Loneliness of a long-distance dress salesman, Wyoming, 1949

The opening paragraph of the opening story, "Roadkill," in my story collection, "The Weight of a Body:" 

The shapes grew out of the smoke and fog -- three pronghorn antelope, running hard. Matthew Kincannon mashed the car's brakes and swung the wheel hard left. He missed the first two, collided with the third on its white-tufted rump which rose like a balloon before its rear legs smacked the windshield, its hooves scraping the glass like sharpened fists.

I set the story in the summer of 1949 on Hwy. 189 just north of Kemmerer, Wyoming. The morning was foggy and smoky, the latter due to a stubborn forest fire in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. I hit the rear end of an antelope that came out of nowhere. It tumbled to the side of the road, creating a dust cloud. I pulled over and ran to what I thought would be a mortally wounded creature. Nothing. I searched up and down the shoulder and came up empty. It was just dawn so no traffic. I returned to the car and investigated the front bumper. Nothing. My first thought was, "Did I imagine this?" But it was just a mysterious encounter along a deserted Wyoming road, of which there are many. On my way to a noon lunch meeting with arts patrons in Jackson, I thought about my father. In the late 1940s, one of the many jobs he tried post-war was a traveling salesman selling women's dresses for a Denver clothier. He sold one dress. He quit when he returned to Denver. He laughed when he told us kids the story. I laugh about it now. Dad was no high-pressure salesman. Still, he kept at it, first as an insurance salesman in Denver's Five Points neighborhood and the he joined Armour Meat Company to sell beef. The first thing the company did was transfer him to their Albuquerque office. He sorted mail at the Denver post office when I was born in 1950. Mom said he woke up with war nightmares when we got into Korea thinking the army would drag him into the fight. He spent four years in the army in Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and German occupation duty. After Mom died, we had drinks at his favorite watering hole and he said, "I always wanted to be a monk." I almost choked on my gin and tonic. "Too late Dad" I told the father of nine. As I drove the state for the Wyoming Arts Council, I often thought of Dad and his rack of dresses hanging in the backseat of his pre-war Dodge. He was engaged to my mom the nurse and just wanted to make good so he could marry her. I reckon that most of his thoughts were on Anna and not on sales tactics for dress store proprietors in Pinedale and Ten Sleep. I turned my imagination loose and came up with the fiction in my story. This blog is for you, Dad. 

Copies of "The Weight of a Body" are available on Amazon (book free with Kindle Unlimited membership). Tell them Father Tom, Father of Nine, member of the celestial monastery, sent you.

Purple Mountains Majesty, 1919

In my novel manuscript, “Zeppelins over Denver,” three sisters from Ohio travel west in the summer of 1919. Their first goal is to negotiate the rough roads to the Rocky Mountains and drive to the summit of Pikes Peak to see what inspired Professor Katherine Lee Bates to write the poem that became the famous song “America the Beautiful.” This excerpt is from Chapter 10. 

Colleen looked to the west. She was grateful for the hat brim that shaded her face from the afternoon sun. Wispy white clouds had gathered to the west but they didn’t look like the dark storm clouds of her home. Colorado’s July sun was relentless. A different sun than the one she was accustomed to. It came up lazy in Ohio, sometimes shrouded in river mists, and the trees were always a barrier. Here, it erupted from the east, announced itself as a glowing orb that shot out fingers of light to illuminate every living and non-living thing. The air seemed to crackle with the light.

Colleen noted that there was something funny about the clouds. They didn’t move. She sat in her flivver and watched for the landscape to change but it did not. And then she noticed the clouds’ irregular shapes that seemed to be propped up by a horizon which was darker than the sky above.

“The Rocky Mountains,” Colleen said.

“Where?” asked Pegeen.

Colleen pointed.

Ireen got out of the car. She looked west and shaded her eyes with both of her hands. “Those clouds…”

“Are not clouds.”

Pegeen hit the ground. Colleen switched off the motor and got out. “See,” she said as she joined her sisters. She pointed. “Those things that aren’t clouds are patches of snow and ice – glaciers. All the tall mountains have them.”

“In July?”

Colleen laughed. “All year,” she said. “Those mountains will be all-white in January. This whole place will be one big snow field.”

“Blessed be,” said Pegeen. “How do you drive in that? You’d need a sleigh.”

Colleen hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe they plow the roads.”

“Or people just stay home,” Ireen said. She looked over at Colleen. “Can we go up there? Do they have roads?”

“Of course they have roads,” Colleen said. “There are gold and silver mines all over those mountains.”

