insearchofbud

Here is a happier Carl Bonde, probably on a footbridge in Montana.

Carl was sicker than he could remember being. He knew it was from last night’s graduation drinking out on a road toward the cemetery. His friend Hank had a trunkful of bottles in a box. No, a boxful of bottles in his trunk. Carl didn’t care. He wished he could throw up, but he knew he couldn’t because he had had the dry heaves hours ago. Carl was glad the shades were down. He didn’t want his mother to know about last night. When did he come home? God! The taste of whiskey was all in his nose and head! Cloying, sweet.

Hank had told him he wanted him to have a good time after graduation. He teased him about being a virgin, about not drinking. It was June, 1941, the evening warm. A clandestine party. Carl was only starting to realize he no longer trusted Hank.

“This is like an initiation,” he urged. “Here, drink this. Tastes like creme de cocoa. Drink it right out of the bottle.” Some of his other friends also partook. Like Les and Dave. Duck didn’t come. Duck’s dad was an alcoholic and Duck wouldn’t drink.

The bottle burned, tasted sweet, sort of like cocoa. He gulped a few. Soon Carl was heading ’round into the slant. After that he crawled over to the grassy side of the gravel road and vomited. Things got mixed up after that.

Hank took Carl home, pointed him toward the porch, and drove away. After the confusing maze, Carl couldn’t keep from brushing hard against the stairwell as he climbed to his room.

Soon, morning.

“Yoohoo, Buddy!” sang his mother. Carl said nothing. “Want some eggs for breakfast?” The thought made him retch. His body felt suddenly hot and he kicked off his covers. “Buddy,” she called again, her voice high, musical. She walked up the stairs in her leather heeled shoes. Clump. Clump. Clump. He looked at her face in the doorway.

“I don’t feel so good, ma.”

“Now why would that be?” his mother asked, coyly. “Was it something you — she paused for effect — drank?”

He didn’t answer. His mother clumped back downstairs. Now he felt cold again and wrapped up in his blankets. His head ached. Nobody would help him get some aspirin powder that he knew was in the hallway cabinet near the bathroom.

His sister Carol was in girl scouts, off to a camp at Flathead Lake. He stared at the wall, in his misery. He studied the door to the closet. At his stuff. Books, a knapsack, wool socks. He knew that in a couple of days he would be off working in Glacier Park. On Huckleberry Mountain. Living in a cabin beneath a fire lookout, thousands of feet above the North Fork of the Flathead River. He wondered if he would feel better by then.

He loved his parents, but right then he was thinking his mother was. . . he didn’t want to finish the thought. He wasn’t superstitious or religious. He had always been the family pet, kind of. The only boy in the family born after three girls.

He loved his mother so much! But she was heartless. She was a . . . FUCKING BITCH! He wanted to say it aloud, so he whispered, “you fucking bitch!” Somehow, he felt better. He had survived the rite of passage.

Don and Gert’s house. Burlington Avenue neighbor.

November 11, 2015

Living near downtown Billings, Montana, makes living easier. We sometimes walk to the Good Food Store for wine and granola and freeze-dried pea soup. Just a jaunt down the street, around a couple of corners, then south two blocks. We sometimes get dark chocolate and breakfast wraps. Their beer is expensive, tasty. At least the one bottle I bought was. I always look at their beer, but end up buying wine.

Tonight we strolled down to a restaurant about four blocks from home. An expensive place doesn’t have to break the budget because we get stuff like hamburgers. Okay. We don’t even have a budget anymore. Anyway, I’m not worried about expensive. Now I’ll admit it. I’m retired and I have been forced by unfortunate events to work almost full time.

I don’t want to work so much, but they need me because everyone but me and three others quit work within the space of a few days. That means I am there more than the usual one day a week. I neither want nor need extra work days, what with my government pension, but since I’ve got the paychecks, we — well — we walk downtown and eat in a restaurant.

