christmas blues III

i don't want this to simply be an account of what everyone got, how they felt, where they went off to, etc., but a certain amount of that can't be avoided. kids were here, sharing gifts, hanging out, having a good time. my son got a vlogging camera and that seemed to make him happy though he left behind a few things, like the directions and maybe a charging cord. that means both of our own children who are around were happy, as were the three foster children, two of whom really raked it in.

but there are a few kids out on the edge of our circle, and we didn't get anything for them. specifically two boys, half brothers, who have been staying with our son indefinitely and will probably stay there indefinitely. we take food over there so they don't starve. we did tell our son, please don't let these two stay, because we can't afford to feed them. but these two have no other place to go. totally bereft of job skills, or any skills for matter, they make us feel like there isn't much for it but to feed them or watch them starve. so we spent christmas money feeding them, and then, had no money to buy them a christmas. no hoodie, no stocking full of candy, no nuthing. so there are a couple kids with the blues i guess. other kids got something. everyone got a feeling of family. i should be grateful. no violence. no anger or tantrums. no passive-aggressive either. people are just grateful for what we can do.

soometimes i say, i look to survive christmas, not enjoy it. you can't have this huge crowd of kids hovering around and exxpect everyone to be happy. slowly they have to learn that they'll make their own christmas, even if it's walking over to the woods, gathering up some evergreen, and decorating their own space with it. these guys are well into the habit of doing nothing, what gets done is what others do for them. why should their expectation be my problem? i've started assuming that's how they wanted it. but the fact is they just weren't able to learn how to do such things themselves. get a job, haul in some money, get some presents for friends and family, all stuck at the source: getting a social security card, so they can get a job. even this, apparently, is more than they can handle.

back at home, the house is peaceful. it's a cold, foggy day, grim and gray, and i should go out walking but i'm babysitting as my wife goes out for an aa meeting. she feels a special commitment to covering it on the holidays because she knows that's when people need it the most. and so off she goes, passing along a commitment to sobriety even as some of us are kicking back, enjoying the calm holiday's sunset descend into night.

these short days, it doesn't take long. it's like four and i can see it coming. and i'm already tired, and i wouldn't mind calling it a night and starting new tomorrow. but i work the night shift - take meds and something to eat to the son, and do what i can to keep things running. means that, whatever, i'm up 'til about ten.

this year more than ever i'm thinking about christmases past, old times, things we've done and carried on. the luminaria, the violence, the notes to santa, the long walks and tours of lights, the silence by the tree at night. the aa meetings to keep it all together and carry into the new year. the bad weather, or in this case, warm, wet, gray. contemplative. at this point i'll let it go and say, hope i'm back for another year. i'm still recovering from surgery.

christmas blues II

the previous post (see below) was written before the big present-opening splurge which just happened. as one who was up until midnight, ho-ho-ho, i have to say that it was unusual that i could wake up, at about eight, and have time for a cup of coffee and to write that anti-materialistic diatribe/rant before the splurge. ultimately everyone woke up and we got right down to business.

as i was saying before, the remarkable thing about this christmas is two foster children, eight and nine, who really had no idea what to expect. a seventeen-year-old also had no idea. another seventeen-year-old has been throuugh it many times and was excited for all it meant to her.

but the one seventeen-year-old foster kid wanted to spend the night with his girlfriend, and did. texted me in the morning for a ride. i went over there, and sat twenty minutes waiting for him to answer the text. i'm here, i said. hurry up, your sisters are. waiting to open presents. no answer. maybe it was like one of those times i waited half an hour, no answer, because he'd gone back to sleep. summon me and then go back to sleep? anyway i didn't have the twenty minutes. of all the days in the year to take an hour out of my life, ten to fifteen to go over there, ten to fifteen to come back, and a half hour to sit there looking at my phone, waiting for no reply, wrong day. everyone wanted to open presents. i turned around and went home.

our own son, twenty, is holed up in a trailer three miles from town. we ended up not making arrangements with him, as he has two or three kids staying there and we didn't really want them all to come around. these guys can come open presents when they're ready i guess.

