Senior Year: Urbandale 1976

I disliked high school. Disliked it very much. The thing is, I had friends--good ones, close ones. I played football. I had fun times. I had good teachers and even enjoyed learning (despite myself)--was even, somewhat, close to a handful of teachers (Mrs. Lien for sure, Mr. York, Mr. Cedarquist, others). I also skipped a lot of days all through high school. I also hated it at times. I never quite felt that I belonged. certainly I was not among any particular group or clique--not a jock or a smacker or a nerd or, I don't know, not even an outcast--just one of the nameless numbers of people who filled up the roster of Urbandale High in the 1970s. It really wasn't that bad. Maybe I just hated myself, really, more than I hated high school. maybe not.

All I know was that by my senior year, I was ready for a change.

I quit football that year. Instead I went to work after school--Yonkers department store at the Merle Hay Mall, the stockroom. I quit my friends for the most part as well. Oh, I still saw them around, my regular group of pals, but I did less and less with them and shut myself off as time went on. I'm not sure they really noticed--they had their own lives and senior years to contend with after all . . . I was on the outs with Bob Mauk, who lived a few houses down from me and had been my first friend when we moved into the house on 65th Street (moving up from Tennessee). My best friend at the time was Kevin O'Malia, but he was in the class above ours and had graduated. I think I still hung out with him at times. I made new friends at work (Jim, Cisco, Mark, Lobsinger and more) and started to hang around with them a bit and also hung out with some new people from school--Dennis, Stokes, others--but only rather half heartedly.

A lot of the time I just hung out with myself.

I sold off my little TV that I'd had in my room. I began reading more--novels, politics. I began to take my writing more seriously and worked on it, refined it, explored it. I was sad a lot. depressed. Self-pitying, no doubt. I just wanted to get away from Iowa, from Urbandale in particular. I yearned for something more, for somewhere exotic or visually intoxicating: tropical islands, Greece, Africa, the mountain states of the West. I was frustrated. Ironically, I was doing much better at school--my grades vastly improved junior and senior years--mainly just because I found that I liked to learn.

So, senior year was one of change, of self-assesment, of desire for more. And I tried to bring that change about, even if I didn't quite know how. I was lonely yet relished that solitude. Felt sorry for myself, yet was also determined not to be like my fellow Urbandalites. Urbandalians? Urbandaleese? And really, I forged a life outside of and separate from high school my senior year. Tried new things. Came to understand myself better and, really, found a pathway that allowed me to continue, to find some value in myself.

But, eventually, before graduation, I came back to my main set of friends. I'd known them for most of my years in school. They were good guys (and they were guys all--their were few girls involved in my school days (and no doubt that had something to do with my misery)). But I reconnected with my group of friends--Larry, Dave, Bill, Randy, Jim, Bob and some others who came and went within that core circle. And later--in the years to come--I achieved some of my desires. Found, to a certain degree, what I was looking for.

But by the spring of 1976, I was back in the fold. I was with my pals . . . Like I said, I don't think they even knew I was gone.

Lonely Day: Seagrove Beach 1987

This was when I returned to the Florida panhandle for the last time. I had been back and forth to that place--South Walton County, Grayton Beach, Seagrove, Seaside, Gulf Trace, you name it--since the late summer of 1985. In that short span, I'd come to Grayton from Los Angeles, then left when things closed up for the winter, then returned in the spring instead of going to Oregon like I'd planned, then left in the fall to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop, then came back after quitting the Iowa Writers Workshop to live with teresa on the beach, then left for Seattle after quitting Teresa on the beach, then returned late summer because I could think of no where else to go.

When I came back that last time, I lived with Brad for a while. He had a place on 30-A, east of Seagrove Beach with an extra bedroom and I slept there while I looked for work. Brad, whom I had met through the job at the Paradise Cafe, was a nice guy. Funny, smiling, good-hearted and generous (yes, sometimes to a fault). I always got the sense that, inside himself, there was something to be wary about--a mean streak or simmering violence--but I had no evidence of it and, compared to anyone else in my circle (including myself) he was as nice as they come. Anyway, Brad put me up until I found work and then I moved in with Dave--whom I did not know very well--in Seagrove and then I found new work as a painter in Seaside.

Though I lived with dave, he was rarely there and he lived upstairs while I occupied the downstairs and so I essentially lived alone. Most of my friends from a year or two ago had moved on--went back to Pensacola or lived in other areas of the county or coast and had other jobs in their lives. I had yet to meet Mike and Jimmy (who would become my friends for that time period) and sometimes the lonliness would get to me.

