Camping In The Ocala National Forest

In the mid-2000's I camped in the Ocala National Forest a few times. I had not camped for years, not since Illinois and my trips down to the Shawnee. One of my younger daughter's friends had moved to the Melbourne area of Florida from Ft. Lauderdale and when she went to visit--about three years in a row, it seems during the 2000's--I'd drive her up there and continue on by myself and go camping.

The place I liked to camp the most was Hopkins Prairie. Oh, there are springs and more interesting areas in the forest, but Hopkins Prairie was a good fit for me--it was off a dirt road, not many people went there, it was semi-primative. It consisted of flat land with a scattering of pines and shallow lakes and lowlands that flooded part of the year. A lot of scrub and palmetto and big flat skies. I had a good time there.

What I liked best was, after living in the concrete and controlled nature of South Florida for so long, it was nice to be out in the woods. To be away from a population center. That alone made me happy. Another factor was that I was all by myself. No wife, kids, neighbors, pets, students, South Florida drivers, tourists and so on. Just me, my tent, my car, my bologna and mustard sandwiches, sardines and crackers, beer, sodas, waters, my camp fire and my whiskey. Alone in the woods, day and night.

One of the times I went, Hopkins Prairie was closed due to flooding and I had to find a new place.

I looked on the map and drove around--again, avoiding the popular places, the springs and creeks that held only developed campgrounds with flushing toilets and showers and running water and trailers and motor homes and families--until I cam across Farles Lake. Farles was a lot like Hopkins, only a little dustier and--to me--not as nice.

Alone, I would hike and search for firewood. I'd write in my journal and think and listen to the wind in the trees. Tend my fire. Walk in circles. Not say a word for the whole day or even more. Fight the ticks and flies and other bugs. Look for wildlife. Roam the woods and my mind. I'd stay up late, get up early.

I did meet some other people.

I wasn't totally alone, as there were always other semi-primative campers or even hikers who came through the woods, or locals just wandering around the area for a short visit.

I met a guy who said he was hiking the Florida Trail. He'd hiked the Appalachian Trail and was camping out in the woods for free. I saw him a few times and offered him some bananas, apples, a half jug of water. Maybe I've written about him before, but I half envied him, living day-to-day with only the concerns of the most basics of life: food, shelter, the trail and weather. But, really, what did I know of his situation.

I met a couple from Canada who were the campground hosts. Met a family down from Maryland--though the guy was Dutch or something--who had a hound dog with them, the dog getting loose and lost and howling in the woods most of the night. I had people walk right into my campsite--a drunk man and his girlfriend who kept going on about the Rainbow Gathering and hippies and such. A guy who sat at my table and discussed car parts and what they cost. Stuff like that.

I was there--the last time I was there--just before a big cold front came down. It was hot when I went to bed and the next morning it was clear, crispy-cold, wind blowing and getting colder. Nice. But a freeze coming . . . I struck camp and drove to the coast and stayed at the Whale Watch Motel in Flaglar.

My tent was leaky and one trip I got no sleep. Well, I slept some. The first night it rained and my tent leaked enough that I went to my car to try and sleep and got very little. The next night I stayed up and drank too much whiskey. Finally I fell asleep in my tent. I slept so deep that I dreamt/thought I was back in my bedroom in Fort Lauderdale and when I woke suddenly in the middle of the night--in my tent, in total blackness, drunk and dead-tired--I had no idea where I was or why and it scared the crap out of me. It took minutes for me to place myself and piece together what I was doing and where and why and it was disturbing enough to me that I could not get back to sleep. I think that was at Farles . . . Ah. But overall, Hopkins Prairie was good to me. Ocala National Forest was good.

And then I went no more. The forest was far enough away--north of Orlando--that making the trip was bothersome if I had no excuse. So, I quit going.

And, really, I haven't been camping since.

I need to go.

Best Friends

I've always had friends. Sometimes too many, sometimes not enough. Best friends are creatures of another stripe, I think. These are the people you confide in and who confess to you, the one's who share their lives but also are con-conspirators in the mundane-profound-absurd game of life.