At Commons 1882, a converted bungalow on Fourth Avenue North, P. and I sat down to eat a hamburger and some ribs. Also cabbage. Some smoked chicken soup. Smoked! Delicious. Apparently they smoke their chickens out back behind the restaurant. The way my friend and I used to smoke my mother’s cigarettes behind the garage and in the alley. I mean almost surreptitiously. Our waiter said they smoke almost 24-7.

We walked home after declining desert. We had each had one glass of wine. As we walked I mused how I had asked our server for “two glasses of your finest pinot noir.”

Robert (for that was our server’s name) looked shocked. “Are you sure? Our finest? Some of our bottles are, like, $100.” P. started to object, but I held up my hand.

“Not a bottle, just two of what you have by the glassful,” I pushed the wine menu toward him. I chose the p.noir from Oregon.

Robert’s eyebrows lifted as he said, “Won’t you get a bottle? Will just one glass apiece be enough?”

“Yes.”

She and I walked hand-in-hand past the First Interstate where the windspeed always increases. I mentioned it.

P. wondered what time it was. She guessed seven. The electronic sign on the corner in front of the Transwestern One building told us the recent activity of the stock market, but no time or temp. Oh, I felt vaguely comforted to know the Nasdaq had risen 105, even if the Dow was down 4. We own some, but not very much, stock in something or other but, as I have mentioned, I have a government pension. I thought about my cell phone, I bought it for less than $16 a year or two ago. I flipped it open: 7:12.

The crosswalk by the YMCA has heavy traffic. The “don’t walk” shone across an empty street with not much coming. Nevertheless, a car exited the parking lot. We waited for the signal. I found it odd how few others we encountered walking downtown.

Half a block later we walked past the Church of Christ Scientists at Division and Burlington, our street. A lovely cream and light green building with lovely windows. An open door let out a slant of light. The interior had muted colors and natural woodwork. Light from sconces seemed to invite the lofty conversations that scientists might have about — I don’t know? Christ? Religious books or Sunday school? Do scientists, as we ordinarily think about them, you know the kind, slaving in laboratories with white coats, flasks of bubbling colored liquids coursing through a network of tubes and curlycues, talk about the stuff that might be talked about in the Church of Christ Scientists? I doubt. Still, the building is so attractive!

Anyway, by then we had walked past. I tried, but couldn’t read the Christian Science marquee, which sometimes has a puzzling message, such as: “The Spirit is Everything You Can’t See.” I’m all, really? Helium? The other side of the moon? The back of my own head when I don’t have two mirrors?

Burlington Avenue has old-fashioned streetlights, spaced far enough apart that one trips on the uneven cracks in between. The houses have their memories for us, the place where the crazy dog used to strain on his leash, barking, drooling, almost ecstatic with ferocity. A woman would come to the door and scream at him. Of course, he ignored her, and her screaming simply added to the pandemonium. I thought how the dog was within the three foot minimum distance for the owner to be charged with having a menacing dog, even if her dog was about the size of a cat. A cat and a half, really. I thought, she is renting that little place, and I doubt if she would be able to afford the $400 the city would charge her for having a MENACING DOG!

By the time these memories had passed through my consciousness we crossed to the 100 block. I thought I heard someone speaking, but I couldn’t find the source. Most of the houses on this part of our street are bungalows, built in the early 1920s. Some are older, like the house of the angry woman who lives across our street, playing her flute. Beautifully, for such an enigmatic soul. She is a good neighbor despite the anger she has toward the mourning doves cooing gently in the alley.

A rental house a couple from the end of the block is one of those side-way bungalows with the front sloping over the wide porch. I remark how I like the houses that look like that. By God, I do. I think I had a childhood friend in Missoula, once, who lived in one. We used to go upstairs and look out the window in the summer. She had comic books, too.

The neighbor three doors east has been fixing up his yard. I noticed that the gravel from the cement contractor was spilled across the sidewalk. As we passed by our next door neighbor I saw their dog, “Susie,” sitting alert in the doorway. A pretty picture. Unfortunately, this last statement was a lie. I saw “Susie” tonight as we drove away, not when we walked home.

There. I just wrote some fiction.