I had my car--the much maligned powder blue Maverick--and so I could get around when I wanted to. But my problem was, I had really nowhere especially to go.

Okay--cut to the chase:

So, I was out one day, being sad and lonely, and I decided to see who was around. Now, Brad was still around and Brad's love-in-his-life was Mary. I knew Mary, but had never known her all that well. But, I did know where she lived, which was in a trailer off one of the many red dirt roads between 30-A and the bay (Choctawhatchee Bay). My understanding was that Brad and Mary had a sometimes volatile relationship (which must be where I got the sense that Brad could have something explosive within him--despite the lack of any empirical evidence; that and also the fact that his father was in prison). Anyway, I'm getting off track. Brad and Mary were sweet lovers.

So, I pulled my ugly car up into the grass at Mary's trailer, saw that her car was there. Brad's car was there. In those days, not all that many people lived in South Walton County. (Nowadays it's packed with humanoids.) You knew people by their vehicles. So, I knew they were there.

Now, I don't recall if I got out and knocked on the door, or if I just honked my horn. I do remember that I sat there in my car after trying to get them to come out. I don't know. I was bored. Lonely. I need to talk to someone, I guess. But I just sat there after a number of tries to see them. Either they weren't home or--more likely, more obviously--they wanted to be alone.

So, I continued to sit there in my car, looking out the windshield at the trailer. Waiting for what? I'm not sure, really. I mean, by now it was obvious even to me that they didn't want to come out. That they hoped I'd just leave. I knew this. Yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to put it in reverse and drive off. Again, I was lonely. So, there I sat. Doing nada. Looking. And that's when I saw the back curtain move.

Oh, it's pretty terrible--on a very small scale--but i was glad to see that curtain move.

I knew I was intruding. But I saw the curtain and then I saw Brad's face, Mary's eyes. They were checking to see if I had gone. But, like a troll, I was still there. And they knew that I had seen them.

So what could they do? They were nice people. Polite Southerners. So, they came out the door and invited me to talk to them. Or, maybe I waved to them and got out of my car. Either way, I got out and we chatted. I don't know if they invited me inside or what--can't recall. But we had a nice chat as people down there were wont to do. And then I left.

And that was it. I felt kind of badly--interrupting them, catching them hiding from me, or forcing them to acknowledge me. I was self-aware of what i was doing as I sat in my car, aware of what i had done, yet I couldn't bring myself to extricate myself from it. I was bad. Though it was a small thing. But in knowing this small thing, it let me know how pitiful I was becoming. I was the unwanted pest, it said. Pariah. Though, really, I don't think I was a pest. I doubt Brad and Mary saw me that way--they just wanted to be alone. Still, it was my self-knowledge while I sat there that gets to me--just a little bit. I laugh at it, too. No, not a pariah. Maybe not even a pest. Except maybe a little bit on that lonely day.

Marlins-Padres: Fort Lauderdale 2002

Okay, I don't know if it was really the year 2002, but it was around there. This was a baseball game. MLB. In Miami Gardens at what was once called Joe Robbie Stadium. It was the Florida Marlins--now the Miami Marlins--against the San Diego Padres.

We--my family--used to attend a few Marlins games each year. Tickets--in general--were plentiful, inexpensive and baseball was a relaxing sport to attend. We saw one Dolphins football game (I prefer football to baseball), one Miami Heat game (before Lebron James came to play for four years) and a few Florida Panthers hockey games. But we saw maybe a dozen Marlins games.

So we were there--my wife, my two daughters and I--sitting in good seats almost above the home team  dugout. Clear view. Close to the action. A sunny day. Marlins winning. My wife and older daughter were in the seats closer to the aisle, I sat next, and my youngest daughter, maybe ten or eleven, sat in the last seat. The seats beyond us in the row were empty. It was a big stadium for baseball (the Marlins now have their own place, in Miami) and you usually were not crowded . . . So, a Padre was up to bat and we were watching but also just being lackadaisical, talking, eating popcorn, drinking sodas, beer for me, not paying real close attention. And this is why I recall this game:

The Padre batter took a swing. He lost his handle on the bat. The bat comes flying. It goes over the heads of the front row fans. I'm watching this. Not quite slo-mo, but not exactly in an instant. The bat is coming towards us. Us. Towards me--no, not me, towards my younger daughter. And I'm watching. Yes, the bat is definitely coming right at my daughter. By the time I filly start to reach over, the bat has landed in the two seats right next to her--she's flinching, I'm reaching, the bat is bobbling, bumping, roiling around in those empty seats. Then I have my hand on it, grab it--the bat--stop it right there . . . I ask my daughter if she is okay and she is. I hand her the bat. The crowd in the stadium is seeing all of this. I tell her, "Stand up."