leaving all that anxiety, broken-family angst aside, let's just exxamine the present-opening splurge. the two foster kids seemed to get a huge windfall from the foster-care side and had what you could call a wrapping-paper frenzy which is like a shark when it smells blood. they were satisfied and will have plenty to do for days. that's kind of like it was when i was growing up - parents buy a day or two of peace as kids dig in to every imaginable game/doll/toy/puzzle. i was miffed when a couple games actually went unopened one year because 1) kids didn't get along, or 2) their ages were too split apart, or 3) they were just too into media, not about to sit around with siblings figuring out some new game. ok that was it for games for a few years, but now as i said is our chance to start over. these kids eight and nine can play a game together, i'm sure of it. not sure they will, but i'll at least give them a chance.

christmas blues I

christmas is a deeply personal family time and lots of families are severely dysfunctional, so it's not easy to talk about. it reminds me that my own family was relatively healthy in that regard and when i try to remember what was good, what worked, i sometimes hope to just recreate that, but it never works. in recent times christmas has been a time of bitter disappointment, sometimes even violent bitter disappointment. what went wrong?

an obvious culprit is blatant materialism and entitlement, but even that doesn't really explain everything. everyone in the family is far more focused on material goods than i am, which means that when my wife sends me out shopping they are invariably disappointed in what i bring home. my wife has evolved into just telling me exxactly what she wants me to bring home, since i'm better at actually driving, parking, braving the mobs, and walking back out with something. ok so that relieves the actual responsibility on my part of actually picking something out for someone which obviously i'm quite bad at anyway. but i come around to one more year and this time we have two new girls, eight and nine, who have never experienced a christmas with us. we have two seventeen-year-olds, one of whom has been around for years and is walking on clouds again hoping for the perfect material-drop that will make her life just perfect again. the other is a foster kid who, like his two sisters, will probably be overjoyed at whatever is given to him and in fact his life has been considerably improved materially by his removal from his parents and his placement here where there just seems to be money to get what he needs. to his credit, he doesn't just grab what he needs like some of the others, and doesn't seem to be as blatantly materialistic as our kids. so i can't blame the entire generation and i don't.

in a way i'll do what i always have done, which is to not worry so much about the stuff, and let them be disappointed if that's the way they're inclined to be. you can tell that i've kind of withdrawn from that aspect of it, blaming my wife or them for being so focused on something that doesn't make them happy anyway, and just let the chips fall where they may. it seems that no matter how much we spend on an uninterrupted flow of stuff, it's still a bitter and dangerous time of year and i might as well just back off, do what makes me happy, retreat into my own shell.

but wait, with three new people, i could reestablish the old customs that i used to enjoy, that make it a family time, that in a way take precedence over everyone waiting for what one of us got from amazon or walmart. but this year following my surgery i got sick and have been barely able to get up out of my chair and produce what i need to. one thing we always did was luminaria - this year, no luminaria, i forgot, and then it got all drizzly and foggy anyway. the luminaria probably would have worked, though the drizzle was off and on all night, but by the time i thought of it i was way too tired. also there's the trains. a lot of work, but if you clear out the table in the garage, there's enough room to set up trains and it can be really fun. it's a christmastime thing. another new year tradition is watching back to the future, one two or three, or all three, or just the third one, which is our favorite even if it may not be the best. we don't watch movies anymore thouugh, not together anyway, and nowadays i have almost no patience with just sitting down and watching any movie with anyone, we don't have a couch, so kids who want to watch a movie shut their bedroom door, get in bed, and then turn it on and sit there for a few hours. not me. my hearing is too bad anyway, and i find it too upsetting that this kind of thing has become what our life is reduced to.

i got the girls a "barbie monopoly" game. i figured you might as well combine the two most garish symbols of commercailism and materialism, put them all in one place, and let them concentrate on the lessons that any monopoly game will provide: namely that one person will get rich, another will get crushed, it's all about money, and all that glitter and nice names and apparent wealth and luxury just looks shiny and unavailable to the vast majority of us who are schlubbing away working some routine job. i don't care, in the end i'm not going to let my happiness be derived from having something others don't, or from having something i didn't work for, or even from having something period. i eat, i live, i write. i don't consume much. i don't own much, i don't want it. i'm not sure my kids can even see that.

