tonight i had one of the wildest experiences i've had in quite some time.

it was about nine thirty and i was at the end of door-dashing. as you may know i've become a door dasher and i like it, especially when times are good and i'm out there on the open roads; it connects me to my traveling days only now i'm collecting small sums of money a little at a time, as opposed to seeing what little i've saved disappear to my inevitable hunger. well anyway door dash has a way of sending you way out in the boonies at the end of your dash especially if you're a guy like me who takes every offer, and this one went to a little country town five miles from knoxville which is itself five from galesburg, my town. not that far, really, but in country miles, it's way out there, believe me. so i get out there with these two bags of mcdonalds and i hear this sound. it's a magical sound and one i haven't heard since my childhood.

that's right, it's the seventeen-year locusts. it's a different sound from the thirteen-year but i knew it when i heard it. it struck me to the bone and i was all excited.

the young woman who collected the bags had several little kids around. i couldn't help it and said to her something like, "you have the locusts already!" I'm not sure if she even knew what i was talking about, but she wasn't eager to hear any more about it, maybe it was the kids, and i left. but i was really excited.

i began counting back seventeen years. iowa and northern illinois would have had them in 2007, 1990, 1973...i got married and moved to korea in there somewhere and i'm not sure i remember hearing them then. but i do remember hearing them as a kid. we may have had them in ohio but we also came out to iowa several times in summers when i was a kid. 1973 maybe?

i've heard the thirteen-year ones too as they were in carbondale. the thing is, the majority of people just consider them a nuisance. they're loud, and high-pitched, and they carry on like an orchestra of violins tuning at all the wrong times. but as a musician that's what i liked about them. they were all seeking the same note and getting pretty close to it, and they had a natural rhythm built right in. most people might not hear all that much. but i heard it.

they're like crickets - the soundtrack to your childhood. like fireflies might be the backdrop to your memories, and might remind you, at some uncertain time in the future, of summer nights in your childhood. if you're out there, listen carefully. you have all summer to hear them, but then you won't hear them again for nineteen more years.

this year both the seventeen- and the thirteen- are coming out. the thirteen-years come out in carbondale and in more southern locations; the seventeen-years come out up here in northern illinois and iowa; some places actually have them both and i can't imagine what that's like. it's a god-awful racket to most people and it carries on through june and july or at least for a good part of the summer. locusts rule! play that orchestra! our world of kids needs to hear them!

the people of that tiny town, the town of gilson, illinois, got them a little earlier than we did and they may not be as impressed by them as i was. but they made my night. god's little orchestra started tuning itself for the big show, and i was there to hear it.

with possibility of tornados coming through, everyone's on edge, me especially. dashing has been thin lately, with either not enough business or way too many dashers, and i suspect the latter - but life is busy and no time to get another job or do one of many things that could supply the income in one form or another. the dashing will pick up though with the weekend and bad weather i'm sure.

my little computer is having trouble with its s- key and d- key. since i mostly use it to cruise around the web, read the news, check my marketing stats etc. it's not such a big issue except late at night when i want to play online boggle, and some games are just a wash because they have too many s's and d's. i'll have to get the keyboard fixed but in the meantime i'm a little frustrated.

then i get on there early this morning to check the news and two marketers i've befriended check in. one is nigerian and one is from miami but living in LA. both love to talk and engage etc. but the s-key and the d=key mean i have to avoid words that use them, because especially with the d i can press and press and nothing happens. eventually i have to tell them and just get off facebook. time to get kids off to school anyway.

with the bad weather rolling in i'm thinking of hiding cars in the garage all day but i signed up for a dash in monmouth and i'll probably take it. good or bad weather, get out there and take fast food to people. people need to eat. as bad as the fast food is for their health, it at least keeps them going to another day, and this goes for my son too who lives on complete garbage and has for years now. i've bben unable to do anything about it and now my life is a combination of dashing for money and dashing for him. a lot of dashing going on.

