insearchofbud

Thursday. My writing has been going poorly. Yesterday I wrote about my first day in the Marines. Today I feel positive that I don’t give a damn about my first day in the Marines. Why did I spend any time writing about that? It was nearly 50 years ago!
Yesterday I took our car to Jerry, my trusted mechanic who owns a shop about a mile away on the other side of down town. You see, a warning message appeared near the speedometer but the LEDs have burned out, or something, and I couldn’t read it. My bike hung out the trunk.
In the old days (before the LEDs burned out) if I took care of the problem the warning message would go away. Only this time I didn’t know what to fix, so the warning came on with a “ding” each time I started and stopped the engine.
I had checked the oil. It was good. I had checked the brake fluid. No, I couldn’t find it. I called Jerry who told me to remove the air cleaner. Then at first I couldn’t check the brake fluid because I didn’t know how, so I poured some brake fluid into the reservoir until it ran out the top. Then I wiped the outside of the reservoir with a nice rag I had, the Harley-Davidson rag I had just used to wipe the oil dipstick. Then I topped off the coolant and windshield washing fluid with faucet water. What else could the car want?
Still, the warning message and dings did not go away. I finally phoned Jerry, my mechanic. I have his number in my $14.95 Tracfone. That was last week.
Yesterday, after taking in the car so Jerry could figure out what was wrong, he called me back an hour later.
After I had driven the car in to Jerry yesterday I took my bicycle out of the trunk for further transportation. My bike rode in the trunk, half sticking out, trunk lid almost down. A 1970-era reddish pink Hiawatha girls bike, one I never need lock up because it looks worthless but is actually damned reliable. I went to the library on my way home.
Billings has a beautiful new library, easy to use, with self check-out, interesting architecture. LEED certified. I checked out a book by Ernest Hemingway and another by H.P. Lovecraft. I pedaled on home. I know I’m not supposed to ride on the sidewalk, but I did. I even met another cyclist who stayed on his right edge. I overtook a walker so I said, “on your left.” He just kind of looked at me, like, huh?
Today I shall pedal back to Jerry’s shop for the car. The problem was that a brake light bulb had burned out. Of course, the question is how much he will charge me.
I didn’t pedal. Instead, I walked to Jerry’s. The First Interstate Bank looked hazy and the sunlight on the street had a curious yellowish look. Forest fires, I thought. I tried to look at the sun but it was blinding, not red as I had hoped. I decided to visit Denny’s Restaurant on the way to get the car.
A tall Black man was sitting near a sign asking us to wait to be seated, so I sat next to him. I asked him if he was waiting to be seated, but he said he was waiting for the manager.
Took a long time for my “senior omelette” but the employees were entertaining. A cook asked another cook not to be sarcastic. I noticed one of the waiters was Asian. One of the cooks was Black. I couldn’t identify any other ethnicities, but I was satisfied with the diversity. Our friend Hilary works there, but she must have a later shift or had the day off, I thought. The waitress apologized for the wait. She said all of the cooks were newly hired.
One time a couple of years ago P. and I went to hear the famous humorist, David Sedaris, speak at the Alberta Bair Theater a few blocks away. He said he had eaten at Denny’s and recommended it. Made me proud of Hilary.
Breakfast was $12, including tip. I shook hands with one of the cooks, and thanked the rest of the kitchen folks for the delicious senior omelette.
Walking to Jerry’s I met a man whose face is much like mine. We exchanged greetings. I hoped he was not a criminal.
Jerry didn’t charge me for the brake light. I said I’d pay for it next time. “Oh, you will!” he replied.

