Night of the Mosquitos: Grand Isle, Louisiana 1981

In 1981 I was in school at the University of Iowa. Brock and Matt (and Mike) were my fastest friends. And we lived for the bars, books, women and new landscapes. Road trips were a great staple to our sense of adventure and discovery. So, that summer, we decided to head south.

We went to Mississippi first--Gulfport. We camped at a private campground (Gaylord's Camp or something like that), under tall trees--walnuts or something--and pines. Sure, it was hot but the hot didn't bother us. We scooted around town in Matt's car, swam in the Gulf of Mexico, hit a beachside bar named Spiders. (I went back to Spiders a few years ago--yes, it was still there--while Bill M. and I visited Mike P.. But have since learned it was blown away by Hurricane Katrina.) So, we drank us some beer, played games of pool with the locals while watching the sun descend into the calm Gulf waters through the bar's windows. We got to know a small group, one guy and two girls, and they invited us to do a little hopping in the night. And we went to a couple of odd bars back in the woods, then to a big place called the White House in Biloxi. This was before the casinos and it was really just a glorified disco. We had our drunken fun, then went back to crash in our tent. Then, sun up, we headed for New Orleans.

Being from Iowa (essentially, though I'd lived in three states before Iowa, Brock was from Seattle, Matt an Iowa Boy from Sioux City) and being young, driving through new places, new states and "cultures"--even within the confines of the USofA--was a pleasing internal adventure all its own. The slow rivers and stagnant bayous, cotton fields, kudzu-covered trees and fences, the snakes, gators, buzzards, the sleepy dilapidation and drawl-talking folks all interested us greatly. And the city of New Orleans was like a foreign world to us. Yes, it was Bourbon Street Viuex Carre French Quarter tourist land, but that mattered little to us as we hit the bars and restaurants, talked to people, listened to music, gawked at the veranda and wrought iron balconied buildings, the tawdry strip clubs, painters in the street, mimes and such, Jackson Square and Jax Beer and the Mighty Mississippi, banana plants and magnolias and stunted palms and moss-laden live oaks, the seedy neon old-world hustle-bustle tourist trappiness of it all. It was wild and strange fun, even if we did nothing particularly wild or strange. And as the night wore thin and our drunkenness became greater, we realized we did not have a place to stay for the night.

We stumbled the streets, considered a few hotels. But we were cheap bastards (even if we had had the cash, I doubt we'd of shelled out more than $20 bucks for a room if we could find one that cheap). But we were car people, nomads, drivers of America's highways (and campers), so we tromped back to Canal Street where we'd parked the car and--despite our inebriation--decided to drive away.

It wasn't really a problem. We found our way to I-10 and headed west. We got about halfway to Baton Rouge before we called it quits, before our drunken splendor turned into asleep at the wheel. Pulled into a rest area and slept in the car. Actually, at one point, I got out of the car and slept in the parking lot, using the curb as a pillow. I don't know if anyone saw me, but they must have, because it was daylight when I woke up in the parking space.

Unbowed, we headed south again, this time taking the small roads, headed for the Gulf again and a small town called--and island--called Grand Isle.

The drive down was amazing: a reel of flatflat land and drooping trees, plantation homes with those mossy oaks like toppled Ferris Wheels, sad little towns under the baking sun, Donaldsonville, Houma, Raceland, Cut Off, Leeville, mosquito-riven canals with traps and detritus and big paint-peeling shrimp boats, the highway getting skinnier and skinnier under a relentless sun and soupy humidity. Yes, it was summer down in the delta land of Louisiana and we were going to camp on the beach.

Grand Isle itself was shuttered and asleep, vacation homes boarded up against heavy humid light and torpor, everything standing still and slow of breath, hanging on in the oppressive impossible heat. Yes, a few places were open, but the streets were peopleless and animal-less. We found the campsite. It was right on the placid grey water. There were a few others there, all in motor homes with air-conditioning. We were the only tent campers. Yes it was hot as hell, dry and humid at the same time. No breeze. But we swam, showered to escape the heat and sweat. We went back into town and entered some weird little bar--black and sealed tight against the day, coldly cold air-conditioned. We had a few drinks, then went back to the beach and ate cold chili out of cans. Drank all the fluids we could get our hands on. But it was not enough. We were running out of dollars and spent them at the vending machine by the showers, but no matter how many cans of soda we bought it was not enough. Two days of drinking--maybe three--and the deep south Louisiana heat were drying us out. The sand was full of ghost crabs, too. Little whitish creatures that scuttled everywhere under our feet. There was no shade to be had on the beach, where our three-man tent sat wilting and broiling.

