the draft 2

 Monday all three local local affiliates had foregone the network news to bring us the fast breaking news of a big storm approaching Chicago spawning tornadoes in the distant burbs and heading to the city.  Naturally I went up to the roof, but after about half an hour of nothing happening I went back down.  But I did shoot this photo.  Those lights in the distance are Wrigley Field, and I am thinking that on a line of sight The Ravenswood should be maybe just a bit to the left, and the next crisp day we get I will be up there to see if I can get a shot of it.

I think challenging elections is a way of otherwise obscure politicians currying favor with Trump and his minions, so if they decide to run in some republican primary they can brag about that and be seen as the Trumpiest candidate.  You'll note in the latest revelations Trump was asking state officials just to announce that they were doing an election investigation, but didn't care particularly whether they actually investigated, just the announcement would be enough.  Like when they were extorting the Ukraine and what they wanted was for Ukraine to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden, whether or not they actually did one.  

In Trumpworld being accused of something is the same as having done it (Unless it is Trump being accused).  It's like the reason they give for these bogus audits is that there has been a lot of talk about the election being rigged.  Of course they are the ones doing all the talking and there is not a shred of evidence, but that doesn't matter because many people are saying it so it must be true.

I hate those restroom guys.  Harry Caray's had one of them when I went there maybe twenty years ago.  I don't know if they still have one because every time I have been there since then I have held it.  When a man enters the restroom he heads straight to the urinals, if some are in use he chooses the one farthest from the others.  Once situated he stares straight ahead with a blank face, and most importantly he says nothing.  If some wiseguy makes a crack about the weather only the slightest of nods, and maybe a quiet grunt are allowed in response.  Washing hands afterwards is allowable, and maybe even a brief hand to the hair, but pulling out a comb and preening like you are posing for Manly Man Monthly is certainly not allowed.

Meanwhile:

Late in the fall I moved into a house on west Hessel clear across the IC tracks from campus, a ranch house in a neighborhood of ranch houses.  Not a place for a bunch of hippies, but we had this plan so that we would look like a family.  We pretended we were two married couples, me and Cindy Cullop, and Slivon and Big Sue, and to make it seem more conventional we told the realtor that Cindy and Sue were sisters.  I doubt that we fooled the guy, but he probably just wanted to get a little rent out of the place so he let me and Slivon sign the lease.

 Big Sue had money in those days.  She had come into an inheritance sometime before, and with that and my Wigwam money and Slivon's grounds crew money, and what we could get from the three or four other people we moved in with we figured we could pay the rent.

 And then one day at a poker game Big Sue started losing, and when she ran out of the money she had in front of her instead of sneaking off to her secret stash of cash, she started borrowing, and she kept losing, and kept borrowing, and then we knew she had no more money.  Her inheritance was gone.  She wouldn't be paying her share of the rent anymore. 

 And as winter progressed people began moving out.  Eventually there was just me and Slivon and Big Sue, and it was just me and Slivon who were paying the rent and it was killing us, and there were months to go yet on the lease.  And then, I don't remember the circumstances, Big Sue and Slivon moved out and it was just me living in this five bedroom ranch house.

 After closing at the Wigwam I would buy a six pack of Ballentine Ale and walk the couple miles back to the house.  It was winter and dark and at some point on my route I would encounter this dog.  I never could see him in the dark, but I could hear him barking menacingly from behind me, in front of me, on either side of me, and I would hug my six pack and look around nervously, trying not to look scared, fearing at any moment sharp teeth biting into my legs.  When I finally got back I sat alone in the frontroom and drank my sixpack.

 But I was getting letters from Marlene in Berkeley.  Somewhere along the line she had dumped the mope.  Now she was lonely, she was sad, she missed me, why didn't I move to Berkeley to be with her?

 Well why not indeed?  There was that pesky matter of the lease.  Eventually Slivon and I screwed up our courage and faced the realtor to get out of the lease.  It was no problem.  He was probably glad to be rid of us. 

 And then I was flying into Oakland on a late night flight, and got some kind of shuttle bus into Berkeley and wandered around with an old letter of Marlene's until I found the address.

 She was kind of surprised.  She wasn't expecting me until the next day.  I put down my bags and we sat down in her kitchen.  Ah California, the golden state, faraway from wintry Champaign.  And Marlene, God she looked beautiful. But something was bothering her, and eventually she came out with it.  "Bob's in the bedroom," she said.