no note for santa this year. my wife asked if she should bring the girls downstairs, make a plate of cookies, and have them write a note telling santa that they've been good. in return santa writes them a note that says indeed they've been good, enjoy. lost my spirit this year. it's a charade i'd been losing patience with anyway. i didn't sign the note santa, but rather just put ho ho ho, and began to concentrate on trying to tell the truth in such a way that it was relatively obvious that everything came from us, the parents, and that there wasn't some clown stuffing himself down through the chimney to fill the place with fancy electronics from amazon. what i'm feeling is more a barely concealed contempt for the whole process, wanting stuff, getting stuff, pretending that someone somehow deserves it. they're not especailly bad kids, in fact, they're lucky they just got placed in some place that can deliver to them, if ultimately they learn how to verbalize what they want, can deliver whatever they want. the money is not so much a problem, the state will provide it, all we have to do is convert it into whatever works for them or whatever they want. obviously i'm letting wife handle that so the question is, what to say to her so this doesn't get converted into blatant materialism, cruel disappointment, even violent threats over some mal-distribution of the goods. the girls may only be with us this one year. but it's become a matter of principle. how do you hand out tons of stuff and not turn kids into material-focused kids?

let's look at the other side, to help give me perspective, i always do this just to get the incentive to actually go out and do what i have to do. and that's slipping, obviously. but the other argument is that presents represent your love for them so when you go out and turn that love into money and then stuff you are proving that you love them in a very direct, materialist, tangible way, unlike say just spending time with them or teaching them how to tie their shoe or drive. you're saying this vlogging camera represents our love for you so don't go saying that we don't love you or don't give you whatever you want. now my daughter, whose mother rejected me many years ago, is very much a part of her mother's family which also is entirely materialistic and subscribes to that general theory. you have to get a good present for every member of the family and this is an obligation you start working on in october and of course making, having and producing the money necessary to keep this system running is a major part of life and of course you're amply rewarded for your hard work by receiving all kinds of things from various corners of the extended family. i can't actually speak for whether this makes them happy; it certainly makes their christmas a huge materialist splash, with wrapping paper very visibly all over their floor. but she's glad to visit me partly because i'm just not in that world. and she couldn't manage two families anyway.

people are awake. got to go. it may be a choorb, as my yiddish relatives would say, but it's my choorb, and i have to tend to it.

i'm draggin' like a big ol' chain, because i got sick after my surgery. it was a combination of taking lots of meds, being cut into, having bad weather, being under a lot of pressure, being needed for rides and such, never really resting well upon my return, and then losing a night's sleep on finding out that my one remaining hearing aid had lost its battery charger. I had nothing for a few days! In a panic i retreated into a sore-throat flue kind of funk.

sometimes i come around a corner and feel much older. such a thing happens when they cut into my jaw and insert a tube so that it will delever electric signals to my brain and i can stay in the game, socially. all music, gone. all hearing of little things, gone. but the implants are picking up words and helping me understand them and this presumably will keep me in the game so i can hear what people say or are saying about me.

but oh the pain of hanging around with a sore jaw, and an earache related to the sore throat, and the blahs, real bad, that make me want to just roll over and go back to bed. every day three or four cups of coffee aren't enough. i ignore my main writing project not to mention all the others. i just don't feel well enough to tackle stuff.

puppy and i haven't been out for walk in weeks. it's been real cold and only now is warming up a little. puppy just pees and poops wherever he wants anyway so he's acting like it doesn't matter that much - but if i do go, it actually matters way more to me than to him. i need the fresh air and the exercise. I need to be alive again.

outside, things look grim. it's been real cold for a long time. leaves are soaked down on the ground as the last of the snow has melted on them; that snow lasted for over a week, which is very unusual. christmas will be warm, though, and that too is a little unusual. we went right past the solstice and now days are getting longer - that's as it should be.