Dusk came. A man from a motor home talked to me, asked about us camping. He said that the mosquitos would eat us up. "Them's red-eye mosquitos. They'll come out of that brush," and he pointed to the sea oats and weeds, "and bite the devil out of you." I didn't quite believe him. But, as dusk fell into night, they came.

We'd never seen such bugs. They were small, they were a million if they were a one. Maybe a billion. And they were relentless. They clouded and buzzed and attacked without guile. We swatted and smeared and killed them by the dozens, the hundreds, thousands, but there were always more. We ran to the showers and they followed us, even attacked while the water streamed upon my parched, baked burnt tired body. Kamikaze mosquitos. We ran back to the tent and got inside. It was an oven. And the mosquitos had followed us inside. We killed as many as we could, but there were more. There was no breeze. No rain. No air. The tent--cramped world of canvas--had to have everything zipped tight because the bugs were still after us, could slither through the tiniest of openings and even the tattered screens. It was miserable crazy insane and we were seared, burnt and dead tired.

We headed for the car. Killed the mosquitos that followed us inside. The car was an oven too, but we slept a little. Woke up and ran the air-conditioning, but we couldn't just leave it running. We slept some more, but it was impossible. Too hot, cramped, too infested. Couldn't take it. So, I bolted from the car. Grabbed a towel. I paced the beach swinging the towel around me to keep the carnivore-bugs at bay. It worked. Of course, I couldn't sleep. I was still hot, sweaty, hungry, thirsty and bone-tired, but the damn mosquitos couldn't get me. They didn't stop trying, but they couldn't quite make it past my flailing towel. Matt and Brock soon joined me.

We walked, towels swinging, until daylight. Eventually the mosquitos retreated back into the weeds and we retreated from Grand Isle.

We packed up, got in the car, and left town. We drove all the way back to Iowa City in one shot.

Buying A Gun: Missoula 1988

Actually Fru and I lived in the Bitterroot Valley--in the fall/winter of 1988--in a blond-wood cabin just up the mountain outside of Stevensville, Montana (or Stevi, as it was known). And actually, it was not me who bought the gun (though officially it was, in my name, because I was a Montana resident), it was Mike (Chicago, Iowa City, Los Angeles Mike, that is). It happened in late October--Fru and I were students at the University of Montana in Missoula--when Mike decided to come up from L.A. to visit.

Fru and I were essentially settled--were in classes, had the drive up and down Highway 93 down pat, life in the cabin serene and pretty and isolated. The weather was cooling. Leaves turning, crisp nights, patterns of snow in the high elevations. And then Mike flew in and I picked him up at the airport in Missoula. He stayed with us, of course. I can't recall if it was the first time he'd met Fru or not, think maybe it was. But we hit the bars, of course, drinking beer at Reds and Charlie B's in Missoula, drinking beer at the Sportsman Lounge and the Stevi Bar in Stevensville, drinking beer in the cabin too. But after that, what else was there to do? Walk in the woods? Check. Go up the Rattlesnake? Check. Drink more beer? Check. . . That's when Mike decided to buy a gun.

We lived in the woods on three acres, only a scattering of neighbors on their own acres, we were in Montana and in the mountains, so why not buy a gun? So into Missoula we went, to a gun shop on First Street, up near the Northern Pacific tracks. We walked in, asked to see the guns, asked to see used guns, Mike chose an old Browning rifle, he was from out of state so I signed for it, bought it, bought some ammo, and we walked out with the gun. . . In a lot of towns, it would be strange to walk down the street carrying a rifle, but not in Missoula. Not in most mountain state towns or small cities. So, we walked back to the car, got in, drove all the way back to the cabin in the Bitterroot, loaded it and shot some trees. We shot trees, then we shot potatoes placed in trees, then shot our many beer cans, then I shot my truck.