I suppose because I moved around so much as a kid that I make friends easily and also have little trouble finding good, often best, friends. However, I do not have a best friends or even good friends from childhood and my best friends have shifted over the years, even in periods of adulthood. My oldest friends date back to high school, middle school, but of those I'm not really in touch with any of them (except perhaps one) other than through once a decade phone calls or sightings or casual social media sites.

So, I will indulge myself here in going through the years (and places) and try to recall who my best friends were. certainly not all my friends, but who stands out in memory.

Sioux Falls: There was Myron, who lived down the street in our Hilltop neighborhood. But about the only thing I can recall of him was that we fought a lot. There were the Bosslers, but I can't really single one of them out as a best friend. When we moved to the second house, I don't recall any specific friends. This was when I was 1 to 5 years old. I guess my brothers and sister were maybe my best friends.

Vancouver: Jeff was my first best friend, when I started first grade. But by the second year there in Washington, Joey Hanes became my best pal. He lived down the street. He was originally from Albuquerque. It was at Joey's place that I had my first sleepover and we both were in love with the same girl in second grade: Kathy McKay. Joey and I were close friends and I even wrote to him for a while after we moved to Tennessee when I was 10 or 11.

Jonesborough: We rented a house almost outside of town for about a year before moving to Johnson City (where we also lived just outside of town). In Jonesborough--which was small and country and quite the culture shock for me and about everyone else in the family--I had a few friends. There was one kid who lived down the road (and it was a road we lived on, not a street) but I can't even recall his name anymore. He was a little mischievous. I made friends with Rocky, who lived a few houses down. Rocky had a younger brother named Stoney (I kid you not). Rocky was, essentially, a nerd who got picked on in school (he would actually brush his teeth after lunch in the boys room) and I stood up for him a few times and we became friends, in some ways, by default. I guess he was my best pal for that brief time until we moved to Johnson City and I went to Cherokee Elementary--a county school.

Johnson City: I had a number of good friends. In the neighborhood, which was only a smattering of houses outside of the town set among woods and pastures and tobacco fields, I knew Kurt and hung out with Kent. Kent and I were close but I think he was one year ahead of me in school and did not go to Cherokee and we eventually became less close. No, I'd have to say Curt Wadawick was my best friend in Johnson City. We went to school together. He was an odd guy in many ways--again, nerdy, in today's parlance--and I'd go to his house for sleepovers now and then or to just hang out. he used to bring whole green peppers for lunch at school and eat them raw with salt. His family made big piles of scrambled eggs for breakfast and ate the eggs with grape jelly on top. He had a creek running in front of his house that we dammed up with rocks. We played a lot of Stratego. I believe our friendship waned or ended when I started 7th grade in the city at East High. I was only in that school for about three or four months, where I had a friend named Dana. But, we moved again, this time to Iowa--Des Moines (though we bought a house in the suburb of Urbandale).

Urbandale: In Iowa my first best friend was Bob, who lived on the same block as I did on 65th Street. He was a close friend until about the last year of high school when we had a bit of a falling out. I lost touch with him but we are now nominal Facebook friends now. My other best friend, who I met in high school not junior high, was Kevin. he was in the class just above my own but we became very close pals. I've lost touch with him, though I did talk to him on the phone maybe five to ten years ago. He lives in Kansas now. I had lost of there friends, good solid close friends, in Des Moines/Urbandale. Friends from school, from work, other places. There was Larry--who is the one friend I still see now and then, who I text or call when I'm back in Des Moines, though I haven't seen him in about two years now. There was Bill and Jim and Randy and Dave. There was Craig and Jim and another Jim and Mark. Keith and Scott. And many many others . . . Good friends all, though my senior year I pretty much dropped off the map with my school chums and though I saw and hung out with most of them in the years after school, when I was essentially living in Iowa City, I've lost touch with most of them in the long years since.