“Still? Even in these modern times?” Ireen asked.

“Yes. But we want to go up there to see what it’s like. I bet it’s grand.”

“Beautiful.”

“Just like Mrs. Bates' song.”

They stood and watched. Cotton ball clouds drifted overhead. A gentle wind rattled the cottonwood leaves. A hawk screeched.

Look for "Zeppelins over Denver" this fall from Hummingbird Minds Press.

Hey old guy, you might want to think twice about returning to 6,200 feet

WELCOME TO 7,220 FEET.

That's a huge sign on UW's War Memorial Stadium. It's meant to psyche-out teams visiting from lower altitudes, which is any NCAA Division 1 school.

My Ireland-born grandfather was about my age now when, in the 1980s, he traveled to the Mile-High City of Denver, the place he spent most of his adult life. The day after his arrival, he was hauled off to the hospital with breathing problems and heart pains.

A few days later, a physician told him to go home. He said Colorado was his home. He also had to admit he’d spent the last six years living in Bradenton, Florida, with his second wife.

The doctor explained that most of Florida was sea level and Denver was a mile high. Grandpas knew all this. He arrived from Chicago as a 19-year-old hoping that the dry climate would help him breathe with his one lung. It did. He worked for the railroad and was a bank guard. He spent a lot of time mowing lawns and shoveling snow for his neighbors. He loved mountain treks, often exploring unpaved roads that he and his ’57 Chevy had no business on. My brothers, sisters, and cousins loved those trips, jouncing unbuckled in the back seat.

So, at 75, Colorado had become the enemy.

Go home, old man!

My Uncle John had the same problem when he (at 62) journeyed to Denver from his Naples, Fla., home. Heart issues drove him to the hospital. The doctor there said basically the same thing: go home. He was a Denver native, who lived all over the Front Range and even up in Buffalo Creek and commuted to The Flatlands every morning.

Go home, old man!

Not a good thing to hear, that you are too old and decrepit to live in a place that meant so much to you.

I bring this up because in September my wife Chris and I will move to our new home in Ormond Beach, Fla., some 10 feet above sea level (for now). What is this Florida obsession of our family? The space program took my father and uncle and their families to the Sunshine State in the mid-1960s. Work and the military took some of my sisters and brothers and cousins away, but most of them returned. I did not.  

What was I looking for? Work, mainly. Why am I returning to Florida? Retirement, mainly. My remaining brothers and sisters live in Central Florida. Chris has friends from high school and community college in the area. We met in Daytona Beach and got married just north in Ormond Beach. Many more health care choices in the area. I am a heart patient and partially disabled. Chris is a diabetic and breast cancer survivor. Our new home on the aptly named Ocean Shore Drive is close to the beach and recreational activities.

I close by saying that as a 73-year-old heart patient, I probably will not return to 6,200 feet. I might push it a bit to come for a few days to visit my two grown children and any grandchildren that eventually arrive. But who’s to say where my 30-something offspring will be in one, two, even five years? And who knows where I will be.

Go home, old man!

There is much to be thankful for. But there are no guarantees, are there?

We Young, at Hospital

We young orderlies, CNAs, techs, nurses fresh from graduation. Voices blared from loudspeakers: code blue ortho, code red ER, code pink nursery. We razzed each other, lunched on cafeteria burgers, one fragment of attention listening for our color, our next emergency. The call came. Chairs abandoned, lunches half-eaten. We reveled in the action. Legs flexed in sprint, adrenaline pumped. We ran the corridors, took the steps two at a time, spurned the vators those were for old people like the ones in trauma. We aged as we ran, furrows formed on faces, arms and legs, brains. By the time we reached the coded sites, we were the elders in crisis who needed rescue by the summoned helpers, who ran to us, strangers who helped strangers. They ran, abandoned lunches, wondered will I ever stop running?  It awaits you around the next corner.

We prepare for take-off

June normally would see me outside coaxing my tomato seedlings. But this year, I’ll leave the gardening to others. We are giving our house, both in and out, a thorough sprucing up. Plants are being selected for color, enough color to lure someone to buy our house. I keep looking for “A Planting Guide for Guaranteed Home Selling” but can’t even find it on Amazon. My bulb plants have already bloomed and faded into obscurity among  the asters, coneflowers, and four o’clocks. It was good while they lasted, these brave perennials braving spring’s snow, cold, and wind to present their colors to my part of the world. I have two big pots that flank the porch and I will probably fill them with hardy petunias. They are fast-growing and stick around most of the summer. They are annuals and need to be replanted every year. You can’t kill them, although drought and h-a-i-l have tried. Add this to the yard work being done the next few weeks and you have a house ready-to-sell. So says our realtor.