I had a red Chevy Custom Deluxe (Kurt's old work truck from Champaign, IL) pickup and it sat in the gravel drive near the cabin and it was an easy target. It was a beat-up pickup, but I liked it and thought a bullet hole or two would only add to it's dilapidated beauty. So, I sighted up its tailgate--from an angle--and Mike stepped back (just in case I hit the gas tank) and squeezed off a shot. Ping. The bullet hit and ricocheted away, leaving a thin groove. That wasn't good enough (the rifle--what, a 22?--wasn't powerful enough) so I aimed again, this time straight on, no angle. Ping-pow. It left a neat little splintered-paint hole in the back of my truck. Nowadays, I see all these bullet-hole decals on trucks. Fake silver splinters on the gates or sides. But I had the real thing, Baby.

So, Mike was there and then Brock decided to come to town from Seattle. Not just Brock but also Margaret, who was in Seattle visiting Brock (they married years later). They decided to take the train over from Washington, but the closest station was in Whitefish, a ways north of Missoula. So Mike and I got in the bullet-hole red Chevy and we made the drive up to Whitefish. It's a long drive by most standards--Missoula to Whitefish--but by Montana ones (where long distance drives are de rigeur) it was like going to pick up a loaf of bread. But we were picking up Brock and Margaret at the Amtrak station. And there they were on a sunny not-yet-afternoon in funny-cool Whitefish. We ate, hit the road, bought some beer and drove (another Montana tradition) and only stopped for outdoor piss-breaks (poor Maragret could not take those breaks) came down out of the last pass and into Missoula and a stop at Reds for more beer. Then we drove to the university and picked up Fru and drove--my truck full, full, full of friends and one lover--to the pretty cabin in the Bitterroot. Where we shot more potatoes with Mike's gun.

But it was a great visit. Good to have old friends, even if Fru and I were not lonely by ourselves. It snowed that night. A big puffy snow like you see in picture books and we walked up the rarely-used forrest service roads among the white-laden pines and frosted rocks. Mike, Brock and I went into Stevensville, got drunk at the Sportsman, attacked each other with a plunger and were the talk of the small town for a few days. I had a paper that was due and maybe a test, so I had to curtail some activities. Mike went home to L.A. and he could not take his gun with him, so I kept it. Brock and Margaret also went away and it was just Fru and I. But come Thanksgiving, we had a dinner with newly minted pals and I got out the gun and we shot more potatoes out of simple malice and boredom.

Yes, I kept the gun. Until 1990. In 1990 I took the bus down to L.A. on my way to Mexico and I brought the 22 Browning rifle--packed it in my duffel, surrounded by clothes and whatnot. Gave it to Mike. . . I own an old shotgun now. A Parker Brothers. It was my grandfather's from my dad's side--a man I never ever met. It's an antique and worth a thousand or more, I guess. I got it after my own father died some seven years ago (has it really been seven years?). I'm not a gun guy. Never was, doubt I ever will be. But I'll hang on to the old shotgun. I think Mike still has that Browning, too. My truck? I sold that, when we returned to Champaign.

Special Edition #1: Chicago

I've never really lived in the city of Chicago, but I have a close relationship with it. I know and love Chicago. I've spent weeks at a time there, spent weekends, spent hours. As a child--not more than five years old, in the early 1960's (for god's sakes)--my family went to Chicago because my father had a meeting there. I do remember some of it. I remember the buildings and streets, I remember my being very afraid and refusing to ride the el/subway, I remember a man offering me candy in the street (butterscotch) and I took it from him but then recalled being told to never take candy from strangers and so I threw it in the street. But after that, I didn't go to Chicago until my twenties, when I was at the University of Iowa.

Cin was from Chicago--from the north burbs: Highland Park. Later she had an apartment in Skokie and she worked--for her father--off Addison in Wriglyville. Cin, who I'd met at Iowa, quit school and returned to Chicago but our relationship continued, so I'd go visit her often enough (and she'd come visit me). I lived with her for about a month in Skokie, after I was done with college, and I'd take the El along Clark Street and go downtown and around. I'd go to Cubs games, the Art Museum, the Loop and other places. We'd go places, too; the Brookfield Zoo.