Iowa City: My closest friends all went to Iowa State, in Ames. I don't know why. Their loss. I took a year off before entering college and went to Iowa, in Iowa City (hooray for me). In Iowa City I knew a couple of guys (Keith, Scott) from Urbandale but I made a whole new set of friends. And of that group I'd easily say Matt, Brock and Mike were my best friends. Oh, like most college people, I had a ton of close pals and relationships, some fleeting, some longer, but those three were my core . . . You may have noticed that I've mentioned no female friends. I had a few girls, women as friends but not best friends, but in college I had more female friendships for sure (and I'm not talking about romantic relationships). But Matt and Brock I lived with most often and we went to Alaska and back together in 1983. we stayed good friends, living together post-college in Florida and Seattle. Though even them I lost touch with for the most part. Mike I went to Los Angeles with and we stayed friends but also lost touch and I've only recently seen him again--in Chicago--within the last year.

Santa Fe: Joel was my best friend. I stayed with him. But I had a set of friends outside of his circle, guys mainly who worked at The Forge at the Inn of The Governors downtown. John, Alex, Haley (female!), Vince. Good guys I felt very comfortable with and spent a lot of time with.

Los Angeles: Mike, from Iowa City, was my best friend. But there was Bob and Brenda, Jeff Wages and others.

Grayton Beach: In the Florida panhandle Matt was there and then Brock came up from Key West. But I made very close friends and then best friends with Tommy and Doug. I lived off and on there for about four years. (I also lived off and on in Iowa City and Des Moines in these years.) So later there was Brad as best friend, then later still Mike and Jimmy.

Seattle: Matt and Brock.

New York: Jimmy

Champaign: In Illinois, I lived with the woman who would become and still is my wife. She is my best friend, was my best friend. But I worked concrete construction and Kurt Strube was my best friend. There were other pals: Doug, Mike, Margaret--Brock came to Champaign. We lived in Champaign then went to Montana and then came back to Champaign. But that pretty well sums up the people in town. I was still close to Matt and Brock and Mike (from L.A.) all the while and would see them now and then.

Missoula: Oh, a number of people from our years in Montana. John, Bruce, Corey, Jeff (?) (man, I can't think of his name and he was one of my closest friends from the U of Montana even though we had a falling out down the line and I haven't heard from him in decades). And there was Bill Brown. Bill Brown ended up being one of my closest friends--he was a good ten years older than me--for all these years until his death in Jacksonville, FL two and a half years ago. John was a close friend. I and friends from work as well as classes and other spots in town.

Ft. Lauderdale: Well. I had a wife and two kids and we lived in Fort Lauderdale for not quite twenty years. Many many friends, close friends, too many to name. Best friends? Bill, Billy, another Bill, Mike, Silvio. Francis. Francis,actually, I met in Mexico and he's from Montreal. I met him right after becoming friends with Bill Brown, in Montana, in early 1990. We've been friends since with Francis coming to visit and stay with my family in Champaign and Ft. Lauderdale and us going to see him a couple of times. Bill Brown moved to Florida and I'd see him every now and then--more so the last years before his death--anyway, this brings us to today.

Today: These days my beast friends are Mike (from Miami, Gulfport, New Orleans), Bill (from Hollywood, FL) and Francis (Montreal). None of them live where I live now. Bill Brown is also one of my best friends (Jacksonville), but he is gone. I'm still in touch and trying to get back in closer touch with a few of my old best friends, but the main core is now Francis Charest in Quebec, Mike Plummer in New Orleans, Bill Murphy in Hollywood, and I should say Billy Theil, my neighbor from across the street on SW 18 St. in Ft. Lauderdale.

That's it.

Fishing With Jim: Des Moines 1977

I met Jim while working at Yonkers while I was still in High School. he was a few years older, from Chicago and a student at Drake University in Des Moines. he seemed much older to me and Jim, more or less, became a mentor of sorts for my entry into the wider world.

he was a funny guy, somewhat well-read and interested in reading and writing, in Hemingway in particular. It was because of him I began to read beyond my usual eclectic Sci-Fi/Adventure material. We remained friends for some years--after high school but not much after I went to the University of Iowa, even though he married and settled in Des Moines. I don't know exactly how I lost touch with him, but he was a fun guy, wise in some ways.