Visitors streamed into the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this past weekend. A must-see destination as Wyoming warms up. We have the Conservatory with its tropical gardens and a Children’s Village to keep the kids occupied. Nine acres of gardens bloom outside. The most color comes from the crevice garden just outside our entrance which showcases Rocky Mountain plants, the kind you can spy on any hike in the Snowies, Wind Rivers, or Big Horns. The gardens will not reach their peak until late July or early August and on through fall’s beginnings. A short growing season with lots of pizzazz. The first freeze usually happens in September although last year it was mid-October. It’s sad, really, when the colors fade. I will not be experiencing that in my new home in Florida. Gardens grow year-round and always need attention which is fine with me. I can go into the Conservatory’s main floor and see many of the tropical and sub-tropical plants that grow in my new yard.

I should be reading up on Florida. Instead, I am sorting my books for departure. We are giving the furniture to our kids and taking a few bins of books and journals. Our new place is furnished so we don’t need much. Moving is never fun but this time Chris and I are retired and want some time to ourselves. The beach is two blocks away, so that doesn’t hurt.  Also, family and friends live nearby. It’s odd how you can be away for decades and return to your growing-up place and feel at home. We will be scouting the horizon for hurricanes. The crackerjack meteorologists at CSU, my alma mater, predict a record number of hurricanes this year. Who knows – they may all batter other places and leave us alone. That’s probably what everyone says in Florida. Cane cane, go away/I hear that Galveston and Charleston are nice this time of year. The rhyme is strained but you get the idea.

On that stretch of sand near J.D. Salinger's favorite Daytona Beach hotel

June 1966. My boss asked me why I was drilling a hole so close to the frothing ocean. High tide coming, boy. Looking for bananafish, I said, and turned the auger in the soft wet sand, digging a hole for the tourist's umbrella. What you talkin' about boy? Sir it's a perfect day for bananafish in Daytona. He grabbed the auger and told me to pick up my five dollars for a day's work and get off his damn beach. Now, he said. I dove head-first into the fresh hole. Blue-green water gave way to a murky yellow soup where dead bananafish floated. They ate too many bananas, swelled, and couldn't escape into sunlight. It was summer 1948. Salinger's Seymour tried to explain it to the kids on the beach at Daytona but they just thought him crazy, which he was, I suppose. So this is what you saw in the war, Sergeant Salinger? Bananafish floating, mutilated bananafish everywhere. That dreadful allied mistake off the English coast, bloody Normandy hedgerows, the bitter Bulge, the stink of the liberated extermination camp. Dead bananafish drove you into the asylum in Germany and you never came out, not really. You shipped out to another bigger asylum, the U.S.A., wrote about it, and we never understood. Your stories spread the alarm. We never understood. We kept looking for that one yellow bananafish who made it out into the blue-green waters. We are looking still.

Sources: Sergeant Salinger, Jerome Charyn; A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger.

Silas House's "Southernmost" takes the reader way way down south

Pain pours from  "Southernmost," the latest novel by Silas House. Most of it comes from Asher Sharp. He's a fundamentalist Christian preacher in rural Tennessee who yearns to do the right thing but brings down a cascading series of disasters. The river floods and he rescues a gay couple and invites them to his church. The congregation is scandalized. All hell breaks loose when same-sex marriage is legalized and the couple asks Asher to marry them. A strict gimme-that-ol'-time-religion preacher would refuse. But ten years before, Asher drove his gay brother Luke out of the church and out of town and he's regretted it ever since. He asks permission from the church council. Absolutely not, they say. 

From the pulpit, Asher blasts this narrow-mindedness and his angry tirade is filmed and goes viral and gets him in trouble. His wife turns on him as do church members and almost everyone in town. Lydia, his wife, uses the video to persuade a divorce court judge that Asher is too unbalanced for joint custody of their nine-year-old son, Justin. This loss is too much for him. He kidnaps his son and travels to Key West to ask forgiveness from his brother whose last communication from him carried a postmark of Key West, the "southernmost" city in the U S. Thus the title of the novel.

Asher does his best to keep a low profile and moves into an enclave populated by an engaging group of Florida Keys misfits. It becomes Asher's de facto congregation but that's not how he sees it. He just wants to safeguard Justin and apologize to Luke. Along the way, Asher learns key lessons in love and friendship and forgiveness. 