Fru was from Chicago, though by the time I met her she'd been living in Champaign, Illinois for many years. Still, we went up to the city quite often. Don--our good friend--moved to Chicago and, over the years, Fru and I would go up and visit him, stay with him (even after we moved to Montana). Fru loves Chi-town and she'd planned to move there before she met me. She'd still love to live there. 

Seattle is my favorite American city, but of the big three true cities--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago--I'll take Chi-town hands down. I can't deny NYC's energy and excitement, it's stately and labyrinthian beauty; L.A. is way down my list, but it has it's cool factor and a cultural, landscaped beauty of its own. But Chicago is a solid town, a rough but cleanly beautiful place. I've known it intimately in winter, in summer, have been there for spring and fall. It's archtecture--the Carbide and Carbon Building is my favorite, black and coal-looking with graces of gold, tall and thin yet solid, beautiful in a non-beautiful way, and only slightly ornamental. That's Chicago. I feel the city's vibe each time I'm there and I can't even count how many times that has been. . . I like their sports teams: Cubs, Bears, Bulls. I don't follow the Blackhawks, but I'd root for them.

I remember the first time I went to the city as an adult, as a young man. I'd gone to see Cin and she took me downtown--sightseeing--with a couple of her local friends. It was winter and the clouds were low, gray, foggy. You couldn't see the tops of the buildings. The streets were packed, but everyone wore big coats, breath trailing as they hugged themselves along the sidewalks. News paper vendors, crowds, traffic, cabs, the soot-like city air and low winter light, the raised tracks of the El racked above some streets, streets like tunnels, and the real tunnels (so much of the city is literally underground, the streets having been raised after the great fire), the sun-blocked streets of downtown, the cold lake looking like an inland sea. . . Sure, it would have been nice to see the sun, to have bright views and a warm cleansing wind, but that first view (since I was a very small child) was a proper one. Chicago is not a bright and sunny city; it is a sternly beautiful, stoic and serious city.

Fru went to Chicago this summer, while I went to Iowa, to Des Moines.

Dang. Now I wish I'd gone to Chicago.

Coming Into Los Angeles: 1985

I had no intention of ever going to Los Angeles.

By September of '84 I'd come back from New Mexico--Santa Fe--and had gone to Iowa City, then Chicago to stay with Cin, then back to Des Moines by the onset of winter. I was working, planning my next move (I don't recall where), when I got a call from Mike, who had graduated from Iowa and was back in Chicago himself. He called me out of the blue and asked if I'd like to go out to California with him and work for him. . . Like I said, I'd had no intention. Southern California, L.A. in particular--like New York and the Northeast--was a place to be avoided. To me, it was too big-cityish, too American Dream-like. I liked smaller venues, more unusual in the thought-scape of most people: New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho (even Colorado was too common), the Florida Keys (not Miami or Fort Lauderdale or Daytona). But, having been asked and knowing there was work in-hand, I said, "Sure."

So, by New Years Eve, I was back in Chicago, spent time in the loving company of Cin, and come New Years Day 1985, I said goodbye to her once again and Mike and I took off in his little brown Mazda RX7, headed for Californyiaye.

We made it to Lawrence, Kansas before the car broke down.

The RX7 was a speedy little sports car and we'd driven it on the winter midwest roads with no problems, and it was a new car, but there was--it turned out--a factory problem with the gears and it became disabled and the local shops didn't have the part, it had to be shipped from somewhere to Kansas City and then shipped to Lawrence. So, we holed up in a cheap motel and Mike rented a car. Lawrence was the home of the university of Kansas, so we wandered around on the campus, feeling at home among students and young people. But the bars in Kansas were not like Iowa or Illinois--they had restrictions on alcohol sales, had bars and clubs and such. It was strange. But we figured it out and in the days were were there had a routine down, had met some people. I met some girl who was home for winter break from Vassar (whose parents were both professors at UK) and we hit it off. It was a pleasant diversion. But Mike was tired of being stuck in Kansas, so eventually we took the rental up to Kansas City to get the part ourselves (saving a day or two for it to be shipped to Lawrence) and they fixed her up and we were on the road agin. That is, until the snowstorm in Flagstaff.