Anyway, what I'm thinking of was a time we went fishing on a cold morning.

By then I had just graduated from High School with no real plans to attend college. I had run off to Florida for a bit, was working different jobs until he got me a job at the UPS warehouse there in Des Moines. I worked nights--maybe 4 to 1am or so 5 to 2am or some such--unloading trucks and sending packages on their way. I'm thinking he worked nights as well. So, he asked if I wanted to go fishing the next morning (or, that morning) when the sun came up and I said yes.

I had never gotten out much beyond my high school friends. I was not and am not a fisherman. Sure, I fished some as a kid. Bob Mauk and I used to walk down to Beaver Creek in Urbandale and fish and goof around in the woods that were there. But Jim came and got me and he had fishing gear and a cooler of beer and we drove out to Big Creek, a reservoir north of the city.

It was early in the day. It was early in the Spring. It was cold. It was just him and me and we baited hooks and stood around on the shore, casting into the murky Iowa waters and getting nothing. He had beer.

I was not used to the idea of drinking in the morning. This was new to me. I did not yet associate fishing--or really about any activity, be it softball or sports-watching or St. Patrick's Day or any Name-Your-Holiday Day--with drinking. I was nineteen. Yes, I drank beer occasionally, drank harder stuff now and then, got drunk now and then, but not during the day and not while fishing and not even every weekend.

What i recall is how odd it was to me. How cold the cold beer was in my hand. It was actually a pretty miserable day and I don't think Jim was any more a fisherman than I was. Yet, it was kind of fun. I'm not sure why he hung out with me. I guess he saw himself as a bit of a mentor, or maybe felt a little sorry for me (as I was a rather foolish guy most of the time) or maybe Jim was just bored. Anyway, he liked to talk and tell me things and I liked to listen. It was good.

That's it. I went fishing with Jim on a cold morning, holding cold cans of cheap beer, catching no fish at Big Creek. Nothing more. Nothing less. We did not get drunk and get into trouble or do anything funny, bad, unforgettable.

But I have not forgotten and I wonder where Jim is now and what he's doing.

Earliest Times: Sioux Falls 1957

I'm trying to recall the earliest things I can recall . . .

I'm talking about the year of my birth. But I was born late in the year, so I'm probably trying to remember things from--at best--1958, though more likely '59, '60, '61. Who knows. I don't.

But I do remember a little bit as a baby--hints and dreamy images and intuitive feelings formed into images. I think. I mean, I do. I do recall being in a high chair at the table being fed my formula. I ate a meat formula because I was allergic--as a baby--to milk, to Mothers Milk, I guess as well as regular milk. (Again, I guess. And who would I ask to find out for sure? There's no one left to ask--my mother would be the only one who could tell me and she's been gone for over two years now. My oldest brother would have no idea what I was talking about and I don't know if he'd even want the job passed on to him as the keeping of our anemic family lore . . .) But, yes, I can recall being in a high chair and a little bit about the kitchen.

I also can remember not being able to reach the kitchen sink. I had to ask for a cup of water. I had to get a little step stool to reach the sink. I don't know what age I was but obviously at least two or three or four.

This was--these tiny unskilled memories--all in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I was born; where all my brothers and lone sister were born. Sioux Falls where I grew up until the age of five and then the whole lot of us--a family of seven--moved out west to Vancouver, Washington. My mother was a native of South Dakota--from Arlington, north a ways of Sioux Falls. My father was born in eastern Nebraska but moved right away to Red Oak, Iowa, which he considered his home town. In Sioux Falls I started kindergarten but did not finish because we moved. I hated kindergarten, hated my teacher, hated cutting strips of paper and pasting them together to make little pointless lanterns . . . I did love the elephant puzzle, though. Anyway, I hated it and moved away and then jumped right into first grade and have always disliked school, except college.