Don’t become a writing junkie. Just declare yourself to say “no.”

November 9, 2015

Oh. My. God! At tonight’s writer’s workshop, I was assigned to bring a writing to the group next week. At first, when Russell Rowland looked at me, with that meaningful look on his face, I pretended not to notice. Then I looked back. “Oh, okay,” I said. I’ll do it.”

What will I write? I don’t have anything! They hate exclamation points! I just used one, then another. Now another! I just read Rhonda Whiteman’s story about a family about to emigrate to the United States from Ireland. It was so much better, so much more complete a narrative and had real sounding dialog. It was head and shoulders above everything I’ve written. I’m glad Rhonda is in our group! There, I’ve use another exclamation mark. Rhonda hates exclamation marks.

I am seriously depressed, which means…well, I don’t know what that means as far as writing goes. I’m sure it has serious implications about writing. I think I can be excused from writing something for the group to pick apart.

They pick things apart. I’ve picked things apart. The better the writing, the more scrutiny it gets. I’ve gone into one of their writings with magnifying glass and a razor. I meant to tear, to dissect, to grab, to axe.

Whew! For a minute there, I was drooling all over myself. Wow, I heave a big breath. I was almost out of control, there. My trouble is that I cannot seem to write any fiction. Real writers can write fiction. Ahem.

No. Real writers, such as Rhonda, do write fiction. Don’t be an ass. Write some fiction. I have written fiction. That’s why I never could make it as a journalist. I wrote fiction that was subsequently discovered to be nothing but a damn made-up thing, posing as a news piece.

I can remember the moment it happened. I was interviewing the publisher of a newspaper in Missoula in 1976. The paper was called, “The Borrowed Times.” They had decided to stop publishing, so I was writing a story for the “Kaimin.” I wrote the story and it was published. Unfortunately, I got a fact wrong. Perhaps I got the name of the publisher wrong. Something was wrong, and whoever it was, called the editor, Jonathan Krim, who caved into their demand to print a retraction. I wasn’t even consulted. Jonathan printed the retraction and I lost my credibility as a reporter for ever. Since then, I became a pharmacist. One doesn’t need to print the name of a publisher to be a pharmacist.

Up in the Snowy Mountains.

November 9, 2015

About four weeks ago I confessed that I am a clinically depressed guy, that my medicine didn’t seem to work well. You were sympathetic. Thanks for the great support and impressive understanding. It’s wonderful to have such enlightened family and friends!

We turn to our sources of strength, don’t we? I believe in traditional forms of meditation, of magic, of prayer, of many ancient sayings, such as one finds in the Bible in the book of Psalms, but also reliable places like the I Ching. Or novels, for me, such as Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” These strengthen and reassure me. After all, things usually seem better after a night’s sleep. Only these days there doesn’t seem to be enough sleep, even if I could sleep all the time. Which I would but I can’t. I’m lucky that I must work full time these days, although my co-workers sometimes notice that I look sad.

Anyway, the new medicine my physician prescribed last month isn’t working as good as the med it replaced. This painful depression seems to shackle my body even worse than before. Thank God for modern medical care, and I’ll visit him tomorrow. We know how potentially lethal major depressive illness is. I am fortunate to have insight into my condition. My doc assured me he will help me find a more effective med.

Again, idle reader, if you believe you may be depressed, or especially if the people who live with you repeatedly ask you if you might be depressed, please put in a call to your doctor’s nurse and get some advice.

Basement darkroom.

ovember 8, 2015

I’m sitting on my late mother-in-law’s rocker in my basement, an electric heater noisily blowing at my legs. Dirty shoes. Ball peen hammer. set of electric drill bits. Chop saw. I type a string of sentence fragments, non-sequiturs. My whole life is a non-sequitur. At once I am writing, thinking about pie, contemplating my newly refurbished darkroom. I see five enamel 11×14-inch trays with such chemicals as gum arabic and ferric ammonium citrate. These are good for the kind of photographs I like. I want to take pictures of the amazing people and important things in my life.