 In northern Arizona it began to snow like crazy. It was also crazy beautiful: the sharp green pines, the red earth and hills against the bright white snow. I loved it. And I liked Flagstaff. Flagstaff was more the kind of town, the type of landscape, I was drawn to rather than L.A. But the snow was so bad--a blizzard, really-- that we barely got off the road and into another motel. From the motel we called a cab and told the driver to take us to some bar. He took us to this big old log cabin-like bar--very western--where Mike and I drank beer and played pool and had a groovy time. Then we took a cab back.

The next day the snow was clear enough for us to take off. And off we took, stopping in Needles Ca, then towards L.A., hitting the San Gabriel Mountains where it was sunny and warmish. Mike sped that car up to a hundred MPH. And he got pulled over. Cop gave us a ticket: Welcome to California.

We made it into L.A. at night, down to a hotel around Santa Monica where Mike's dad was. Mike's dad was setting the business up--construction--for Mike in California and he had flown out from Chicago and was waiting for us to make it there. We had drinks by the pool, dinner by the pool, everything warm and delightfully SoCal, lights twinkling, palms rustling. You get the picture. Of course I was enamored (but I still preferred Flagstaff).

We spent the next days looking for an apartment--found a month-by-month one in West Hollywood, near Burbank, the Oakwood complex. I think Mike's dad found that for us. Then we went to work, remodeling, changing some place in Santa Monica into the very first Jenny Craig Weightloss Center in the USofA. Jenny Craig and her husband were there, in from Australia. After a while we had to go find a work vehicle--got a big red windowless extra-long van. Called it the Sex Oven for reasons I won't go into at this time.

So, I settled in. Worked for Mike, but I was never astounded by L.A. (unlike the way I was with NYC years later). Even in those first months, I knew I'd leave. I mean, I learned to like and appreciate Los Angeles. I had a great time and met interesting people, but it never really stuck with me. Too big and noisy and money-oriented.

The thing was, though, when I went back to Iowa and said I'd been living out in L.A., people were very impressed. I'd been gone before, living in Key West, Santa Fe, Alaska. No one seemed too impressed about those places, really. But mention California, mention Los Angeles and Hollywood, they were all curious and jealous. . . Oh well, the American Dream is a dream of fame.

Coming Back to Grayton Beach: 1986

I'd left Grayton (the first time) in December of 1985, going back to Iowa. The Paradise Cafe had closed for the season and I was ready to hole-up for the winter, write and get some cash in my pockets, then be off wandering again. I'm thinking I took the bus to Chicago, where I looked up Cin but Cin wanted nothing to do with me, so I headed on to Des Moines. In Des Moines I got a job at Younkers at the Merle Hay Mall (again) and lived at my parent's house. (I did go to Iowa City for a spell, staying with Matt and Roger, who had made their way there after being in New Mexico for a spell.) I'd been reading a lot of Henry Miller and Norman Mailer, a little Knute Hamsun, and so my plan was to take off on my own for Eugene, Oregon with little money and do whatever I needed to do when I got there. But as spring approached, I got a call from Johnny--chef and kitchen king at the Paradise--and he asked if I wanted to come back and work at the cafe.

Okay.

So, I went to Iowa City first for a few days, then took the Greyhound down to Grayton.

The bus trip itself was strange. Long hours sitting, stopping in small towns, seeing and feeling the shift from cold untrustworthy weather to the sleepy drooping-leaved trees of the Deep South. I recall stopping in Dothan, Alabama where the bus station was like a place back in time. It had a little cafe attached to it with worn formica-topped tables in swirling green and homemade sandwiches in plastic that looked like they'd been sitting on the shelves since the 1950s, and beans and cornbread and gravied meats and all that very southern atmosphere and voices and just old old foreign world stuff (to me). Along the ride we'd picked up some guy in Alabama and he said he'd been in jail and the bus driver let him off on the side of the road, where his car sat--evidently he'd been jailed for drunk driving and now he was taking the bus from the town to where he'd had to leave his car. And in Florida, in the panhandle, the bus only had a few people in it and the driver talked with us about his experiences, about hitting a mule once, about a buzzard flying, crashing through the windshield once and he--the driver--had to grab the big ugly bird to take out the door and it was still alive and it puked on him (a natural defense of buzzards, it turns out): "Ain't nothing stinks worse than buzzard puke. High heaven," the driver said.