 Bob Hill, A Champaign guy who had moved out to Berkeley earlier.  You know at one time she had told me that she would like to have Bob Hill's shoes under her bed, but I had thought that she was just teasing me.  He was a skinny guy with glasses which is what I was too, but I was a real hippie and he was just a straight guy.  This was just something that happened and he wouldn't be any competition.  Sure enough she sent him home, and that morning I awoke in her bed.

 But then a few weeks later he was moving in and I was moving out.

No More Audits For Cheboygan County

 Remember awhile back when I reported that the Cheboygan County Commissioners sent a letter to somebody requesting another audit of the 2020 election results?  Well they got their answer, and the answer was "no".  This article covers some well trodden ground, but I found a few interesting tidbits that I didn't know about.  For instance, I didn't know that anybody can conduct their own personal audit anytime they want because the paper ballots are a matter of public record.  What I still don't know is why the Trumpists would want to challenge the Cheboygan County vote when Trump carried the county by a substantial margin. 

https://www.cheboygannews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/08/09/state-elections-director-

This link is kind of glitchy.  If, when you click on it, you get a page that says "Oh Snap!", just scroll down to this headline and click on it.  

Elections director denies Mich. county commission's request for audit 

*****************************************************************************

Okay, neither the restaurant, which was closer to Mackinaw City than it was to Cheboygan, nor the waitress was all that fancy, not like that place in Chicago we went to after my senior prom.  I think it was called "Magnum's" or "Maxim's" or something like that.  I ordered lobster thermidor, which I discovered is nothing like regular lobster.  I didn't like it.  The worst part was when I went to the rest room and was accosted by this colored guy who kept offering me towels and brushing me off with some kind of whisk broom.  I didn't know what to make of it until I noticed this fancy plate sitting there and surmised that I was expected to tip this guy.  I put a quarter on the plate, which was a lot of money in those days, after which the guy finally left me alone.  We have many fine restaurants around here.  I've been to some, but not all of them, and I've never encountered one where they don't let you piss in peace.

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.

For Love or Money

 I didn't like "The Great Wall" as much as I liked "Catfish."  The only reason that comes to mind is that I found the ending of "The Great Wall" to be rather abrupt.  I seem to remember reading the draft story before, but it was a long time ago and I wouldn't mind reading it again.

Funny how emotional people got about clothes, hair, and beards back in those days.  People nowadays wear most anything and nobody seems to care.  When I grew my beard I didn't mean for it to be a political statement, I just got tired of shaving after three years in the army.  Nevertheless. one of my old army buddies, who came to visit me some time after we both got out, told me that I was a "disgrace to my beard" because my political views had taken a sharp turn to the right, as his had taken a sharp turn to the left,  since last we met.  

I had to shave to get into the paper mill, which I wouldn't have done if it wasn't for this woman who I had been shacking up with for a few months.  She worked as a waitress in a fancy restaurant that closed up during the winter, and she was planning on relocating to Vermont where she had a winter job in a ski lodge waiting for her.  I asked her what would it take to get her to stay here and spend the winter with me.  She said that the job I had at the time didn't pay enough to support both of us but, if I could get into the paper mill, she would consider staying with me.  I still wouldn't have done it except some guys I knew at the mill said I could grow my beard back after I completed my probationary period and joined the union.  That's exactly what I did, but the woman went to Vermont anyway, while my job at the paper mill lasted 23 years.  

the draft 1

 I was hoping for some comment on The Great Wall this overcast Monday morning.  Sundays I almost always have the blues, kind of drag myself through the day. telling myself this is just a thing, no big deal, it will be gone Monday morning when I will be right back with the crew ready to get things done, and I usually like to start out the day responding on the blog, but this morning there is nothing.  Well, very well then I shall continue.

So that story, The Great Wall, many of the incidents were ripped from my faded newspapers.  There was a Dawn Weaver and early on she came to work with her eyes frozen shut, and was the heroine of the morning.  She was always a steady hand guiding her huge heavy tray of bowls and dishes steaming with hot Chinese food through the crowded shifting passageways of the dining room and coming for a clean landing on the tray stand next to the table of eager eaters.

It was some years later that I was shocked to learn that she was helping herself to booze out of that upstairs bar.  I think I have already explained how that face in the bowl of Special Great Wall Won Ton Soup happened.  There was a Vincent who did paint a big mural of vaguely tropical things on one of the walls of the House of Chin.  