the first marketer i befriended because i didn't know that friending people was a marketing ploy. she hustled me unsuccessfully, but then she went out of business, lost her home, had to give her kids to someone, and ended up on the street for a while, but now she's found jesus and seems to have a church community that is keeping her afloat. i stay in touch with her as friends because i know that when you're on the street you need that connection with anybody and at least she's getting on facebook and checking in regularly, whatever the circumstances of her instability, the marketers all seem to have that in common. to be a marketer they have to come on all professional and have a slick webpage, etc., and many of them use words like "collaborate" in their pitch like you're going to get right down in there with them and help them spend your money. in fact they don't have any more or better tricks than i do to get my book out there but they are like sharks in the sense that when they sense weakness or blood, like you might give in, they can be relentless. i don't care. i make it clear i won't give them any money and then if they still want to be friends that's ok. that's why i have these two and only these two left, besides the woman, who is no longer a marketer.

at the little house kids started in on the junk, throwing it around, moving it, throwing tools into buckets full of junk, that kind of thing. one kid ripped out a flimsy window covering so now it's partly exposed to the elements. i quickly grabbed up all my tools and put them in my car where they wouldn't be so quick to grab them. the problem is that they'll use some of them as weapons in their play as they are a bunch of rowdy kids who don't care much for school and have a lot of built up frustration and rage against the world and everyone in it. give them a small shed full of crap and they'll just throw it all around - they don't know what else to do with it. and i'm not sure i have time to show them.

in the house they moved out of, there are six broken windows and three broken doors. one of the doors ended up outside where it was ruined by weather. lots of glass ended up out there too. it turns out they know how to break it better than how to clean it up.

slowly i need to teach them how to respect stuff and take care of their humble shed. ir's an old railroad house, two stories high, well built originally but with so many windows busted out it's fallen into some disrepair over the last 90 or 100 years. if i think about it i can see how boys in their condition would light out into it like kids in a playhouse but there's almost nothing i can do about that - i'm not going to be over there every minute.

such is life. the tornados roll in, or whatever weather this storm carries. i go out to dash and clean up an old house and a shed. the marketers are out there circling their prey. some things go toward chaos. others are recorded in perhaps a futile attempt to understand them while other people do drastic things just to maintain some dignity. life goes on.

there's snow of all things, and plenty of it, and the whole thing leaves me so chilled all i can do is sit here under my blanket drinking another cup of coffee. the dogs don't even want to go outside, and my little feather would rather just pee and poop in our bathroom than chill his little fanny out in the cold snow. and he does, because he's spoiled.

i went to chicago on monday to move my oldest son, who was moving from brimfield, a small town near here, to a tiny little apartment on belmont avenue. it was very exciting and i had to do it just to be there when he did it. he's actually been back from school in new mexico for about four months, and he's been working, so he has the money both to get into the place, and for a tank of gas and my lunch, throw in my other son too. there was both a sox game and a cubs game, so that made a traffic nightmare getting out of town, but even while we were there on belmont avenue it was quite busy and no place to park for any of the diners in the area. we were all going to meet in a local diner on belmont but it just wasn't possible, no place to park anywhere within two miles of wrigley.

the cubs, while we were moving, apparently had a good opening day, but it was in the rain and everyone got a little soaked. as for us we parked the van in the loading zone and didn't have that far to walk. the apartment was very small and we filled it up in a minute. i figured out why the poor kid was sorting even pieces of paper before we moved, trying to consider as little as possible to be 'necessary'. but he claims he's very happy there and happy to be in a permanent place.

i am slowly settling into a doordash routine where i work late nights. there are several reasons but the main one is that dasher always has 'dash now' at night and one can rarely get it earlier, when apparently everyone wants to work. at night i find the house addresses harder to read though i'm getting better at getting the information off the app itself which is not always right. i'm also tired at night; i still wake up early and do all my book stuff from early in the morning.

you'd think with the new month there would be victorious celebration; after all i am turning seventy this month and i should be celebrating just being alive. instead i'm kind of tired and hiding under this blanket. proud of that son, though, he launched, and he is where he wants to be.