Finally, in Walton County at night, the driver could only let me out at the IGA store in Santa Rosa on Highway 98 (not in Grayton on little 30A) because, after the stop in Panama City, his next scheduled one was in Ft. Walton before heading to Pensacola. So he let me off the bus and said I'd have to get my bag in Ft. Walton when I could (he wouldn't unload it). So, I was left there--no car, no luggage, little money--and I used the pay phone to call Johnny. He sent Ron to come pick me up.

It was great to be back in Florida, in Walton County: the warmth, the fetid smells and heavy humid air, the southern voices and talkative southern people, the beach and sea and pines and magnolias. Friends who had not become truly close friends yet. Yes, I was down in the panhandle essentially by myself: no Matt or Brock or Holly, just the semi-local folks I'd met and worked with the year before. But I was glad to be back and not starving in Oregon.

And there was a party going on.

Much like the first time I'd come into Grayton Beach, the young people were whooping it up at Sam's place outside of Grayton, some second floor spot in Seagrove Beach, I think it was. Ron took me there, straight from the long bus ride and my baggage-less wait at the IGA. And inside were some of the same people but also some new ones as I was handed a beer, a cigarette, some smoke, maybe a bump of coke. They were happy to see me and I happy to see them and I fell right back in to the hedonistic laid back beach world. It was Sam's place and she had a roommate whose name I can't recall, some southern lass who had a boyfriend named Melvin but everyone called him Smellvin. Doug was there, Tommy and Jack and maybe even Brad, Randall and Van and others. There were two other new people who were going to work at the Cafe: Eva and Shumae, both Asian--which was very unusual for the beach there. A good guy named Chas--a smart southern man who wanted to get into the restaurant biz (and did end up owning a cafe, with Shumae, years later (I think he's still down there). So, I partied with everyone, reacquainting myself with them, with what had changed. I had a room in Grayton--an apartment upstairs on the main road which Johnny was letting me use. But eventually I rented my trailer (also on the main drag).

So that was my first return to Grayton Beach. And it was actually the last time I lived in town, last time I worked for the Paradise Cafe. I came back twice more, living in Gulf Trace and Seagrove Beach. I saw Monica again for a while, but not Gretchen, I met Pat and her daughters, I met Tee and Tee ended up moving into the trailer with me (as did Matt, as he returned also). Maybe Holly was still there. Good old Duke and his wife, Rebecca. Bobby and a host of other characters from the cafe and not. Keith, who we called Chief, who was an African-American down from Detroit, he and I became good friends. It was all fun and disastrous. But I left in August to go to the Iowa Writers Workshop, which was also disastrous in its own way.

The next two times I returned to "Grayton" were different, but I still came back.

I'd still go back, I think.

Coming Back To Des Moines

I don't know how many times I came back to Des Moines. I guess it depends on what you mean by "coming back". That is, I came back the first two summers from Iowa City, when I was in college, to live and work and I returned to Des Moines after I graduated. But like all other times, Des Moines was but a way station, a place to go between going to other places, a place to be when I didn't know where else to be.

In Des Moines I almost always stayed with my parents in Urbandale, at their house, usually in the basement. Yes, I know it sounds bad, cliched, insipid, but that's what I did. I could live rent free, eat for free, had the use of a car when I didn't have a car and I could work, save money, write, visit old friends. I always had a lot of friends in Des Moines (though now they have all moved on, except for Scott and Larry, it seems). In Des Moines I could touch base with who I was or used to be. In Des Moines I could make my plans to leave Des Moines.

I love Iowa. I love Iowa City and other towns and have a begrudging affection for Des Moines. I like Iowans and, though I was born in South Dakota, had grown up in Washington State and Tennessee and didn't live in Iowa till I was thirteen, Iowa is still "home" to me and Des Moines is a hometown in its most emotional sense of the term. Still, I don't live in Iowa and have not "come back" to Des Moines in over twenty years. Just visited.

It's hard to piece together each return and what happened and who I hung out with and where I worked because I returned so often. I know I worked full time at Younkers twice--once at the department store at the Merle Hay Mall, another time--after graduating from the U. of Iowa--at the 9th Street Warehouse. Maybe I worked there one other time, maybe not. I also worked full time mowing lawns for Truegreen, I worked many many temp jobs, worked construction, for UPS unloading trucks late at night, worked washing dishes at a company cafeteria for the Meredith printing plant and other simple, often strange, jobs. Usually there was Kevin and Larry and Bill still in town. There was Scott and Keith and an assortment of their friends--like Lowell--who I got to know and went around with. There were also Yonkers pals: Mark, Bruce, Tim, Craig.