What if we wrote all of the things we were sorry we did? What if we wrote all of the things that helped us change into reasonably healthy adults? What if we included all of the old rusty cars we played in as children, the sheds and shacks and chicken coops? The alleys.
Remember that big kid, Ted? When we played the junk car and shack hide and seek games he used effective strategies to fool us. He whispered loud enough for us to hear that he was leaving the area where we hid, but he nabbed us.
Ted was also an expert concerning the mysterious things. Motors and radios. He spoke of a powerful radio his dad had that could get all of the stations but one, and that one was too nearby. I could get my hands on radios. Motors were harder to get. Ted said they worked because of “coils.” I didn’t know what coils were.
Radios made a humming noise when the tubes warmed up and at night the tubes glowed with an orange light. Remember? The tuner had interleaved plates that meshed in arcs as you turned the dial. The dial on the front of the radio had a small electric light. You could see all of the tubes glowing by looking into the back of the radio cabinet. Best of all the radio made music and told stories. The radio was a solo instrument. Other times all of the cousins were in Kalispell.
Did we track sand and dirt into the house after playing in the gravel pit? Did we sit at the top of edge of the gravel pit and kick away the gravel until the edge collapsed? Why ask? If you had been there you’d be right there with us. Grandma would have been wise to meet us before we entered the house to clean us up and dump out the dirt from our shoes. Would she have done this each and every time we visited the gravel pit, just on the other side of the fence from the house?
Fortunately for her, other, less dirty, attractions for us seven boys kept us away from the gravel. Worms for fishing. Some fishing poles in the corner of the barn. Hooks, bobbers, weights. The bridge over Ashley Creek, running deep, slow and muddy. It was never clear to me if our grandpa owned land on both sides of the creek, but we roamed freely all over. It was all ours, overgrown with crab grass, thistles and nettles and brush. We just sat on the bridge with our feet dangling until the bobber blooped. Then we reeled in with the bait reel.
Cousin Mike said his brother David caught a trout there with his spin casting rod. David was serious about things. Very intelligent, but kind and benevolent. We almost always caught perch, and they were usually about 5 or 6 inches long. We kept every one we caught in a tin can that a big kid had nailed to one of the logs that supported the bridge. That was it. A couple of logs, maybe three or four, that spanned the creek. Heavy boards provided the bridge deck, nailed. I could smell the boards in the hot sun. They were gray from weathering and smelled of humus and oil. One day my cousin Carl removed all of the dead perch from the can, one at a time, and threw them into Ashley Creek to float away. I don’t remember any particular smell, but I was at the far end of the bridge, perhaps 30 feet away.
Once I reeled in a turtle. Another time someone hooked a water snake. We let the turtle and snake go. We considered Ashley Creek too dirty to swim in.

Saturday. My friend woke us up this morning before 8 by ringing the front doorbell a couple times.
Feeling indignant, I went to the screen door and greeted him with “What’s up?” Said he wanted to show me a knife he made out of an antelope horn. Long time ago he gave me one he made the same way. He removed it from what looked like a pillowcase. It had a nice leather sheath. I was standing there in my pajamas without my glasses talking through the screen. I said (quite honestly) that I didn’t have any cash. He said he had tried to pawn his knife but nobody would give him any money for it. He said he just wanted to talk. I invited him in, unlatching the screen door. He sat in the overstuffed chair.
I didn’t have in my hearing aids and a half-dozen electric fans sort of roared in the front room. I asked him if he wanted some coffee, but no, he said, he had some out in his car. Anyway, I wanted coffee.
After starting a pot I dressed.
Turned out my friend had just wanted to talk. At least, I think that’s what he was after. Things have been going badly for him. He gets dialysis twice a week and other people at the center have recently died. Also, he has had trouble at home, although I wasn’t able to make out all of what he had been saying because of my poor hearing and the roaring fans. Something about unruly children that he is not allowed to correct.
He said he had nowhere to go, so he came over here to see me. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t been friendlier to him when I went to the door. Instead I had been feeling crabby about being woken up.
I couldn’t think of much to say. Well, I thought of lots that I could have said, like, you can stay here as much as you want, or, how about if I fix you some breakfast. So for a long time I just listened to him. He didn’t look depressed or sad, but he said things were going lousy.
He said he figures he will die in the near future, and he worries that his kids and grandkids will fight over his possessions. I thought yes, he looks kind of old. I peered at him. He is my age, but on dialysis, as I mentioned. He has gray hair and his skin does sag a bit.
At last, I thought of something to say. I reminded him that he had been through tough times before and he came through pretty good. I was thinking of his wives who had both died of heart disease. Also another time he fell off his roof and the times he had been hospitalized for long periods.
He agreed about the tough times. He said a couple of times he almost gave up, but he wanted to live for his kids and grandkids.
Finally he stood and headed out the door. I followed. He has a good looking new car. I admired it. He said he keeps it up because it is the last car he will ever own.
Then he drove off.

This is not my twin. I have grown a beard.