Almost anything can happen. Key West has a free-and-easy reputation. There is a price to pay for kidnapping -- just what will that be? House keeps us guessing to the end. Meanwhile, we get a deftly told tale at turns heart-breaking and delightful with a cast of intriguing characters.

I had never read this author but knew I was in good hands with its publisher, North Carolina's Algonquin  Books (now part of the Hachette Book Group). Look at their online catalog and try to restrain yourself from ordering new novels by Julia Alvarez and Lee Smith and works by Chuck D and Neil Gaiman. 

To the barricades -- patiently, part two

Me and a couple other big fellas were designated stretcher-bearers. A message came to someone with a walkie-talkie that the ambulances had arrived. We picked up our litter and headed outside, not quite sure what we'd find. Our patient was a kid like us, looking small and innocent with a bloody white towel pressed to his head.

Two cops flanked the ambulances. They told us to leave the kid and the blanket and get the hell out of there. We were good at following orders. Inside, we grabbed the next wounded and headed for another ambulance. The cops were gone and the EMTs told us to load our patient. We did as were told. Unbeknownst to us, a newspaper photographer was documenting the scene. We did our job and hurried back inside. 

Once we stretcher-bearers delivered our wounded to ambulances, cops screamed that we better get inside or get our heads busted. At that very moment, cops were rampaging through the dorms knocking skulls. I just returned to the aid station and waited. For some reason, the police left us alone or didn’t know we were there. When things seemed calmer, we drifted away to find some shelter. I walked across the street and headed to my dorm on the other end of campus. A lone armed National Guardsman waited by the cross street. I asked him if I could make it back to my dorm about a quarter-mile away. He was thoughtful. “You might make it but no guarantee.” He looked like my younger brother Dan. 

I skittered over to my friend’s place at the PIKA House. The Pikes had watched the action from their balcony and drained a couple kegs in the process. I slept on the floor and made tracks at dawn. It was a beautiful spring morning in Columbia. I saw no cops or Guardsmen. The littered streets, gleaming with spent canisters and glass shards, had been swept clean. I had to hand it to the USC administration, more effective in riot-cleansing than in making it easy to register for classes.

When I settled into my dorm cafeteria and opened the morning paper, I saw myself in a big photo above the fold. Uh oh, I said to my grits. 

"What's up?" asked my dorm R.A. Nice guy but one of the senior NROTC officers. 

Nothin'. Just reading about all the news from last night. 

He took a closer look at the photo and said, "fuckin' hippies." 

"Yeah," was about all I could muster. He left and I felt like collapsing into my breakfast. The tallest guy in the photo was me. I wore a bandana on my head, a long sleeve shirt, and bell bottoms I fashioned from regular jeans, sewing some psychedelic fabric into the cuff to give it some flair. It was me. Nobody would know unless I told them. So I kept my secret.

A  few days later I hopped in a van with friends and we drove to the big D.C. demonstrations. A massive crowd, mainly peaceful. My fellow students were hyped up by the event’s vibes. Some were arrested blocking streets and putting up a barricade at the Key Bridge. I stayed away. I was there and not there. I was against the war, mainly any chance I had flying to Ton Son Knut. I didn’t really know the bigger picture and still don’t after decades studying U.S. history. Campuses all over the country had erupted that week. Outside agitators were suspected. Jane Fonda had brought the fight to USC and other campuses. I went to D.C. the following spring for the May Day demos, “Days of Rage.” My friend Rick was arrested for blocking traffic and herded like cattle into RFK Stadium with hundreds of others. I was at the Washington Monument, tripping and listening to the bands who played all night.

We were trying to figure things out along with other Boomer kids who also were there for a good time. There was no future but only a now. We didn’t think ahead to repercussions.

These past weeks, students at Columbia, Arizona State, University of Florida and others have been in the same boat. They seek a better world and a good time, as did I. That is made harder by the militarization of our police.

What they haven’t learned yet is how damn hard it is to make a real difference in the world. It takes lifetimes.

To the barricades – patiently, part one

Antiwar protests on college campuses are in the news and it’s no longer 1970. In the spring of 2024, young people are objecting to Israel’s handling of the war and the ensuing mass casualties. They also are upset that their universities may be funding Israel’s excesses through investments and other business ties. There are also protests by those who support Israel objecting to a 19-year-old getting involved in politics and saying bad things about Israel. It’s as ridiculous to say that criticism of Israel is antisemitic as its is if you decry Hamas you are Islamophobic.