There was a time when George was arrested for drunken driving and me and a hostess and a dishwasher were delegated to bail him out, but we had to wait for him to get fully booked, so we sat around in our regular bar across the street from the cop shop with a wad of money and the keys to his Buick Riviera, and at the time in was in the back of my mind that we could, you know, just go.  Out of town where University Avenue ran into I 57, you hit a fork in the road where you could go to Chicago or Memphis.  Of course I always took the fork to Chicago, but it was always in the back of my mind that someday, on a whim, I would turn south and go to that mysterious city of Memphis.

Never happened of course, and I never kissed the devil in her stained red dress in a crumby bar while a blues song played on the jukebox.

Paths never taken.

But here is a path that I did take, from not graduating in June of 1967 and losing my student deferment to getting my CO in the late summer of 1969.  It is pretty much all true though some details may have been polished a bit.

I would have graduated the summer of 1967.  It was theoretically possible if I'd passed all my courses, but of course I didn't. My parents didn't find out I wasn't graduating until the last moment.  I'd known it for some time, but how did you do tell that to your parents who were planning on coming down for graduation?  Marlene and I used to joke about it.  How maybe we could rent some caps and gowns and get some friends to cooperate in a phony ceremony.  It was pretty funny, but even as I was laughing I would worry about how I would slip this dagger into my parents' hearts.

 Well I did it somehow eventually.  They did come down though, out of momentum, to try to get some kind of explanation or something.  I had been seeing this guy I called my shrink, actually a counselor in the Student Services building.  I'd written my parents about him and my mom insisted on seeing him.  These things happen was the only explanation he could give them.  On the way out of his office my mom bumped into somebody, or maybe they into her.  She gave them a raft of shit, why don't you watch where you're going.  She went on and on.  She was really pissed.

 But then that was over, and I was free.  I went out to the quad to hang with my friends.  It was a hot day and I had taken off my boots to walk around barefoot.  When I went back to pick them up I noticed that they were all scruffy, beat up and torn.  Well I wouldn't need them anymore.  I left them on the quad.  I was free. 

 Champaign Urbana in the summer is a wonderful place.  No hordes of students, the living is easy.  I slept on couches, wandered down to the union in the late morning and hung out there until it was time for the bars to open.  Everything was green and weedy under my bare feet.  There was no time, not really.  This would never end.

 I moved in with Marlene.  This was nice.  But a couple days into that I was brushing my teeth and she caught me using her toothpaste.  

 Well what was the big deal?  I didn't have any of my own so I was using hers.

 You don't have anything do you?

 Well no.  I'm free.

 Freeloading more like it.  Did I expect that I was going to just freeload off her indefinitely?

 That is what I had expected, but I knew better than to say that.

 Why didn't I get a job?

 A job?  I supposed I could try, but who was going to hire me with all my hair and my beard?

 Why don't you cut it off then?  

 Cut off my hair?  How could this be, the love of my life was asking me to cut off my hair?

 But that's what I did eventually.  Got a job at the Wigwam waiting tables and eventually moved into tending bar, working those eleven hour days six days a week.

 Marlene meanwhile had taken up with some mope.  A lump of a guy really, sat around reading philosophy or mysticism or something.  Was always depressed, didn't have much to say.  I don't know what she saw in him.  Maybe she thought he was deep.  I didn't see him as any real competition, just a stupid little fling of hers.  I could get her back at any time, whenever I decided to make my move.  Then she moved to Berkeley and took the mope with her.

Boogie Woogie

 Myself, I had some coughing and a lot of sneezing about a week ago, and didn't think much about it, but then I came across this article: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/566706-the-signs-you-have-the-delta-variant-are  Not sure what to think now.

great wall 10

 Seems to me that it well could have been the boogie woogie flu?  How can you know unless you are tested and I don't believe they can test you after the fact?  Pink, why yes of course, the whole reason plants are green is because they absorb rather than reflect red light.  Makes you wonder why all grow lights aren't pink.  I remember that ricin was a lot more in the news when you were growing it, and I was worried for you about cops dropping in for some lawful reason and then asking, "What is that you're growing Lad?"

That rule to work thing sounds a lot like the blue flu.  Legally cops can't strike, so they call in sick a lot, and when they are on the clock they do their job in a minimal manner, just enough to not get legally fired.  I suspect the Canadians also are not legally allowed to strike.

And here is the ending of The Great Wall.  I would love to get your impressions after you have read it, and I will have a few words to say about it.