August 12, 2015

My idea of a blog reader is of someone with a keen curiosity and a great memory. Also inclined towards idleness. After all, why spend time reading stuff off a computer screen? What could one hope to discover, except humiliating truths? What are rhetorical questions? Okay.
Yesterday I met our new pharmacist, I’ll call him Dave Gillespie, a tall, quiet man. I hope he enjoys working with us folks at Omnicare pharmacy. What’s with the name “Omnicare”? Isn’t it a bit misleading? Omni means “all inclusive.” Care means, well, anxious attention to ensure the well-being of another. I guess I’m okay with the “care” part. But “Omni?” No pharmacy in our country is all inclusive! An octopus has many arms with individual suckers. And it has limits, so our pharmacy could better be called Octocare. We would make up eight kinds of care we provide. List them on our fingers, but not our thumbs.
Maybe 8 years ago, or so, I worked for a home-grown pharmacy here in Billings, Montana, that specialized in providing home intravenous infusions, such as antibiotics and hydration, and tube feedings. Its name? “At Home Solutions.” A really fine business that filled a need locally. I thought its name was appropriate and well stated. Then the owner sold her business to a bunch of investors who joined together with a larger company called, “Option Care.” This name was nowhere near as pretentious as “Omnicare,” but close. It still had the big open “O” at the beginning, ready to swallow smaller companies, which it did.
To me, the name change meant I had to answer the phone differently and use the new Option Care stationery. Soon, perhaps two years later, Option Care got swallowed by the larger, Walgreens Drug company. We got rid of the coffee cups, pens, business cards, mouse pads, and refrigerator magnets with Option Care logos. We couldn’t work up the same enthusiasm when we changed our name again.
This purchase of Option Care by Walgreens resulted in the inevitable changes in our phone answering, but with less enthusiasm. Also this time a bald guy in a necktie from California visited us and told us we needed to stop doing thus-and-such and start doing that.
Oh, we still cared for sick people exactly as we had, we just had to document it differently in a computer. I thought the changes were quite good. I didn’t mind because I had been documenting care for years. I just didn’t like the insulting way Mr. Bald Necktie spoke to us. He did, however, leave us finally, to travel over to Oregon, where he wanted to retire. He left us with some sort of fake assurance that we were fine folks. After all.
I hope Mr. Gillespie likes us at Omnicare. We’re mostly pretty nice people and good looking, mostly. Well, we do have a blonde female technician who is quitting because she wants to be a dental assistant. She was in pretty good condition until recently when she got hit in the eye by a whiffle ball. Now one of her pupils is permanently dilated. Such scars are evidence of character, I hope to tell her today. My cousin has an eye like that. He got hit by a chunk of wood. The one eye is creepy looking when she looks you in the face and one of her pupils is larger.
The other folks at Omnicare are a pleasant mix of younger and older, all of us struggling daily to keep a whole list of nursing homes and assisted living facilities stocked with medications. Wait. That’s misleading. We do little “stocking” of meds. We send the residents of these places their prescriptions, individually packaged with their names and the instructions for taking. We are good at it.
We often speak to nurses and nurses aids. I find them fun to speak with, even the ones who seem stern and refuse to be teased. I don’t tease! I simply tell them the truth. They like it. People are not used to the truth. “How are you doing?” “Terrible, my elbows are killing me!” “I’m so sleepy I can hardly work!” “Good, payday is tomorrow.” Like that. “Good, the boss took the day off and now things are rolling along really well.”

Berit and Einar Bonde, parents of Tosten Bonde, who settled in Nerstrand, Minnesota, along with his wife Ingabor. They were parents of my grandpa Carl T.

Berit, daughter of a land owner in Vang, Norway, was born in 1801. Her husband, Thorstein Bonde, got into financial trouble, left her, then died in Lillehammer.
Five years later Berit married Einar Halvorson Groven, son of a soldier, but a man who knew how to farm. Of interest, Einar took the name of Berit’s farm, “Bonde.” Berit had children from her first marriage, but with Einar, they had two kids who survived to adulthood, Halvor and Tosten. They emigrated with their sons to the United States in 1849.

Einar died in 1875, Berit died two years later.

John Herman and Skip Reising play guitar on a porch in Seattle in 1969. Bill Yenne photographed them when they had time off from working on the crabbing boat.

My next approach to writing about our universe will be to pick on a variety of important people in my life and write their stories, just as I remember them, leaving out nothing. Of course, such an approach is dangerous, so I’ll make sure to write only about dead people, like my mother, like my aunts, like my friends, teachers. Just dead people that I admired. Most readers will not know much about any of these people and the few that know anything at all will be easy to silence by pressing a button on my computer or clicking a mouse.
I thought another attack would be themes on “Americana.”
P. and I have traveled some to a variety of countries: Chile, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Turkey, France and Japan. Not in that order. I have noticed a certain romanticizing of our western culture. In Japan in 1972 I used to walk by the “Silver Dollar Bar,” catering to homesick Marines. It occurs to me that the “hippie culture” of the 60s has also been romanticized. Its roots were San Francisco, Seattle, Missoula. These are places I visited in that period.

I can’t always keep track of things like I used to.