What constitutes “amazing?” I consider the angry woman across the street. She is angry because she has been ill and cannot sleep well. She likes horses but hates doves. Which makes more shit? Wait. Good shit!

Important things? Well, that nondescript bookcase, yes the one at my elbow that is about 2×2 feet by 9 inches deep, the one that originally held a set of Encyclopedia Americana. Now it has a little box that is labeled “OVER 550,000 YARWAY IMPULSE TRAPS Now In Service Everywhere” and “Yarway Impulse Steam Trap 3/4”.” Inside Yarway, is a clothespin, a school photo of our daughter in junior high, several homemade business cards proclaiming “Dan Struckman PHARMACIST vacation coverage.” Also a clipping from the 1963 High School paper of a basketball game with a photo by Dan Struckman. Also a photo of Penny and the kids hiking on Mount Sentinel in perhaps 1978.

Otherwise the bookcase has my favorite coffee cup. A ceramic cup scratched on the bottom, “CS ’90.” Daughter Clara must have been a junior at Billings Senior when she made it 26 years ago. Light, durable, attractive. The tan glaze has what looks like blue tulips.

Someone snapped this photograph when Carl was on leave, before entering infantry training in Arkansas.

How could Carl have known his fate? Well, obviously he didn’t. Carl was assigned to a machine gun section in the weapons platoon of E company, 262nd Regiment, 66th Infantry Division.

Carl was intimately known by his US army buddies, including Bill Moomey. I met Bill Moomey. He was a mild, soft spoken man in Kearney, Nebraska. My sister, Carol, and I drove to Kearney to meet Bill and his wife, Doris. Bill was with Carl moments before he died from a German U-boat submarine torpedo attack. This made Bill cry when I spent some time with him.

When my sister and I found the Moomey’s address in Kearney, we drove up and down some modern-looking housing. They were all beige. The houses had white fences and curl-de-sac streets.

Eventually we found their address. I knocked at the door which was beside the driveway. Looked more like a condominium. A man came to the door. I told him that I was Carl Bonde’s nephew.

He replied, “Nope.”

He looked at my sister, then said, “yep.” she looked to be about the right height.

Bill invited us in. He and his wife Doris had us eat a farmer’s dinner. It was roast beef, potatoes. You know, the green beans. Then for dessert, lemon bars. I ate one. Doris invited me to have another. I declined. She dropped the plate of lemon bars on the counter. “Well!” she said. As if I had refused to acknowledge her existence. I got that. However, I didn’t take the bait. I let the lemon bars lie there on the counter.

Soon Bill sat us around the table and said grace. He invited the Lord to bless the meal and us travelers. I felt distinctly blessed.

The meal was sumptuous. Potatoes. Roast beef. Vegetables. I remember carrots. Green beans. The kind of meal one would eat on a farm. Bill and Doris had vegetables growing on their back porch.

After our meal Carol and Doris left to head into Kearney for shopping.

Bill and I walked down to his basement. To his shrine. (His name for it.) I noticed that Bill had his army badges, insignia and awards all on display. Bill had made sergeant. He had his 66th Division Panther insignia.

I showed Bill all of the photographs I had of Carl Bonde with his horn playing buddies. Bill didn’t recognize any of them. I showed him the photo of Carl with the great group of anonymous soldiers, all without smiles, all in rigid formation. Bill supposed that photograph was taken after basic training. He didn’t know any of the soldiers.

Then Bill took me upstairs to watch the History Channel documentary titled “Coverup! The Leopoldville Disaster!” We watched until the one sailor said he pushed some African men into the sea to die. I asked Bill if he believed that. He said he doubted that had happened.

Chandler & Price Letterpress

My connection to journalism is that many of my family members wrote for papers or taught journalism. I am sort of a fringe person. I wrote stories for a monthly paper for the Montana Wildlife Federation. I don’t know who I am. I published a magazine, “The Portable Wall,” for perhaps 20 years. Out of my basement. One of the presses is so heavy I don’t know how it will come out, but Nathaniel Blumberg had one like it in his printshop.