You don’t have to know every single thing about this war to go out on the streets and check it out. Young people gather for events all of the time. It’s exciting. Their friends are there. The police look amazing in their U.S. Army castoff riot gear and their giant riot trucks once used to quell disturbances in Fallujah. That’s a lot of adrenaline surging through demonstrators’ bodies and things happen. Still, most protestors have been peaceful. I cannot say the same thing about NYC and Boston cops.  

I am a Baby Boomer who saw his first antiwar protest in the spring of 1970. I was a ROTC midshipman and I went to the demo instead of the annual Navy Ball. My dorm friends were going outfitted with gas masks and scarves to take the sting out of tear gas and pepper gas. I went with them to campus where all the action was going to be. Tear gas flew and the S.C. state cops rushed the demonstrators applying their batons to longhair’s heads.

We fled into the dorm complex and ended up in a restroom being used as a first aid station. Men and women were jammed in and those with even a tiny bit of first aid experience helped administer to those with cracked skulls, eyes blinded by gas, and asthmatics struggling to breathe. One guy had been a medic in Vietnam this time the year before. Others like me had been Boy Scouts and knew enough first aid to patch broken scalps.

An ambulance arrived outside and I was drafted (Hah – drafted) to pick up the wounded in makeshift stretchers and carry them outside. One was my buddy Pat who’d sliced off the top of his index finger when picking up a broken bottle to throw at the cops. Yes, there were young people on this night of nonviolent protest who threw broken bottles at cops and picked up tear gas canisters and threw them back.

We were demonstrators once, and young.

End of part one

The biopsy van stops here

Crash

Grief clouded my sight and

I rear-ended the van bearing biopsies

Bound for the cancer lab, one of them snipped

From my wife. The rear door flew open

I expected an avalanche of plastic bags, little slips

Of skin, viscous liquids, knobby tumors. But

nothing. And then a blooming flower, pink and white, on

a long green stem grows through the open door.

Out of the open door amidships

More blooms, others bright with purples and white

And oranges, many colors, fanciful shapes.

I knew then everything would be all right, there

Were no ugly lab-bound surprises, just a field of

Flowers at their peak, gloriously and forever alive.

A podcast asks: What Should I Read Next? "Florida" by Gainesville writer Lauren Groff

I almost literally ran into fiction writer Lauren Groff outside the Tallahassee Marriott. I was chatting with my sister Molly, the pusher (of my wheelchair) and there was Groff, big as life and very noticeable in her pantsuit of many colors. My sister Molly stopped the wheelchair and chatted with Groff as if they were old friends but just met at the authors' table buying books for me, the Groff fan who attended her session at Word of South, the city's spring celebration of literature and music. "Is this him?" Groff pointed at me. Molly replied, "That's him." Me (a.k.a. him) was pleased that she knew my name and that I was a grad of UF where Lauren teaches writing. "I love your stories."

I was referring to her National-Book-Award-nominated "Florida" with a native Florida panther on the cover. Most stories in the collection are set in Florida (no surprise there) and they are knock-your-socks-off wonderful. I keep the trade paperback on my bookshelf within reach of my Wyoming writing desk where I write this now.

A few weeks ago I reread the opening story "Ghosts and Empties" about a working woman and mother who slips on her running shoes and prowls her Gainesville neighborhood at night. Why? "I have somehow become a woman who yells..." She hooked me right there. That is the joy of any fiction, the opener, one that delivers.

The next story, "At the Earth's Imagined Corners," is even better in an entirely different way. We leave contemporary Florida for the 1930s and '40s in rural Florida "at the edge of a swamp with unnamed species of reptiles." It's a tough one, filled with rage and unnamed reptiles. "Dogs Go Wolf" features two young girls abandoned by their parents on a Florida island. Uh oh, I thought, fearing the worst. The girls turn their dilemma into an adventure and the ending may surprise.

During our afternoon at the Marriott ballroom, we saw a rendition of "Peter and the Wolf" performed by the South Georgia Ballet Company. Following that, we heard from three experts on what we should read next. After that, Groff was interviewed by Anne Bogel for her podcast, "What Should I Read Next?" We discovered that Groff was set to open an indie bookstore in Gainesville, a "general interest bookstore” that emphasizes banned books, BIPOC authors, LGBTQ+ authors, and Florida authors."

My kind of bookstore. It's located at 601 Main Street, part of the new South Main Station. Groff's husband, Clay Kallman, grew up working at his parents' Florida Bookstore where I bought "gently-used" paperbacks for my English classes. As Groff told the Independent Florida Alligator: “We were hoping to respond to the recent authoritarian slide in the state of Florida right now,” Groff said, “and to respond with celebration of a lot of the books that are currently being banned.”