When P. got home from work last evening I was in the back yard sitting on a bench. I had already taken apart the switch for the electric lawn mower but I soon learned that putting it back together required a dynamic effort to fasten a spring on a plastic pin with a lever and electrical connections. All this fit within a plastic case that clamped onto the lawn mower’s handle.
I tried to assemble it five or six times. P. urged me to keep trying, but I knew it was hopeless. I could not imagine how the Chinese, or whoever manufactured it, put it together in the first place. We’ve had the mower almost 30 years! It was made after the cultural revolution in China, I’m almost sure, but I’m not sure that fact has any significance.
I broached the subject of our quarrel yesterday, how I felt stung by her twice shouting at me, “God damn you!” because I had finished off a bottle of wine in the afternoon. Shoot! There had been hardly any left, just a couple of ounces!
She suggested that I hadn’t really accepted her apology, had I?
I admitted that I had felt hurt for some moments with her curses echoing in my head. Actually I sulked until the next day.
Then I asked her if something was troubling her? Was she feeling especially crabby? I can’t remember what she said.
I thought, You know, Mark Fryberger’s mother’s shed has a lawn mower just like the one I took apart. What if I bought it from him?
“Let’s work on the switch later,” I suggested. “Meantime, let’s go out and eat.”

My life and hard times.

August 6, 2015

Last night when P. walked into the kitchen she said she had spent 3 hours with some needy friends of hers and she wanted a glass of wine. When I told her it was gone, she asked about the small amount remaining yesterday in a bottle in the cupboard. I said I had drunk it that afternoon. “God damn you! God damn you!” she shouted at me. “You drank the whole thing since yesterday, didn’t you?” I had to answer, “yes.”
I felt really hurt by her curses and, since I would be cooking hamburgers for us two, I went out and sat by the grill. A few minutes later she apologized for cursing at me, and I murmured that I accepted her apology. She was getting something from the car. As she walked back by she apologized again, saying she was really sorry. I said that I accepted her apology.
Only I was still feeling stung.
We held hands some after we went to bed, but I scooted clear over and we didn’t touch much all night. At one point I got up and looked at Facebook, about 1 a.m. This morning I pretended to be asleep when she got up. At noon things weren’t much better. She left for work again about 40 minutes before she needed to be there. I wanted to tell her that I had wanted to throw a tantrum last night when I went out to cook the hamburgers, but I was too tired. Instead, I told her today that a good thing about feeling so tired is that I can sit and look at the dirt on the back of the electric fan for a long time. I think this did not amuse her, or something, because she said “no comment.” Then she announced she was returning to work but would take the bedsheets off the clothesline first. So the birds wouldn’t poop on them.
Bottom line:
I think P is worried about the way I can put away a whole 750ml bottle of wine in one evening. She doesn’t like that I’m sedentary, lazy, and that I like to sit around. She usually treats me friendlier when I return from work or after times when I get out and exercise. She likes it when I do something.
In turn, I am worried about P because she refused to go to any church services with me, refused to go to the family reunion, likes to keep a low profile, and be a wall flower. She doesn’t want me to post pictures of her or her mention her name on Facebook. To me, it feels like she is becoming a recluse.
My imagination is at work about why she might feel that way.

I turn over the dungheap of my imagination to find — more of the same.

The drivel just below this is what I really don’t like to write. That is, generalities. Whoa! More generalities. I feel like having a tantrum and bouncing a shoe against the wall with my angry kicking on the floor. I feel compelled to write, but I don’t like the product very well. That’s why I hope to attend some coaching sessions and groups where I can get some pushback. Also, I am dimly aware of rules of grammar and punctuation that I don’t follow. I realize that getting someone to read one’s stuff is easier if one follows the rules. True? Of course, it depends on how compelling is the writing. One doesn’t need to spell the word dynamite correctly for it to be dangerous.
Drivel. Vacuous drivel. I think I’ll start a new blog, but I’ll call it “Vacuous Drivel.” I really would like to publish others’ writings, so I would need a swell website complete with cool artwork. No. No to cool artwork.
I would start a new blog without cool artwork. I’d have crap artwork. Crap writing? No. Well, maybe. But nobody has time to read even a word of crap. Crap.
How do people write fiction? I think they write the truth, but call it fiction. The fiction is entirely in calling it fiction. The writers are writing about real people and claiming that any resemblance is coincidental. Bullshit on that!
How do they keep people from knocking on their doors, and then their heads? Writers have to live in seclusion. They remain hidden behind a hedge of tangled words that are not generalities, but specifics. Like their shoes. Are they new? Yes. Have they laces? Yes. Did they buy them from Scheels? No. I mean, yes. Another coincidence. My made-up sporting goods store name matches a real one on the west end of town.

This photograph, taken by an unknown person, shows my uncle Carl –he was born in 1923, so perhaps 1932–in Kalispell.

I had forgotten that this picture existed of my heroic uncle, killed in World War II in what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called the Children’s Crusade.