then there's the ho-ho-ho. we have an extra kid this year. took in another foster kid, sister of the two who are already here. i see the two little girls, nine and eight, at the dining room table, making noise, being girls. there we go again. twelve and thirteen, and lots of the concerns of the younger generation. main one is, you gootta have a phone, and know how chargers work. don't know if these two, nine and eight, will actually have that chance while in our care. i've become against the whole business.

for reasons too numerous to explain. a seventeen-year-old will watch some media while we're driving around, because media is life and saves you from the discomfort of actually talking to someone. there may be something to see on the street but if so multitasking will take care of it because the media is like glued to the attention vortexx. i worry about the future of this country but so what, these kids are nowhere near the worst. but exactly what is it on media that's so attractive? nothing, really, not even worth finding out probably. it's just a placeholder, it holds their attention so they don't attract it from others. in a cocoon, they can make it to another day.

resting in my chair after a long day & night yesterday in which we went to iowa, i had surgery, and came back to see many many trucks on the side of the road east of west branch, after a harrowing set of accidents on saturday night.

the surgery went well but took too long; i was getting another cochlear implant like the first so i knew what i was getting into, and was somewhat drugged up as my wife drove us through it, stopping for gas in west branch before we saw the remains of the accident.

though the accident was saturday and this was monday night, there were still dozens of cars and smashed trucks on the road, and in two cases trucks on the shoulder with their blinkers on. this was probably because they couldn't move them, and were told to leave the blinkers on, but it slowed traffic down so we could all have a proper rubberneck on the other destroyed trucks that were also on the shoulder and the median. quite a lesson on truckers and ice!

over sixty accidents were involved in that one, just east of west branch, but nobody died. apparently back at the hospital they'd had to decide who to treat first as so many came in. but this had been two days earlier and still wasn't totally cleared off, though the roads themselves were in much better shape, and there were two lanes going all the way through. still it was about a ten-minute delay.

the ironic thing was that i once lived just east of west branch and the accidents could have been right there, near scattergood school, but i'm not sure really because i was in kind of lousy shape to look in the darkness across lanes to see exactly where we were. I spent a couple of years there but didn't recognize anyone at the west branch casey's, in fact that casey's might not even have been there when i lived there. time has make a new west branch. i am in my chair, dog on lap, getting used to the new hearing condition.

what will happen is that they will turn on the right implant in a couple of weeks and slowly i will hear better in that ear as i do in the left. in the meantime i have only the left and have some adjusting to do. with implants out i have almost nothing, as opposed to before, when i had very weak hearing on the right and implant (if charged and functioning) on the left. now i have to be more vigilant, and make sure i always have left, especially when out on the road.

as i began to come to this morning, i became aware of several crises, washer broken, kids need stuff, way behind on everything, laundry, christmas to organize, etc. but sun is out and it's warmer. snow is coming off roofs naturally.

And the dog is very attentive, and sticking right on my lap as i more or less stall in getting up and organized, and take my time. the accident took almost as much out of me as the surgery. my son is, after all, a new trucker deciding whether to go 50-state, as opposed to just CA-AZ. The truckers were heavily criticized for driving too fast (on ice/snow) or carrying 'dry loads' but i don't know exactly what happened, more than sixty people were unable to stop at some point, and whose fault is that? it could have been anyone.

vaya con dios, truckers. welcome to iowa!

i swear god will take from you every drop of blood that you have in this life to help take care of the folks out there that are falling through the cracks. lots of folks, lots of cracks, and if you have trouble saying no you're in the line of fire.

speaking of saying no though i did pass up a trip to chicago, for the impulsive boy whose friend needs to go up to see a clerk about getting the right date on his birth certificate. one car, icy roads, at least two kids but probably four, some along for the ride and the fast food, and the possibility of visiting home. no thanks. it didn't sleep well and wore me out thinking about it. but this thirteenth kid, that one won't go away.

she's the older sister of the eight-year-old we're already fostering, and the younger sister of the seventeen-year-old. we have one more seventeen-year-old, and we're almost done with our own kids, the last three of whom were adopted. the foster kids, all three from the same birth family, would probably be moving on in may to their father who, if he does what they want, will be ready to take them by may. the seventeen-year-old would be moving on to complete independence. they could declare victory. they extracted him from a violent household, he lived, and he came out alright. it's a wonder they aren't all in trouble.