I can remember my mother rocking me at night in the rocking chair. I wonder if this memory, this intuitive feeling, ever leaves anyone who has been rocked by their mother in a rocking chair. I do feel as I age, as I grow ever distant from these opening moments of consciousness, of understanding the world, I wonder if I lose them. It seems I used to be able to recall more specifics from these otherwise blank years, that I still possessed direct access to, not just the actual memory, but the rather profound feeling that went with them . . . But, it seems, I don't have that any more.

I remember how, late at night and I could not sleep, or if I was sick, and my mother would put me out on the couch in the living room (we always called couches davenports--I don't think I know anyone who calls a couch a davenport anymore) with a blanket, I remember I had to keep the blanket all the way up to my neck. I had this idea that there was some skeleton creature that roamed at night and would--I don't know, kill you or some such--unless you kept the blanket all the way up to your neck and over your toes. This is an interesting imaginative fear put into mythical figure by a child and I don't want to even think about it any further than I just have . . .

Oh, there are plenty of memories from Sioux Falls, from the Hilltop neighborhood where we first lived. memories of people--the Bosslers, my friend Myron, Mrs. Cooney, others--memories of places like the big field of dandelions and all the bees among those dandelions, snow forts and the weeping willow tree and, of course, hated kindergarten . . . But those I don't consider the earliest memories, the ones I'm trying to touch upon. Oh, maybe they are, but that's not what I'm after here, today, now.

Jack Kerouac said he could remember being born. No, I don't believe that, but it seems like I used to have a good idea of very early memories, from when I was a baby, before I could walk. Not complete memories or ultra specific time and place recollections, but definite remembrances and direct sensations/inner feelings associated with those remembrances. Now? I don't know. I'm not even sure why I bother to try and know. In the long run--what's the point?

What good does it do?

Moving Out: Fort Lauderdale 2012

Really, I'm not ready to write about selling the house, packing up, saying goodbye and leaving Fort Lauderdale. Not ready yet to try and put the emotion--or revisit those emotions--into words. Yet, that's what I'm thinking of this morning.

We--my wife, my two daughters and I, our cats, our dog--lived in that house for over (what?) fourteen, fifteen years. Which, I believe, is the longest I've lived in one continuous spot for my whole life. I knew a lot of people in South Florida, in Fort Lauderdale, in my neighborhood, on my street. I had great and comfortable friends. I knew the plants, the seasons (yes, there are seasons in South Florida), the insects, the birds and reptiles and some fish. I knew my palms and oaks and flowering plants, my weeds and vines, my waterways and streets and communities from Key West to, basically, Neptune Beach in Jacksonville. I knew a lot of Florida--the Keys to Pensacola--with only the Tampa Bay/St. Pete area as an exclusion. Sure, it had gotten a little stale now and then, but like I said, I was comfortable.

And then we left.

I was the last one out--me and my dog and the two older cats. (My wife's cat--my cat, too--from when I first met her, M.R., she lived with us until about 2000 before she dies at the age of 20 or 21; I buried her beneath the Royal Palm in the back yard.) Our youngest daughter was in her first year at FSU and our older daughter was with my wife up north, staying in an apartment while looking for a house.

So, all our stuff was gone with the movers and put into storage. I had the Volvo and a number of boxes of personal things plus my clothes and computer plus things necessary for the dog and the two older cats.

I had made last minute plans to go to Neptune Beach and stay with Bill, but that was only temporary. had made more concrete plans to rent the condo on Camp Street in New Orleans (where my wife had sent a year; where I had spent months on the last year) . . .

Anyway, as I noted, I'm not really ready to write about it. Though, I will say, the very day I left Fort Lauderdale--January 12th, 2012, I'm pretty sure--in a full car with three animals, by the time I was up to Daytona, my brother called and told me our mother was in the hospital (she never did go back home and died by August). And that's how the year went. By the time I hit Tallahassee to see my daughter, all the animals had fleas. I had to go to a vet there to get flea-killing pills.

But two things I remember that I will write about briefly here:

One: I stayed across the street at Billy's house after I moved out. For three days, I think. And my dog could not figure out why we slept there. She knew Billy and his house quite well, but one of the saddest things was when she crossed the street and went to the front door of our house that was no longer ours and scratched the door and looked at me as I stood watching her from across the street, and could not understand why she could not go home, why I could not open the door . . . That still bothers me and it was why I could not stay at Billy's longer than three or four days even though he wanted us to be there for as long as we cared to.