My father, also named Bob, sold a piece to a magazine, “Open Road for Boys.” That would have been 1918. At a homestead near Big Timber. According to him it ruined him for working at a real job. Oh yes. He tried teaching in White Sulphur Springs but he was unable to keep discipline. My mother said he nearly blew his stack.

During college in the late 20s Bob wrote short stories and collected rejection slips. He eventually got a real job and worked for the Bureau of Reclamation in north central Montana.

Ultimately he married my mother. She put an end to his aspiration to be a Bohemian. Thanks to her charms I exist. My brothers have died, my sister lives in Nebraska.

Bob and Helen moved to Great Falls to do things like play bridge. He edited the “Montana Farmer” and met secretly with Joe Howard and Chick Guthrie and others at the Great Falls Tribune. They started the Montana Newspaper Guild in the 1940s. Bob organized the Guild’s social events.

The Struckmans moved to Missoula in 1946 so Bob could teach magazine journalism. That’s when he made friends with journalists all over. Bob died of cancer in 1953. My mother taught grade school. She kept excellent discipline.

My sister and I both edited school newspapers. I went to the J school in 1967 and became close friends with Dean Baker’s little sister, Virginia. I smoked too much marijuana and took too many pills and quit college.

I rode freight trains, hitchhiked to Alaska, worked for the railroad. I was afraid of Vietnam most of all. I couldn’t leave it alone so I joined the marines.

I joined the marines, got in trouble with the marines, stayed in the marines for seven years. I got out of the marines. By then I was married to Penny from Lewistown, with three kids. I picked up journalism again, unsuccessfully because I felt stupid. I was stupid. Oh, I finished my BA in Journalism but the reality of the newspaper business and my own foolish notions did not jibe.

I found pharmacy an expedient career. I published my own magazine and got to know Wilbur Wood. Nathaniel always encouraged me. My sons both worked as reporters for Lee papers, both quit. One went to medical school, the other, Bob, got a job writing speeches for the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka.

Now I am obsessed with writing about my lost maternal uncle. And sitting around. However, pharmacy called me to help at Omnicare so I have little time to do the goofing off I crave.

My brother Tom’s linoleum floor had been mended with care. After he died I was struck by the beauty.

November 3, 2015

Last night at Russell Rowland’s writing workshop I learned that my muse is dead. I thought I had a muse. At first I thought she was just asleep, but now I know she is gone forever. This is a crying shame. I am not crying, though. Instead I feel bitter and hateful toward my muse, such as she was.

God damn muse! I feel anger seething beneath my surface.

Stephen King, one of today’s greatest writers, said not to count on a muse. In turn I ask, who the hell does a muse think she is anyway? I thought she was some kind of spiritual being who whispered into my ear and told me what to write. Turns out the muse is a slut. A dirty rotten whore.

Actually, sluts and whores, as it turns out, are neither dirty nor rotten. As the Beatles famously sang, “She was a working girl, north of England way.” The queen, I think. Or else a whore.

Therefore, I declare that it is about time we honored people of all sorts, eh? Yes. I would be proud to be counted among the whores and the sluts. I cannot understand how I came to this theme in my writing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have cursed my muse after all. I think my muse is cursing me back.

At this time I want to write a brief summation of my writings.

1. chronicling my effort to find out about my maternal uncle Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr. I am using every avenue of research I kind find.

2. history of my uncle Carl using the fruit of the research in item 1.

3. semi-biographical story of Carl using all of my best information along with my imagination and life experiences.

4. family history of the Bondes back to the Norwegian king described as fair-haired.

5. history of the amazing Bonde women.

6. Old North Trail captures the imagination and begs for a longish narrative.

7. Struckman history coincides with Bonde at my own conception. I, zygote.

8. my own narrative starts at Fort Missoula. It ends in jail.

9. my own narrative starts in jail, ends in Alaska with a Volkswagen.

Each of these themes interweaves the others. At every point I must have a fireplace burning for warmth.

Most importantly, I must add to this narrative daily. Please check my website: insearchofbud.wordpress.com