really what i've found is that if an adult is consistently present and caring, and providing what they need most, which is shelter, food, and a ride to school or work, then they are grateful to live a somewhat boring life, and be home at night, on the media, in a comfortable bed, staying up as late as they want. i'm talking about the seventeen-year-olds now, who we deal with extensively, and there's like three or four of them that have jobs, are very responsible, and it's a miracle they keep going given the dysfunctional families they started out with. i'm beginning to feel that the transition to work & car stable life is a luxury that many high schoolers don't have, having families that can't help them with driver's licenses, jobs or car. but given the choice, most would take that stability over drugs, crime or whatever the other choices out there. it's not a matter of rent, they have a place to stay. it's mostly a matter of food security and a ride to school or work.

with the younger ones, it's really a question of whether we have the energy to drive them around, do dentist appointments, school functions, that kind of thing, and we're on the verge of not having that energy. if it's only 'til may, we might make it, but something tells me it's a little more than that. and the weight of the noise alone is substantial. i've always said that having two kids is not 1 + 1 = 2, or even 30 + 30 = 60, but more like 30 X 30 = 900, with all their characteristics multiplying off each other to make far more noise and complication than simply adding two together.

one last push, one more chapter. she was out there - she was about to have to go to chicago, or somewhere else around the state, start over in a new house, away from sisters and brother, and now she's at least with one sister and one brother. there is, yes, another sister, a twin of the eight-year-old, she's also definitely out there, she did have to go away. we just couldn't handle her. if you go back to the origins of the family, one older boy, three younger girls all within three years, one girl completely uncontrollably violent and unreasonable, the mother also probably bipolar, violent and unreasonable, that's all it took to break down the family until we and the social services started putting it together starting from the saner edges of it, namely the seventeen-year-old, then the eight-year-old, now the ten, now the father, and try to very delicately keep it from moving into that trouble zone where kids are isolated and bitter, and can't function.

If they all come out healthy, and alive, and able to move on to the next phase, we'll all be grateful. the community or the village will have stepped in and raised the kids.

got a big snowstorm on friday night and basically i was in denial until the very last minute, and when i had to i finally got to driving around in it and shoveling the walks. i can do it. i've lived in snow country for most of my years and this is just what we do. i had my chance to move to cali or texas or even mexico, and i didn't. so now i scrape the windshield. naturally a really cold spell came right behind the snow and froze up everything especially the streets that they were too slow to plow and that were already a little packed in. so now there are a few that are solid ice and the main ones are actually quite reasonable, but i have to go to oquawka this afternoon and there's this one high bluff over it where you go down a steep hill to get to the town, and in my dreams at least if you can't stop you roll right down through the town and into the mississippi.

well that's an exaggeration, and i'll be ok, but in some ways i'm kind of dragging. my son now has three visitors with nothing better to do than live off a disabled kid, but we don't take a hard line and simply kick them out even though we can't really afford to feed them. it's like they're in suspension. no money is a permanent condition, and slightly-warm place with occasional food is better than what they're used to anyway. so they're not going anywhere even though my son has said it's a little too much. none of the three of us, son, wife, or I, is ready to just order them out.

one was here for a court date. what happened happened two years ago, when he was 16, but involved my son so i felt partially responsible to take him down to the county courthouse forty miles down the road and wait. fortunately they dismissed the case but again made us wait all afternoon. i felt like i was doing penance for every crime i ever committed and got away with. just waiting, in a courthouse, for them to look carefully at his case, which granted, was a little complicated. people were friendly. but eventually i took to pacing in the upstairs of that courthouse. how much penance can you stand?

to show how much i'm living in my head, i've come up with a philosophical question. if snow covers a stop sign, do you still have to stop? can you argue that you didn't know it was there, even if you've been at that intersection a few times and should know it's there? just curious.

blog reports are in, in case anyone is curious about how it goes, maintaining and tracking 28 personal blogs and 9 commercial ones. i do a pretty crappy job overall, but they are entrenched in the system and get lots of visitors. you can find some of them by going down in the template to the "some-o'-mine" tab where you might get clicked over to any possible thing. or follow the lighthouses, they'll take you on a little tour. my own carousel. if one blog gets a visitor, several will.