Two: Was the first night at Billy's, in his spare bedroom with a single bed, that night when it was time to sleep, the freaked-out cats, my freaked-out dog and my freaked-out self, all climbed into the bed and huddled together. There was little space but we didn't care, we welcomed the intimacy I guess; cats, dog, human. It was all we had--ourselves in that bed in that room and the bed and the room did not belong to us. So, indeed: all we had was ourselves.

Okay. I guess I ended up writing about the move to some degree. There's more. There's always more. It was not a crisis. It was not the death of my mother--which is also not a crisis, though it's more important, a deeper experience and also a certain sorrow certainly from my mother's perspective and not just my own.

My family moved out. I lost my house, my friends and neighbors, the climate and landscapes, the plants, I knew well. My kids lost their childhood home and childhood friends. I'm uncertain as to what my wife lost (though she almost lost me). I had moved around quite a bit as a kid, a lot as a young adult. I was happy having a home.

Fort Lauderdale was very much home.

Parasols: New Orleans 2012

I was living alone at the condo on Camp Street. Well, I had two cats and the dog and was in New Orleans for a month while waiting to move north. My wife had lived at the condo for about a year--working--and we, as a family, had plans to move to the city but that all fell through and, well, I ended up back in New Orleans for one final fling before we settled once again.

Anyway. I was there with said cats and dog and my good friend Francis came down from Montreal to visit (and to help with the drive north).

One thing Francis and I did was we went to Parasols, in the Irish Channel.

I'd been wanting to go there for lunch so we walked over to the streetcar stop on St, Charles and Julia, took that anachronistic transport down to Washington--the Garden District--walked to Magazine and then further till we hit the place.

Parasols has a lunch area but we went straight into the bar. Ordered up beers and some po'boys.

And more beers.

There weren't too many people there: us at the bar, maybe one or two at a table, two girls also at the bar and the bartender who was named Mike.

Mike was a youngish, redheaded, freckled fellow.

Mike was drunk as hell.

Plastered.

He was entertaining the two youngish women seated at the bar but had no problem getting us our beers and taking our order, no problem serving us our order. But he was full on drunk. He kept bringing out strange liquors for the girls to try and for him to try himself--along with shots of more established liquor. And beer. He put on a disheveled straw hat--sombrero-ish--and some old mardi gras beads and he was just staggering behind the bar, yet still operating it, taking money, making change, pouring drinks. This was all before noon, you understand.

Not that it was so unusual--especially in New Orleans--to find someone drunk before noon. I guess it was a little odd and humorous to Francis and I because we were sober and were at Parasols and because Mike was the bartender, not the drunk who the bartender serves. Anyway, there was an air of anything-goes and conviviality with just the few of we customers and Mike there and I could see how the day would play out if we stayed . . .

(A side note: When I went to use the Mens Room, that's when I realized there was a whole other part of Parasols, a lunchroom with tables and waitress and the kitchen. And in the Mens Room there was graffiti, one of which was scrawled Mike fucks chickens, or some such. And I knew who Mike was!)

By now Mike and the two women were pulling us into their orbit. Music was playing, drinks were going round, the sun shown outside, doors and windows open to the humid daylight . . . I knew if Francis and I had one more drink, we'd be sucked in to an early drunk and get nowhere else except back to the condo by three or four or five and a hangover by dinner. We had plans to walk Magazine and he wanted to look for some stuff to buy because Francis is always looking for gifts (well, not always).

It would have been so easy to stay.

It would have been easy to be like Mike.

In many ways, I wanted to see what happened, as the drinks Mike continued to pour down his gullet hadn't really hit him yet. But . . . we had to get out of there.