So, she stands up, holds the bat aloft in both hands, the stadium crowd roars and claps.

Yay!


I've always wondered if they showed that on TV. But it was a moment for her--for us--to have a sports crowd cheer. We got to keep the bat. Still have it. And it reminds me of that game, of that time, of South Florida.

South Dakota: 1957

I was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in late September. I arrived at Mercy Hospital, somewhere in that city. I was the third child--the third son--of a family who ended with the fifth child. A middle child in the end. All my brothers and one sister were born in Sioux Falls, and I imagine at Mercy Hospital.

I don't know what day or at what time I was born. I suppose there is some record of it somewhere. There is no longer anyone I can ask who would know such trivial facts and I am not from the type of family who is concerned with such information.

I moved away--with my family--from South Dakota after I had turned five years old. Do I have memories of the place? Yes. Some vivid, some murky, some ingrown I suppose . . . Our first house, our second house, some people, places, events. You'd be surprised what you can remember from early childhood. I can't say how being from, and living the first five years of my life in, South Dakota has shaped me.

It's a strange state, in many ways.

I can say that I have dreamt of it.

My mother was from Arlington, South Dakota. My father from Red Oak, Iowa--though he was really born in eastern Nebraska.

When I have dreamt of South Dakota, in my dream I have always known that it was South Dakota. That was explicit. In my dreams I am always not in a town but out in the countryside. My Aunt Nancy--my mother's only sibling--lived in Arlington. Actually, she lived on a farm just outside of Arlington. She and her husband--Lawrence--had five children of their own. We visited them quite a few times when I was young. Maybe that's why my dreams are outdoor dreams. My grandmother lived in a small house in Arlington, though it was very much a country house.

One dream I had was of swimming in a river under a bridge in the open spaces of South Dakota. It was summer. Warm. Golden and dry. The river was shallow and weak of current. It was a pleasant dream. It was of a sparse landscape with a scattering of trees and open yellow fields and a gravel-bottemed clear clean-water river. A pleasant and happy swim with a friend.

Another dream also had the same landscape--more plains or western than midwestern. There were the trees and golden land and distant distance. But in this dream I was visiting my mother and my mother was rejecting me. I can't recall the specifics--it was a dream--but it was not nice. It was disturbing. Yet, the landscape was of the same subtle beauty. Inviting, if potentially harsh in the long run.

Well. 1957. That's a long time ago by now, to most if not all. I should go back to South Dakota. Return. I have been back, that is, been through, but not in many years. Decades, really. If nothing else, I should try to dream of it.

Sour Cream and Onion Burger: Iowa City 1982

After a night in the bars we'd sometimes hop in Matt's car and drive to Coralville where the all night diners were.

My favorite was the Perkins.

Perkins had decent late-drunk-night service and a menu with all these different burgers on it. Burgers that were--for that time--somewhat eccentric. I always ordered the Sour Cream and Onion Burger with fries and I would dump ketchup all over it and alongside it and around it and probably some mustard too. I'd drink coffee even though I wasn't having eggs.

Those late-drunk-night diners could get rather freewheeling. I remember the table next to us one time getting in a syrup fight. Yes, syrup. I feel sorry for the waitress, manager and clean-up person even to this day.

Anyway, I'd eat my burger and my fries in a rather fast and mechanical way. I recall one of my friends--Jeff Wheeler? I don't remember his name exactly as he was not one of my close friends and he was from Osage, Iowa and I'd ask him about that small town and it was kind of a running joke between us (why do I think everyone's name was Jeff? I bet his name wasn't Jeff, but it was, I'm pretty certain, Wheeler and he was, definitely, from Osage)--he was watching me and said something like: "That guy knows what he's doing" as I went through my meal with a rhythmic chop and chomp.

But now that I think of it, we rarely if ever tipped the waitresses. We were no doubt loud and obnoxious--not as bad as the syrup fighters, but still . . . And eventually Matt got into the unfortunate habit of doing some dine and dashes--not paying for his meal. That never happened when I was with him but he'd told me about it and eventually he'd dined-and-dashed once too often and the waitress recognized him and they held him.

I was there that time and they basically held the whole table there and made sure we all paid. I felt insulted. It never occurred to me to not pay. But, later, I understood. Guilt by association. I think Matt had to pay for back meals.