have a good holiday season and stay in touch!

i feel like i'm in a new era of my life, one in which people roughly my age are experiencing severe health problems, declining, and/or dying, and that occupies much of my worrying. my father once said, 'you get used to it;' he lived in a retirement community, and at any given time, someone was declining, or dying, or they were clearing out their room so that someone else could do the same.

in my case, there's an ex- who had brain surgery; they put a stint in her brain to drain fluid as it appeared to be hydroencephalosis (?) or water on the brain. the stint drained the fluid into her abdomen where it would be released - now explain to me how this is even possible. but by a week or two later, something was malfunctioning. draining too much, draining too little, or clogged, or something, and she was experiencing pain, dizziness, confusion, etc. back to the e r. another friend had a wife who needed spinal surgery, had to start driving at four in the morning to get to chapel hill for that surgery, and it's all i can do to imagine spinal surgery. ouch! makes me feel lucky that all i'm doing is cochlear implant.

two things i've changed in my life, though. i now walk two miles a day, and i now quilt a little every day. this unfortunately has been at the expense of writing. i still market and i still read a lot as part of my marketing strategy. my marketing strategy by and large hasn't worked. i'd do better to just write what i want quick before i am like my friends above. in fact i have a lot of things i want to write but am instead kind of stalled, backwatered, on a fantasy kick when i have no fantasy left in me. the last of my kids are all media junkies relying on games and fantasy to occupy their minds when they absolutely feel they can't make it in the real world and therefore don't. they get fed anyway right? you would think the natural desire to be indepenedent would kick in, and it has to some degree, but it hasn't been able to overcome an overwhelming inability to face the realities of life.

speaking of the realities of life, there are plumbing issues everywhere, under a sink at our house, with the sewers at a rental house, and with an entire heating system out at my son's trailer, where several kids are holed up, all unable to face reality...not working,....not doing anything really....being disabled, mentally, emotionally, or physically.

one would think i could just focus on my fantasy, finish it, and move on to my next project. but i can't seem to do it..

Just Passing Through - Autobiography and true stories from >out there
Kindle Special SAT-Mon. Nov. 22-24
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FB3LJ85

Local Author Fair

i finished the last word of a book i'd been writing for months - finished writing it, that is, not revising, rewriting, editing, etc. - but at that point i thought i'd go for a walk. figured i'd walk a mile downtown and check in at the bookstore. the bookstore is small, indie, very well kept, and in financial trouble, but it's still there, and looks like it will be there for the upcoming shopping season.

well, that walk, yesterday, about a mile and a half maybe, was way more difficult than it should have been. this morning i was all creaky-boned and decided to do it again, and i did. still difficult! ankles creaky, huffing and puffing, that kind of thing. i need to get out there every day until i get back some mobility.

it's a beautiful walk down prairie street - fine old houses line it, and some are in much better condition than others. an old gentleman who wrote a book about mexican laborers (i might be wrong about this) lives in one of them, and there are several other establishments of interest on the walk, culminating with downtown itself, where the bookstore is. once again, the main proprietor wasn't there, but that's not so bad; i told the guy i was in it for the walk anyway, which was true. i engaged him in a conversation about judy's which is right behind him. then i turned around and walked home. it began drizzling. i put the books under my jacket.

one of the books, i intended to give to the author if i saw him. i did see him but i was way back at the stop light and he was getting out of his car. maybe i could have yelled out at him, or knocked on his door, but i didn't do either. i'll find him. i plan on giving him a book and maybe finding out more about his.

at the bookstore one can become a "local author" if one fills out the right kind of contract.

i figured that if most of my life was about writing and being an author, i should make these walks be about writing and being an author.

which brings me to judy's. i live on the same block as judy's restaurant, made famous by social media clips on facebook, youtube, tiktok and others. i mean really famous. i can tell people in california or australia that i live near judy's and often they know what i'm talking about. but judy's has done something curious. her pancake house is on my block, yes, in the historic district of galesburg, but she opened another chinese-cuisine restaurant downtown there behind the bookstore, and she apparently cooks in both of them. so she works mornings up here on broad, and evenings down there on prairie, then she makes movies all day long apparently. her movies, clips really, are very clever, use a little bit of trickery, are kind of harmless and silly, and are extremely well-known.

one day i went in there and offered to write her a book. i think she's a social media pioneer and, as a promoter of galesburg, a rock star. before she found social media her restaurant wasn't doing so well. now, it's packed. and it's all people from out of town.

it's a new chapter for me in making myself known around galesburg. as a door dasher i had some fame, but this is quite different.