Amen and hallelujah.

Progress like it or not

The old homestead ain't what it used to be.The road named for great-grandfather Richard Ball is now Tymber Creek Road and yes, that's Tymber with a Y and Grandma Rose the schoolteacher would not stand for this kind of spelling no matter how high-and-mighty the home builders want to be. The road is four-lane instead of two-lane beat-down blacktop. The sign at the entrance reads Tymber Creek Riverside with no attempt to change any other innocent i. A few car-lengths in is a guard shack flanked by lighted gates and a sign "Residents only!!!" and another one "Protected by Simpson Security." Mary leans forward, "What kind of nonsense is this?" I say probably rich man's nonsense. The driver behind me honks. I look through the rearview at a long-haired teenager in a big SUV. In the old times, drivers didn't honk to move you along because it could be Uncle Wilt, R.I.P., who drove a rusty red GMC equipped with a fully-loaded rifle rack. We forget our visit to the old house site where three generations of Balls grew up. Our youngest, Tim, says from the backseat that his pal Ron's dad has a fancy drone he uses to scout for Civil War artifacts and we might be able to see the contours of the house's foundation or the barn or maybe the dock on the Little Tomoka you used to fish from. Tim always has good ideas and sure we might see the house's ghostly outline but what's the point really? Things will change like it or not.

A visitor looks for signs of Florida Man.

I have been here two weeks and still haven't seem Florida Man. I was looking for him Saturday at the beach and saw a very big man in a tiny bathing suit barbecuing under a shelter half. He gripped a forbidden beer in one hand and a bbq implement in the other. The sun was feasting on his bald head and body. Next to the shelter was a huge pickup (you can drive on some parts of the beach) festooned with U of Alabama and Roll Tide stickers. Alabama tourists are welcomed here, I'm told, but Roll Tide stickers are verboten. I daw a young guy in a T-shirt and shorts riding a zoomy street bike weaving in and out of I-95 traffic. No helmet, of course. Freedom! Thing is, you. can see the same thing in Wyoming on I-80. In the summer. Thst's about it so far. At a Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, a robot served us lunch. The robot showed no signs of Florida Man Syndrome.

Mr. Ripley is coming for your gold but not your woman

I was not all agog about Nexflix's "Ripley" as I was for "Three Body Problem" or "Shogun." I became a dedicated viewer of "The Bear" only after I discovered it was not a reality series about a Michelin-star chef who yells a lot. Carny does yell but he's charming and disturbed and well-played by Jeremy Allen White. Ripley's Andrew Scott is a charmless murderer who is inventive enough to keep us watching for the next clever twist. The European settings and black-and-white camera work are amazing. I've never been so fascinated by aerial shots of trains chugging through Italy. It was 1961, after all, and 2024 shots of high-speed trains racing through the countryside would not have the same effect. The movie imbues Tom Ripley with six of seven deadly sins. A sexual lust is not part of him. The lust for gold, yes, but no sign of libido even when he lures the beautiful Marge (Dakota Fanning) into the Venice digs of legendary libertine artist/murderer Caravaggio. Envy, greed and the others are integral parts of Mr. Ripley. Tom flees his dreary NYC life through happenstance. He doggedly pursues everything that comes after. Marge and Richard Greenleaf are U.S.-bred Eurotrash. They drink fine wines and live in a lush townhouse that overlooks the azure Med. On the surface bobs Richard's fine sailboat. Ripley wants all of it. Tension builds around how he will get it. I was entranced most of the eight hours and sometimes just patient. It is gorgeous in high-def b&w and owes a lot to post-war European directors and cinematographers Take it slow, as you would a pricey wine.

There will come a time when lizards will again rule the planet

i have seen maybe a dozen alligators since I came to Florida 10 days ago. Most were seen on a boat tour at Wakulla Springs near Tallahassee.They are scary, magnificent beasts with an ancient lineage. Imagine you are an early Spanish explorer, a puny human, coming across one as you navigate the swamps of the new world. "Alligator," you might say. That translates to "lizard." according to our tour boat captain. "The lizard," he added for emphasis. King Lizard, or so says this marsuding conquistidor who most likely will die from malaria and not lizard. Large lizards have starred in famous films. "Journey to the Center of the Earth" featured lizards attacking explorers deep in the earth. One of then was Debby Boone's pops Pat. He crooned his way put of the encounter. A lizard attacked King Kong and regretted it. Is Godzilla part lizard or just mutant lizard? The Creature from the Black Lagoon looked lizard- and amphibian-like. Lore at Wakulla Springs says the first-time actor who donned the rubber Creature costume survived and devoted so much time to Friends of Wakulla that his ashes were scattered at the film site. I've viewed some YouTube videos of King Lizard and the Gizzard Wizard. They are quite convincing in their human-skin outfits. But you can't fool me.

