dillon since the seventh grade and I didn’t much know anyone in Missoula except my loser jock friends from high school.  I looked for some hippies around campus, but I couldn’t find any.

My dorm room had a grimy ground-level picture window, a marvel of architecture.  Marvelous because it had been designed as if to eliminate any possible grace or beauty.

It was closest to the north outside door of the building, where countless feet tromped past my door to class every morning.  The sound of anxious feet made me feel anxious too, like I had to join in the rush.My accommodations:  Unsatisfactory.  Just like my roommate,  can’t remember his name, the super straight college freshman.  Not artistic.  Not cool.  Not rebellious.  Totally beat down by the establishment.

He had bad habits: he kept his hair short, he shaved, he didn’t like me, he talked in a loud voice, like someone from New Jersey.  He had learned these habits at a military academy where his parents had sent him.

He had been a teenage criminal. Like me, he majored in journalism, one thing we had in common, although he said he didn’t care about journalism.

We treated each other politely, at first.  He suggested I sleep on the bottom bunk, so I did.  After all, my covers were neatly tucked in there.

I laid down on the bottom bunk and he climbed up to the top.  I pushed my feet up against the springs overhead to jog him up and down.  He responded by threatening me with a shocking surprise that would be quite painful if I did that again, so I didn’t.

He told me that he didn’t like me.  He said he rejected all of my values.  Hippie values.  Peace, love, drugs, rock and roll, sexual adventures.

One day, entering the room, he told me, “You are a nihilist.  That’s right, a nihilist.”

He laughed.  I had no idea what he meant.  He told me that we had practically nothing in common.  He didn’t like illegal drugs.  He said he lost a good friend from a heroin overdose.  Of course he was lying.  Wasn’t he?  I told him that hippies don’t take heroin.  Just psychedelic drugs.  For recreation and introspection.  For scientific purposes.  Like getting high.

Soon I learned how to smoke tobacco.  I had a girlfriend who always seemed to have cigarettes.

Even more disgusting, each morning my roomie brushed his head briskly for about 15 seconds with a pair of brushes he kept on his well-organized dresser.  In turn, I snubbed him and typically rolled out of bed chanting some secret hippie stuff.  I often put on yesterday’s clothes, and headed to breakfast.  Or else I rolled over and skipped my 8 o’clock class.  Or both.

After the first quarter I saw the military man roommate maybe once more, between classes.  He was friendly.  Said he got just one B, the rest A’s.  Hell, I did just as well as he did.  Well, not quite.  But pretty good anyway.  Good enough.

Missoula had always had beatniks, now it had hippies.  Trouble is, I didn’t know any.  At least not in Missoula.  My brother and his friends in Eugene, Oregon, turned me onto pot when I ran away to visit them during the summer.

I wanted to find some hippies.  Some dope-smoking people willing to share with me.

How to define hip?  I’ll tell you.  A hip person wasn’t straight.  Straight people caved into the pressure from the town folk, their high school teachers, their adult relatives, their jock friends.  These people made them get a short haircut and wear regular straight clothes and abstain from pot and drink plenty of alcoholic beverages and smoke tobacco cigarettes.  Also  watch TV.  In short, straights were not rebels.

As I said, straight people were well-groomed and cared about television and sports and didn’t question the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.  Straight people were mean.  Straight people were knee-jerk patriotic and were allied with the old guys who belonged to the Elks or Masons or some other organization.  They were the problem.  Hippies were part of the solution, the revolution for peace and justice and harmony.

When I got up I did my best to act naturally.  My hair was growing long, same with my beard.  In that way I hoped to attract persons of like interests.  Interest in being a part of the counter culture.  You see, the counter culture people dressed in glorious colors, exercised the freedom to seek self-gratification.  Freedom to shun the military and war. In those days all young men had to register for the draft in their home town.

Eventually I made some friends with like-minded people.

My friends spoke honestly and kindly, mostly.  Unless angry.  We were rebel men and women who hung out together wherever we could.

We were not locked into having to ask for dates to get together for university-sanctioned social events.  Like in sororities and fraternities.  Frat boys were not cool.  They reeked of sexism, alcoholism, and underarm deodorant and aftershave cologne.  My friends shunned all that.  We looked and smelled naturally.  Of sweat, of tobacco and incense.  Sometimes of marijuana.

Those days were the nascent time of hard rock and blues music.  I know that’s hard to believe now, but it was.

The folk scene was drawing to a close in 1967.  It had been reviled by the anti-communist John Birch Society that spread propaganda lies like, “buying a Bob Dylan album puts money in the hands of communists; even buys the bullets that kill our soldiers in Vietnam.”

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were some of the pioneer musicians prior to 1967, followed closely by the “summer of love” psychedelic San Francisco bands:  The Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix.  I almost forgot Procol Harum, which also started out in 1967.  From the east coast came Velvet Underground.  Frank Zappa came in that first wave.  Creedence Clearwater Revival came in later.  Also about a year later was Cream and a list of newer bands.  Raw energy, message of freedom, anti-war, anti-establishment.