Kevin, Keith, Scott and Lowell lived in different old big falling-down houses at different times in the north side of Des Moines when I'd come back and I hung with them. They had other people living with them too, like John and Randy. John was a furniture salesman, a drunk driver and drug user and a Christian. Randy was a cocaine addict who spent all of his time alone up in his room snorting away--nobody knew he was doing it because it did it all alone and by himself. I barely knew him. He worked for his father's Tv appliance store and would steal TVs from his father's business--sell them in the street--to fuel his addiction. John was funny and a good person to drink with but was a wreck of a young man. Don't know what ever happened to him. Lowell got married--after dumping his long time girlfriend--and moved to Topeka, Kansas ( I think). Kevin, who was one of my best friends coming out of high school, eventually married and moved to Wichita, Kansas. Keith married, moved to Cleveland, Ohio, divorced, remarried and still lives outside of Cleveland. Scott, after a bit of rambling and an MBA at Iowa and being jobless for a long spell, bought a house in Des Moines, across from Waveland Park. Larry married, worked with computer programing, met another woman and has lived a dual life for as many years as I've been married. Very Weird. He lives in Windsor Heights. Bill is married and is a gentleman farmer in Kansas also. (I don't have the slightest idea why in the hell anyone would move to Kansas.) My Yonkers friends left and stayed and I lost touch with them as easily as I had made friends with them.

Hanging out really meant drinking. Drinking cheap beers at their houses or going to the small bars of the city. The Waveland Tap was a favorite, but there was the Bon Ton, Sully's, the Duckblind, Wellmans, the Greenwood Lounge, King Tut's, the Alpine, the Westend and others. Johnny's Hall of Fame Lounge, downtown. I do recall one day drinking beer at Keith and kevin and Scott's house where they had a big front porch with a fat porch rail. The wooden rail was big enough to stand on and so I initiated some contest to see how far we could jump from the rail out into the weed-grass yard. The railing was at least three feet high with a broad top, and it was another, what, two feet at least down from the porch to the yard, So I clambered on up there, stood, swung my arms back ready to jump big. And as I jumped, pushed off from the rail, the whole thing collapsed. The balustrade became disengaged from the pillars and porch and went down into the shrubbery and I went down also. We all laughed. I wasn't hurt.

I saw Scott just a couple months ago in Des Moines and he brought this up, said Keith had been in town and Keith had retold the incident. Had to have been there, really, for it to be that memorable.

But Des Moines is a good city. Most people have heard of it or driven through it. To some friends--who were from the small towns of Iowa--it is the Big City. But overall, I don't think Des Moines gets much respect in a national sense. I like it, but was always ready to get out of it.

My Greatest Game of Pool: Seattle 1987

Let me set this up properly. When I was in Seattle I was in a deep no good drunk-and-stoned-most-of-the-time depression. I'd dropped out of the Iowa Writers Workshop, I'd gone back to the beach in Florida's panhandle (Walton County) to live with Tee and that had ended very badly. I'd driven by myself in my ugly powder blue Ford Maverick from Pensacola to L.A. and up to Seattle in the middle of winter. Seattle was--of course--gray and rainy and I lived with Matt and Brock in a junked-out apartment in Queen Anne next door to Brock's father's print shop (where I worked briefly). I slept of the floor. The downstairs of this building was used for storage for the shop, but the only kitchen was down there and so when we made meals we had to take our plates and silverware and drinks and go out one front door, turn, go inside the other front door and up the narrow stairs into the dusty unkempt old place. There was no shower, just one bathroom with a single white unclean tub. I lived out of my duffel bag. I was down, almost out, and we wandered the slick streets of Seattle being absurd and acerbic and getting drunk in lowly bars (many which are no longer there).

I was a failure. Unhappy, forlorn and not even getting laid.

I first worked at a restaurant (Duke's) as a damned busboy when I got to Seattle, then at the print shop. I'd left, went up to Bellingham to live and write to stay, but that fell through and I came scurrying back. I worked remodeling the apartment, which only made the place worse as rooms were sealed off with sheets of plastic and dust and debris settled everywhere. I was going broke and getting worse.