We got trouble, trouble, right here in Beach City

Chris and I are looking forward to our April trip to Florida. Both of us did some of our growing-up on Florida's east coast, Daytona Beach for me and Ormond Beach for her. Daytona was (and is) a beach town with all of the trappings: beachside motels and souvenir shops, lots of bars, and a very nice beach. Daytona also has the speedway for auto races. 

Ormond begins just north and it was looked at as the more genteel neighbor. We went to the Ormond beaches when Daytona's were crowded. The beach sand was deeper and less drivable, but most of it was open to surfers with the main destination the Ormond Pier. If you go further north, there is Ormond-by-the-Sea which is a bit redundant and then Flagler Beach, named for the robber baron railroad magnate of the 19th century. 

Flagler used to be a funky little beach town with a good surfing pier but growth has changed it. Palm Coast development is in Flagler County and it replaced thousands of acres of wildlands. For one of my jobs, I used to drop by city and county offices to get lists of building permits and then rush over to Orlando to type all of it into The Construction Report, printed and distributed each Friday. It wasn't really writing but kind of fun.

In case you didn't know, construction is big business in Florida. Big, big business. Florida's big challenge, besides its dingbat governor and legislative troglodytes, is people trying to find affordable home insurance. They could be cast into the homeless by the next climate-change-caused hurricane which can't possibly exist due the state's GOP-heavy legislature banning teaching anything like it in school. I grew up by the beach and we had sand dunes then, created by the Lord Almighty to blunt the impact of big storms' tendency to wash tons of sand back into the ocean. 

The so-called peninsula I lived on is a barrier island. It is supposed to serve as barrier to tropic thunder. It did for many millennia before promoters decided they could make beaucoup bucks by selling plots of sand to Howard Johnson's and Steak-n-Shake and Americans bent on living the dream. I lived that dream and it does seem dream-like to me now, a retired bureaucrat in Wyoming. 

It was a beautiful place to grow up. We surfed by day and waited on tourists at night. Me and my eight brothers and sisters grew up freckled and barefoot, one of the wandering tribes of Daytona. We had a home to go to but, as time passed and my parents got older and more frazzled, we were turned loose to have fun but not get into trouble. We mostly succeeded.

If I sound sarcastic in my Florida appreciation, I sound like this all of the time. Chris has a whole different set of beachside stories. Most involve teens getting fake IDs at 16 and going into tourist bars. They had fun but didn't get into too much trouble, or so she says. 

We were readers once, and young

Chris, Annie, and I took in “Dune 2” at the Capitol City Digital Cinemas LUXX Studio Theater. It’s new. Not quite as fancy as the ARQ Theater and a step up from one of the boring standard spaces. We sat in handicapped seating in the second row. There’s a first row but you have to recline and bend your neck to take it all in. The place wasn’t packed although there was a chatterbox who sat a few rows behind us. We took him out with one of those wicked Fremen bazookas. I enjoyed the movie, thankful that the story moved along quickly and I didn’t notice the passing of 180 minutes. Long movies used to have an intermission. That’s gone the way of Ben Hur’s chariot. I plan to write a nasty letter to someone about this.

In my youth (early 1970s), I was a Frank Herbert fan and read “Dune” and “Dune Messiah.” Many of my friends read the books. We were readers, absorbing Vonnegut, Heller, and Tolkien, even Heinlein. My roommate was a former outlaw biker from Milwaukee who had to leave his hometown for some reason he didn’t want to share. My landlord was a friend who lived next door in a matching concrete block house. He worked in construction. His roomie was my brother who also worked construction – there was a lot of it in Daytona Beach those days – and he eventually got fed up with banging nails and joined the USAF. I worked as an orderly in the county hospital by night and attended community college by day. We all were readers and enjoyed talking about books over beer and weed. On weekends, we were in and on the water.

“Lord of the Rings” was probably the favorite. Fantasy and adventure, cool characters like the Ents, Orcs, and Gandalf. We really had no sense that Mordor was created from Tolkien’s war memories. We knew about the war origins of Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” because he writes about it in the introduction. War had been on our minds quite a lot those days. I had not yet read the great novels by Vietnam vets as they didn’t yet exist. I had no concept of what war could do to the psyche. Tolkien fought in the far-off Great War and Vonnegut (and my father) were in the now-ancient war against totalitarianism. Those battles may loom large as this election season approaches.