Still, I never tipped. I'm not sure why. Stinginess, yes, but also I plead ignorance. Lack of experience. Not understanding how the system actually worked. I don't think I got it until I went to Santa Fe and worked as a waiter. Now I almost always over-tip.

My neo-compensation for those Sour Cream and Onion Burgers will never reach the ones who deserve it.

The Muskie Motel in Muscatine: 2012

I did not stay at the Muskie Motel in Muscatine, Iowa. I stayed at the Super 8. It wasn't until the next morning, when I got up and drove into town, ready to cross the bridge over the Mississippi into Illinois, that I saw the Muskie Motel and had my regrets.

I'd been out to see my mother in Des Moines, once again. It was spring, I think, and one of the early warm days that let you know that summer really, actually, truthfully, was going to arrive. Of course, my mother was in the nursing home and I was driving back by myself.

For whatever reason, I decided to take the smaller roads back to Illinois instead of I-80. I decided to take Highway 163. I went through Prairie City and made a short stop in Pella. Pella is a pretty enough town and full of tulips in the spring--though there were no tulips when I visited. So either it was too early, or I'm mistaken about the time of year I made this drive. Who knows . . .

I kept going, taking in Oskaloosa.

Oskaloosa, with its funny-ish name, was a town well known to people my age and older who spent part or all of their childhood in Des Moines. Oskaloosa was the answer to jokes and riddles by Floppy, a dog puppet, on the Duane and Floppy Show, which was a kid's cartoon show out of Des Moines. Anyway, I think I knew one person from Oskaloosa, a guy I met in Iowa City who lived on my dorm floor with Mike Policicchio. He smoked a lot of dope. Then again--like the time of year--perhaps I'm mistaken. Maybe he was from Keokuk.

From there I kept driving. Now on a smaller road, Route 92. It was a very pleasant day and I had the windows down. Was in no hurry. Just enjoying the countryside and wind and fields and the little towns. It was so much nicer than the rush of the Interstate. I wasn't sure where I'd stop for the night, only that I would stop and not try to drive all the way back in the day.

Rose Hill. Sigourney (which I think Iowans have a strange pronunciation of, though I don't recall it at the moment)--a nice-looking town. Signs for What Cheer (I have never been to What Cheer). West Chester. Then at the connection with Highway One there was evidence of a bad car accident--lights and ambulance, cars rolled and crunched, backed up traffic. I was patient. Made the jog south and continued east.

Washington--a big town for the area. I knew a young man from Washington who worked at the University. I met him when I worked at Iowa during the summers, at Burge Hall, stripping and waxing floors and housekeeping and goofing off. He was a good kid--country, a little wild. Maybe his name was Jeff. Not sure. He taught me how to make a squirrel-call using three quarters and your hands. And there was Norbert from Kalona, just north of Washington. Norbert was married, had a kid. He was killed in a car accident, coming home at night from Iowa City, a friend driving ran off the road. I think they were drunk.

Columbus Junction surprised me. I'd never heard of it. It had a river and a big shift in the land--almost like a bluff. Hills. It was just odd to me was all.

Then I got on highway 61 and drove into Muscatine and it was late enough that I figured I may as well stop. I'd never been to Muscatine before. My dad called all cantaloupes "Muscatine Melons"; I guess there are Muscatine melons but most are cantaloupes . . . I made my way up past some fast food places and other chain stores, chain restaurants, chain gas stations, a car dealership, then some chain motels, settling on that Super 8.

I walked up an embankment to some restaurant/fast food joint. Arby's? Wendy's? Once again, I don't recall, other than it was pretty uninspiring. I think I took my food to my room. Maybe it was Burger King. Watched some bad TV. Felt bad in return. My mother. My leaving Ft. Lauderdale. Not moving to New Orleans like I was supposed to. Back in a place I did not ever want to be back in. And now in a Super 8 in Muscatine, Iowa . . .

One of my first roommates at Iowa on the 2000 floor of Burge Hall was from Muscatine. Now, his name was Jeff, for sure. My other roommate was Chuck (from a Chicago suburb). This was freshman year and I knew hardly anyone in Iowa City--though it all turned out very well. Jeff was a little odd--a smart guy, music major, actually a bassoon major at that time. Yes, he played the bassoon. Chuck became a closer friend than Jeff ended up being, but we got along. He was a good enough guy.

So, it was the next day as I used my brand new iPhone (I'd had flip phones until then) to plot my route into and out of Muscatine and over the river into Illinois that I drove past the Muskie Motel in Muscatine.