 

such is my life that on a monday morning my wife could say to me, "want to go to gary?" referring to a city in indiana, and i, interpreting it as pressure, though tired and burnt out, would agree to do it anyway. it would be for our son, whose friends moved to gary a while ago. it would be for one friend's birthday, which was apparently monday.

gary is a three hour drive from galesburg; we go straight north to moline, then straight across the state of illinois, into northern indiana, where gary is about twenty miles from the border. most of the trip then is illinois. and it goes from sheer farm country, nothing harvested corn fields and husks blowing around, to more and more orange cones, traffic congested, cars and trucks bumper to bumper - in short, chicagoland. the two boys i took with me fell asleep instantly although it was only about two in the afternoon when we started. out.

it took four to get there, because of an accident and because we landed in chicagoland right as rush-hour traffic was clogging up the arteries/ i was starving. i found a fish place in the neighborhood while the boys went in to celebrate a birthday.

an interesting thing about the fish place was that it barely sold any fish. it seemed like it had been a fish place by tradition, called the shark fin or something, and the signs advertising catfish, shark, shrimp etc. were ancient and nobody had done anything to replace them, only add a few for chicken wings. but they sold mostly chicken wings, and those fish things were there but not even really on the active menu that they used the most.

if you're white, everyone's a little surprised to see you in gary. or maybe it surprised them that i got out of the car, since most people were using the drive-through. i have trouble hearing what people say and find it better to just get where i can see their lips - but it makes for a situation where i can almost read in their faces, what's this guy doing here?

the boys were hungry when i got them out and we got back on the road. the poor woman, mother of three large teenage boys in a small house, probably had trouble feeding her own kids, and ours i think popped in by surprise, as far as i could tell. the kid whose birthday it was wasn't even home at the time, but came home toward the end.

but to me, a trip to gary is always interesting. they live in a part of town, south of the interstate, where lots of people let their yards go unmowed and it almost feels like woods on various streets as the vegetation overtakes the road, putting you in deep shade as you drive through. in addition some railroad tracks cut through, and one of the streets you need is one way, so there's always the possibility. of getting lost. but i've been there several times and have used their house as a base to explore a little, at least on the broadway side of it.

broadway is interesting to me because, years ago, i had a friend whose family lived on broadway; it might have been his grandmother. we came through there at least once when traveling together; his grandmother was romanian. in addition, when i'd go visit my first wife's family in chicago, they also were from gary - a jewish family that had settled in gary originally and then found its way up into chicago. all kinds of history all over the place, but it seems to be getting covered up as nature takes over where people have other concerns.

all of this leaves me back home somewhat shaking my head. why is it that, of all things i could be doing at the age of seventy-one, i am still indulging the impulses of a twenty-year-old who needs to see his friends, yes, but has no idea of how difficult traffic is, how lucky we were basically to slip in and out of there without some major disaster. at one point i found myself on the interstate behind some major truck carrying about five army tanks, probably used in the invasion of chicago, and i had a fantasy about what would happen if someone were to just disrupt it. like every truck, it was going about sixty bumper-to-bumper in a nine-lane road going east through gary. broadway was one of about ten exits but of course the one i was looking for. coming back, i was grateful to get back on that nine-lane madhouse, and the boys, very hungry now, got me to stop at an oasis. i'm surprised they still have those, but they do - there's one up by ohare too - and they kind of hang over the road but this one had seen better days. let's just say things didn't work out as planned, but they never do, and i'm glad to be home, in a sleepy town where i'm used to things.