The straights in Missoula, on the other hand, listened to top 40 hits:  A few big stars making music highly processed with violins and horns.  Pabulum.

We didn’t shun all responsibility, although the straights often tried to portray us that way.

It always boiled down to hairstyle.

We hippies bravely fought the pressure to conform to “straight values.”  Someone yelled at me from a car to “Get a haircut!”  My mother told me to get a haircut.  My track coach in high school threatened to pull my beard out with a pair of pliers.  My sister’s adult friend told me in a forceful way that my long hair was unacceptable.  There was a song on the radio with the lyrics”  “…are you a boy or are you a girl?  With your long brown hair you look like a girl?”  Anti-hip songs with messages opposing marijuana, other psychedelic drugs, mocking the anti-war movement.  We had to stand up tall for our values.

That’s what we were about.  Freedom to be hip, to have hip friends, to be members of an underground culture that could fulfill the American dream of self-determination.

This morning was so cold the wood stove wouldn’t draw.  Hell, I wouldn’t draw either.  Nonetheless, I opened the front door and added to the fire the unread sports page.  I was hoping for news of the Rocky Battlin’ Bears basketball teams off the internet.

January 17, 2015

I dislike talking about my mental health because of embarrassment.  And, I think others are tired of it.  As many loyal readers know, I have fought worsening depression.  I posted desperate stuff on my blog.  Then came the calls and emails from my children and my oldest grandchild, worried.  After all, what if a call might make the crucial difference?  

Then I have to fight my guilty reaction.  I scared them.  Then things get worse.  More and more complicated, one fear, one anxiety, one guilt, piled upon the others.  The road to madness.  I shake my head vigorously to clear away this crap.

First, thank you to all who cared enough to give me such advice as to “get the fuck to a professional!”

This made me smile and, yes, I have seen a psychiatrist.

I have my second appointment the 27th of this month, first thing in the morning.  I know how lucky I am to get in to see a psychiatrist in Billings, Montana, in fewer than four months.  I got in to see Dr. Stiles inside of two.

In this town if you miss a psychiatric appointment, you might drop to the bottom of a long list.  A list that might take a year to get back to where you were.  I went to his office an hour and a half early, damned happy for an appointment.  Actually, I went by mistake a week early.  I was unfazed.  Walked home.

Dr. Stiles changed my antidepressant medication to one I had done fairly well.  Then he told me to exercise daily and follow a routine.  Oh yes, and to see him in a month.  As I mentioned.

I am happy to say I feel better, much better.  I made one change that my sister Carol, not Dr. Stiles, recommended:  I got a puppy.  Gunther makes me roll out of bed damned early, put on whatever sock I can find, pull up the pant legs, hobble out to my boots, and take the little fellow walking around so that he can poop and pee.  I couldn’t be happier. To return to the warmth of the house afterward.

Last Friday at work a young woman, Carol, a pharmacy technician, told me how I looked happier.  It was true.  I felt happier.

Gunther depended on me.  In turn, I needed him.  He accepted me unconditionally and looked at me with anxious, rolling eyes.

I have tried to exercise daily, but today, Sunday, I took a nap instead.  Exhausted.  From taking Gunther outdoors after his meals to poop and to pee.

I got Gunther up at 7:30, took him directly outdoors where he shivered.  We both shivered. Neither one of us peed outdoors.

We went indoors where I took my meds and he ate and drank.  I sat with him until he whined once, twice.  Then, remembering the advice of Dr. Kate Kilzer, DVM, to take him out after he eats, we went out.

Near the sidewalk, Gunther lifted his left rear leg, dog-style, into the air and peed.  And peed.  Thrilled, nonetheless I worried the puddle of piss would reach his front feet.

Well it did, but with no apparent ill effect.  Then we walked west on the sidewalk about 50 yards, then started back.

Lo!  Gunther pooped some nicely formed turds, which I picked up with a red Gaz bag I’d found when we circumnavigated the block last night.
Good dog.

This puppy, part pug, part Belgian griffon, tears at a rawhide “candy cane” near my feet.  Gunter got me up at 5:30, or rather, I got him up from his sound sleep to walk around in the cold dark neighborhood to pee.  He peed, but then he shit on the kitchen floor when he got inside.  I was satisfied that he was satisfied, so I fed him, watered him, and made him go in his kennel so I could go to work.  I can’t quite keep track of his shits and pees.  I know he likes me, quite a lot, because he ended up at my feet tearing apart the rawhide toy.

I think we will get along fine.

This evening P. and I circumnavigated the block with Gunter pup.  She sort of half dragged him with a leash while I trailed behind.  I saw him steal glimpses of me as went, so I just shrugged.  My spouse knows quite a lot about animals.  I think Gunter knows quite a lot about me, not all of it good, but most of it true.