We had our places: the Mecca for late breakfasts and Bloody Marys; the Ginza, Sorry Charlie's, the Otter--the rundown Seafarer's Lounge on 1st Street--and other bars whose names I can no longer recall for drinking; the Safeway up the street on First Avenue West for groceries (cheap fatty bacon cuts with grits was a staple) and cases of cheap cheap Heidelburg beer; Matt got pot from some source or another. But the main watering hole we went to was an Irish bar. A pub, maybe Dave's Irish Pub, and I can't for the life of me remember it's name. Maybe I've purposely placed it out of my memory. Anyway, the Irish Pub was where we hung out and knew the bartenders (Greg was a true Irishmen and became a great friend of Matt's--he also was a alcoholic and eventually almost died from it and he and Matt got into great amounts of serious trouble, even wanted by police at one point, over the years) and some of the cliental. 

  So I was deep into my internal misery by the time--at the Irish Pub--I played my greatest pool game ever.

The bar was half-crowded and a group of younger people came in, two guys and two girls. Like I said, I wasn't getting laid in Seattle and of course I perked up seeing the females. I was drunk. They were semi-drunk, maybe not even so much as that. Matt and Brock were there, but we were playing singles and I had the table. I've never been the best pool player in the world. I could be quite good, but had a tendency to get bored with the game, to lose interest down the stretch. (I recall the days in Iowa City, at the Vine especially, when Brock and I would team up and win and win all night long even though we were bad players; we had some kind of good game karma at the Vine.) And, as said, I was not in a good frame of mind personally, so even my pool game had been off for months. But we talked to the new group of people. I tried flirting with one of the girls--even though they were with the guys--but it went nowhere. Big surprise. But that girls guy put his quarters down and we started the game of eight ball at the Irish Pub.

And I played horribly. Stinkily. Bad bad bad. I hadn't sunk a single ball and he had made all of his but one. I watched me beating me and quaffed my Red Hook beer--expensive beer I shouldn't have been buying--and knew I was going down to an embarrassing defeat. And the girl was watching the game the whole time. Finally the guy missed a shot, on the eight--my many balls in his way, no doubt--and I went up for my last round.

I hadn't made a ball. I was gone if I didn't make some now, at least to save face.

But the feeling came over me. A feeling like at the Vine in Iowa City. I had nothing to lose, really. I had nothing but open green, since he had conveniently shot all of his balls into the pockets. And I hunkered down, aimed my cue, and began to drop my spheres into the pockets like they wanted to go there. Like gravity was pulling them into the six black holes on the table. Man, I could not miss.

I just smiled. Took a shot. Drank some beer. Smiled. Took a shot. Drank some beer. He and his girl watched me and I could see him sweat. Could see the girl interested in me now. I was down to a few balls left but felt no pressure. And I made one, made one more, so that all that was left on the green felt was the eight.

"Call your shot."

"What?"

"Call the shot. Or do you want to play bank it only?"

"I was going to call my shot," I said. "It's a little late to play bank the eight but . . ." And I didn't give a damn. I thought I'd lose and I'd redeemed myself, so, if he wanted to add late rules, so be it. "Okay."

My only possible bank was a long one--across the far table and back to hit the eight and drop it in--the long-cue-ball-first kind of bank. And, without further ado, I let it fly.

In went the eight. Cue ball was safe. I'd won the game. The patrons of the Irish Pub in lower Queen Anne in Seattle cheered (those that were watching, that is). And I was delighted.

My competitor was pissed. The girl came over, facing me, said, "That was great", her eyes lit, swimming with alcoholic intoxication and admiration, sexually flirtatious, until her partner gently grabbed her by the shoulders and directed her away.

And that was it. My big game. My single savory moment of an otherwise unsavory existence that year. . . Oh, sure, I had plenty of fun and good times in Seattle--I love Seattle, as I've said before--but that was a moment I still recall quite clearly out of the rainy gloom. And it isn't much, really. So I came from behind, ran the table, and won a freaking pool game? So some girl briefly shined her bright eyes at me? So the people at the bar on that one miserable night gave me a little cheer? So?

So, it was a goddamn great game of pool, that's what it was.