beards

 I have always been weak on my endings.  I like the writing well enough, but I am never thinking that far ahead and when I run out of steam, I don't know what to do.  For Catfish I just followed where all the subplots were going and wrapped them all up, which maybe didn't seem so sudden because there were so many of them.  In Great Wall I kind of had an idea running through it that the somewhat bitter bartender saw a goodness in Dawn that seemed so strong that he wanted to partake of it, to be a good man with a good woman, but then it turned out that she was pretty bitter herself, kind of a standard ending, but maybe too abrupt.  Perhaps there should have been some foreshadowing earlier in the story.

I did a blog search on The Draft and I found some interesting stuff, but not the particular story that I am posting now.  For about a year before the blog began we exchanged emails and perhaps I sent it to you in one of those.

Oh there is a fine story about the waitress at the fancy joint.  I am assuming it was in one of those resort areas just south of Cheboygan.  I have an image of her in one of those fancy nightgowns trimmed in fur, eating some snazzy chocolates while watching Christmas in Vermont on her tiny black and white tv, and noticing how the snow on the tv looked so much better than the real snow outside her window, and thinking how maybe she should ditch her honest and hardworking, but bullheaded boyfriend.  Bullheaded because he was for some reason too proud to shave off that messy beard and take orders from some foreman at the new and shiny papermill.

But wait, Christmas in Vermont was a tv movie made in 2016.  Geez I had this image in my mind of it being like White Christmas, some Bing Crosby vehicle that was popular when our parents were young.  I could not have even heard of it until five years ago, yet I feel like I've known it since I was about twenty years old.  Kind of spooky.

I'm going to give this story about the fancy waitress and the stubborn blockhead some thought.  What was your job before the papermill?

Beards.  Quick no googling. who was the last president to have any kind of facial hair?  If you said Taft 1909-1913 you are correct.  There were no hippies in 1963 when I started college, but there were beatniks, and often they had beards even if they were only those Maynard G Krebs goatees, and one of the exotic things I was expecting to see in college was guys with beards.

But there were almost none.  Four years later there were plenty.  I guess the hippies just wanted to stand apart from everybody else, and growing a beard was quicker than growing your hair:

long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratsy, matsy
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!

But of course Beagles knew way back when, way back before even the nightgowned waitress curled up to the black and white tv, that the real, the most sensible reason to grow a beard is that you no longer have to drag that sharp and dangerous razor across your raspy face every morning.