Man. The Muskie was exactly the kind of place I'd wanted to stay at: cheap, small-roomed with their own doors that opened out to a parking lot. Not ratty, but nonetheless a place with its own suspect distinction.

Maybe. Who knows? Perhaps it would have been a lousy place: spongey bed, no reception for the TV, thin walls and noisy neighbors, bedbugs. It could have been an even lousier night, for all I know.

Then again, maybe if I'd stayed at the Muskie Motel in Muscatine, maybe I'd be a happier man to this day. Maybe my mother would have gotten better or lived longer or--well, no. But possibly it could have altered some small smidgen of things. Possibly.

But it didn't.

Capturing Red the Cat: Des Moines 2012

My mother had fallen ill, then was placed in a nursing home facility because it was determined that she just wasn't quite ill enough yet to be put in a hospice. So, her apartment on Grand Avenue in Des Moines was empty of her, if not empty of her things or her cat, Red.

I, along with me second oldest brother (who lived in Des Moines) arranged to have her possessions boxed up and moved out (to his basement) because it was evident my mother would no longer have use for them. The cat, however, was another issues. Luckily, there was a woman--the Widow Simmons, I called her as Simons was her name and she was a widow and lived in the same assisted living complex--who was willing to take the cat.

Red the cat was a handsome male. Long-haired, large, reddish-orange, tabby-like markings in some areas. he was also an ornery animal. He pretty much only liked my mother, but even her he would sometimes bite and scowl and growl at. He ruled the two room place, did as he pleased, and disliked anyone who got in his way. My mother had gotten him, along with a second Cat she named Little Bird, as kittens. Little bird was friendly and sweet but two cats were evidently too many and for whatever reason, my mother decided to keep Red. No doubt Little Bird was put to rest, something my mother--who grew up in a small South Dakota town among farms and The Great Depression--was not disturbed about.

Anyway--it became my job to capture Red and get him to a vet before I took him to the Widow Simmons to live another of his nine lives.

This proved to be difficult.

Most things were boxed up but the furniture was still in the apartment at that time. I first tried to box Red up--using an actual box that I lured him into, but he burst out of that quite redly after I'd closed him in. My mother had not taken Red to the vet--had not enclosed him in anything--in many years. He was big and strong and wild and had claws. So, I went and got a cat carrier, one made of strong hard plastic and that had an opening on the top as well as a caged door. That was fine. It would hold him. getting him inside it was another matter.

Once he realized what I was trying to do, it became a chase. This was not a big apartment: one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, one bathroom. You could not just grab him and hold him and place him in the carrier. He was, essentially, a feral house cat. So, I donned gloves and long sleeves--and I am not a small or timid man--and had hell of a time trying to corral him. He hissed, growled, showed his fangs, took swipes at me, ran and ran and jumped, made the sounds you hear from cougars and panthers and jaguars that you've seen/heard on television. I was surprised no one came running and knocked on the door. It was crazy! Loud! Vicious to the ears and eyes! I grabbed a broom to try herding him.

Finally I got him confined to the bedroom. Of course he went under the bed, so I tipped the mattress and box springs on their sides to expose him. Still, I could not catch him. We had become mortal enemies. He hated me and I had begun to hate him.

I don't know.

At one point I had him cornered. He was hissing, growling, crouching, staring at me with giant lightning-bolt-eyes. I returned the same anger with my own eyes. And that's when it changed:

I suddenly felt so sorry for him, for his situation, for his fear, for the confusion of living alone in the apartment for over a month as my mother lay in her helpless long-term state of a slow death. So, as we dagger-eyed at each other, mine suddenly softened.

Seriously. I softened my eyes and my facial expression and looked on as--just as suddenly--his eyes and expression softened as well.

I only wanted to help him. To do what needed to be done.

It was still a struggle, but finally I got him in the carrier and inside, defeated, he became docile.

I took him to the vet. Took him from the vet to the Widow Simmons' apartment--a nice place on the second floor on the corner with lots of windows--and presented Red to her. I brought food and food bowls, a water bowl, a cleaned-up cat box and litter. The Widow Simmons was pleased. We chatted a bit. I explained that Red could be difficult. We opened the carrier and let him sit there until he was ready.

After a while he did venture out to look around. he seemed like a different cat--a little cautious if not quite intimidated. he would be fine. I later got a few of updates: he was doing well, he had sat in her lap, he appeared content, no problems so far.

I told my mother, who was cognizant though ultimately terminal, and she said: "I don't know. Maybe he never really liked me."

Not true, of course, and I assured her of that, but she had no desire to see him again.

Or so she said.