I was thinking my next story will be nonfiction along the lines of how I dodged the draft back in the day.  Have a pleasant weekend Gentlemen, and as the cop in Hill Street advised his charges, be careful out there.

I was going to drive her home first thing, like I had pantomimed to Vincent, but the police station was closer and maybe the first thing I should do was bail out Leon.  But when I got there they were going to need another half hour to finish booking him. 

I couldn’t leave her in the car while I sat in the police station waiting for the procedures.  I could have sat in the car with her, but it had been a long day and night and I sure could use a drink myself.  There was this crumby little bar across the street from the police station, and she was doing pretty good by then, so I took her in with me.

I settled her into a booth, got myself a beer, and when I came back Dawn asked, “Where’s mine?”

Startled, I started, “Dawn, I really don’t think you need…”

“Where’s my drink?” she cut me off.

Well what more harm could one more drink do?  “Glenlivet?” I asked.

“Sure, that will do.”

I’d left my cigarettes and lighter on the table and when I got back with her Glenlivet, she was smoking one. She kind of just blew the smoke out and coughed, but she kept right at it.

I sat the glass down in front of her, leaned over, and touched her shoulder, “Dawn, what’s happened to you?  Is it because of those little bottles?  Because you were thinking about your dad’s death?”

She looked up from her cigarette.  “That fucker,” she said, “I wish he was dead.”

I watched as she took a healthy sip, made a little face, set the glass down, took a puff, coughed.

“He’s not dead then?” It was all I could think to say.

“Fuck I don’t know.   He wasn’t the last time I saw him. Unfortunately.  I suppose you want to hear the story.”

“If you want to tell it.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, lit another one right away.  “Okay,” she said.  “Why not?  I was in the third grade when he ran off.  No warning, he just didn’t come home one night.  Mom said he took up with booze and hookers.”

I cringed a little thinking of Raven and Ruby.  They had seemed nice enough girls.

“He was drinking Glenlivet?” I asked, just to keep up my part of the conversation, just to keep things straight.

“I guess he did.  I guess he was drinking all the scotch in the glen, and all the gin in the mill.  Mom taught me that one.  I don’t know how he kept his job, but he did, not that that helped us, all the money went for the booze and the hookers, he never sent us a fucking dime.  For a little while, I was a little girl, I would miss him, miss him kind of taking care of me when something bad happened.”

“He’d say, ‘shrug it off?” I prompted.

And that made her laugh, “Shrug it off?  Maybe he said that.  He sure shrugged us off.  That fucker!  And then nine years, nine years later, on my seventeenth birthday, my aunt, his sister, though I didn’t put that together until too late, invited me to her house for dinner, and when I walked in there he was sitting at the table.  That fucker!”

She paused for a quick puff and a gulp.  “And he had this package, this gift-wrapped package, wrapped up professionally like the store will do if you ask them to, and it was my birthday present!  Nine years not a fucking dime and here’s a fucking birthday present.  I was shocked, too shocked to do or say anything so I just took the package, opened it up, and it was a make-up kit.  I never wore make-up.  And it wasn’t even a real make-up kit.  It was a toy make-up kit, like for little girls.  It was so stupid.  That fucker!  I broke it over his head, and then I kept beating him with the pieces of it, and he had his arm over his head, and underneath it he was trying to say something and I just kept beating him until all the pieces were broken too small.  And I haven’t seen him since then.  That fucker!”

The Heroine of The Great Wall finished her story. I looked at her in her red dress stained with soy sauce now and sticky from sweet and sour, sitting in a crumby bar, drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, saying ‘fuck.’

“What about the Peaceable Kingdom?” I asked her.

“The Peaceable Kingdom?”

“You know, the lion laying down with the lamb.”

She seemed to be giving it some thought.  She lit another cigarette and didn’t cough at all.  “They were just posing for the picture,” she said.  “As soon as the painter put in his last brush stroke the lion ate the lamb.”

She finished her Glenlivet, plunked the empty glass in front of me.  “What’s a gal got to do to get another drink around here?” she asked.

Coming back with her next drink I noticed that she had all the little Glenlivet bottles lined up along the edge of the table, and one by one she addressed them, “Shrug this off Fucker,” and flicked them to the floor.

As soon as I set her scotch on the table she grabbed it and took a big gulp.

I leaned over her to settle her down and she put her hands in the hair behind my neck and drew my face down to hers and gave me a big deep kiss full of scotch and smoke, and with her stained red dress and some low blues song on the jukebox of the crumby bar, it was like kissing the devil.