And so we did. Had a nice buzz for the next hour or so. Took the streetcar back (or maybe the bus, from Napoleon and Magazine). No doubt we went out that night--went into the Quarter, to the Chart Room and Harry's Corner, Lafitte's Blacksmith--my, our, usual places--no doubt with my other good friend (named Mike) who lived and still lives in New Orleans. No doubt we--that night--were like Mike.

But I don't remember that night, not as clearly as I can recall Parasols, the first and only time I've been there.

Gary, Yonkers, Des Moines

I've known a number of Garys, knew two Garys when I worked at Yonkers.

I worked at Yonkers--a department store based out of Des Moines, Iowa--off and on for a number of years when I was in my teens and twenties. I started there in the fall of 1975, I think, working for either a $1.70 an hour (or perhaps it was $2.70--no, $1.70) in the stockroom. I worked after school and on weekends and when I graduated from high school (Urbandale High, Urbandale being a suburb on the north side of Des Moines) and had no idea what I wanted to do, I eventually became a full timer at Yonkers at the Merle Hay Mall. Then I worked there now and then over the next few years--summer while I was in the first couple years of college, then briefly right after college, then maybe once or twice when I came back to Des moines because I was, essentially, broke.

Anyway, Gary.

This Gary I knew briefly. He came to work in the stockroom at Merle Hay and didn't last all that long. He was a nice guy. He was African American, heavy-set with a generally sweet personality. He sang at his church and I was told had a wonderful voice--enough so that he had made recordings. I got along with him and eventually met some of his friends and we hung out together a bit. I brought him over to my house (I was in my teens and lived with my parents on 65th Street, not far from the mall). I introduced him, casually, to my parents.

It was after the visit to my house that I was surprised. My surprise was my father's reaction. he did not like Gary. "What?" "You should keep to your own kind," my father actually said.

What? I had been brought up not to consider race, to be honest and just and fair in relations with all people. I found his objection to be hypocritical and strange but didn't make an issue of it.

I have always had a solid group of friends and then other sets of friends and then friends who were on the edge of being true friends (and then of course acquaintances and such). This Gary was not a close friend but he was a nice guy.

Eventually Gary no longer came to work. I found out he had been fired for stealing a coat. Now, we all worked in the stockroom where all the deliveries came, where we unloaded trucks and took merchandise to the different departments and all that. We had access to the big back doors at the loading dock (now I'm thinking of all the drivers and fellow workers and things that happened, like the driver going through a divorce who purposefully stepped on a cooked roast meant for the Meadowlark Restaurant and when asked about the incident I said I knew nothing . . .) and the thing about those doors is that there was no security. People could steal stuff all the time. In fact, not long after I first started there, most of the crew ahead of me were fired because they were stealing merchandise like crazy. I knew nothing about it.

Okay. So Gary took a coat, an expensive one (big mistake) that was actually pretty ugly. I was and am not motivated much by material things, so it never occurred to me to steal something like that. (And that's not to say I didn't take a thing or two over my years there, but they were small idiosyncratic thefts.) But, Gary was gone and we never became good friends. I never heard from him again.

But now, when I think back, I don't think my father's objection to Gary was due to the color of his skin. No, what I see now was that Gary was pretty obviously Gay. This was in the late Seventies, before the gay/lesbian movement and understanding of that had made headway in most of society. So, I can see now that that was what my father was concerned about though he didn't articulate it as such. Now, my father was not against gay people either (one of my brothers is gay and my father knew that, even back then), no I think he was worried that because I had befriended, or had been befriended by, Gary that I too might be gay. And maybe because of my brother, it made his objection even stronger. (I really had no idea or at least only a slight idea about Gary, but my father needn't have worried.) I think if I'd known Gary, say, ten years later it may have been a different reaction from my father.

There are so many small incidents and people and places. Pointless in the long run--but maybe not. What you thought was one thing turns out to be another and the reasoning of it all turns out to be something else . . . Just thinking of my time spent working at a mundane place like Yonkers in a mundane place like the Merle Hay Mall actually leads me to many interesting characters and small events that revealed small yet important things to me . . . and I suppose that it continues to this day. Things are being revealed in all their seemingly triviality and I'm still not smart enough to really see them for what they are.