“Dune” was a favorite because of the turmoil of Paul Atreides and the giant sandworms of Arrakis. That was the part of “Dune 2” that thrilled me and I could watch again. The Fremen and Paul ride the sandworms! Amazing special effects. Our seats shook. This was also my favorite part of the novel, Paul and the Sandworms. Herbert did a great job creating them and Denis Villenueve and crew recreated them wonderfully. These characters and creatures invented by writers and recreated on the screen became a part of us, a part of me.

One other result of all of this reading. We were steeped in satiric humor and (I haven’t yet mentioned “Catch-22”) the ridiculousness of being human. Billy Pilgrim reacts (or he doesn’t) as he time travels through absurdity. Yossarian does everything he can to cheat death. He is flummoxed at every turn. Paddling in a small boat from a small island in the Med to neutral Sweden may seem crazy until Yossarian finds out his tentmate Orr has accomplished it. He ridicules Orr throughout, wants to bonk him on the head for his endless fiddling with the tent stove and his absurd stories. He won’t fly with Orr because he crashes all the time. Turns out, that was Orr’s way of practicing for his desertion. Yossarian runs away in the book and sets out on a tiny dinghy in the movie. I thought it was unfortunate that in the last episode of Hulu’s “Catch-22,” Yossarian flies off on yet-another mission in a B-25.

I really liked “Masters of the Air.” I did wonder in one episode what Yossarian might make of the Bloody Hundredth. On one mission to Munster, only one of the unit’s planes makes it back to base. Earlier, we see others on fire and many airmen in their chutes trying to escape. The novel’s Yossarian spends three years in combat on 55 missions. His commanding officers want to make pilots fly 80 missions which means Yossarian may never get home. He runs.

Flying 80 combat missions may seem outrageous. Rosie in “Masters” flies his 25 missions and is cleared to go home. He tells his C.O. he will stay on to lend his experience to the new, untested pilots. The C.O. then tells him that the men will have to fly more missions and keep flying. They will be targets, a lure to bring up the Luftwaffe to get shot down by our swift long-range fighter planes like the  P-51 Mustang. The C.O. says something like “we plan to sweep the Luftwaffe from the skies for the coming invasion.” Rosie flies 52 missions and survives.

They were brave and many died. It does remind me of Yossarian’s observation: “The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”

Poetry Monday: The Letter is in the Wind

The Letter is in the Wind

I could dry up and blow away before

A letter arrives

I drag a lawn chair to a breadbox of a mailbox

The kind 1950s teens used for bathing practice

I sit, and imagine letters

Dear Mike: My love is like a red, red rose.

Mike, I miss you terribly I ache with it

I would gladly read whatever missive lands here even

The bad or sad news

Michael, dear: F--- you and the horse you rode in on

Note: my asthma acts up around livestock

Mike: Grandma died today. She was surrounded by

Friends and family and you

Were not one of them

Mike: Our dog Zeke got run over by the truck delivering

Your Christmas package, the box containing the latest

Brautigan book and a chew toy for foundling Zeke.

I would read them all, even the letter that promised

A scholarship in a far-off place and an ensign’s gold bar

A job as reporter in a strange city that will have

Plenty of stories and you will be lonely.

Dear Sir: You too could be a winner!

As I said, I will read them all perched along the

Lonely rural blacktop named Expectations Road.

In which Covid catches up with me and I ask: What if?

I remember how careful we were during the first weeks of the Covid-19 plague. We got our groceries delivered, left on the porch or (if snowing) just inside the front door. The deliverer wore a mask and we work masks. We brought the groceries into the kitchen and wiped them down with disinfectant and, early on, wiped down each plastic and glass container. They told us that was SOP now, be careful, don't let this coronavirus sneak into your home, invade your nose or mouth, and send you to the hospital where you might not make it out alive. The grocery stores ran out of disinfectant wipes and spray and toilet paper. Our neighbor's son, just back from overseas wars, felt challenged by the circumstances and prowled the town looking for TP -- and usually found some, maybe a few rolls or a four-pack but nothing like the eight-pack we use in the average week. He was a master scrounger, much like James Garner's character in The Great Escape and the plucky William Holden in Stalag 17. In the latter film, Marshal Dillon's brother, Peter Graves, turns out to be a Kraut spy, which made sense with his Nordic good looks. Arness, meanwhile, went to war and was wounded at Anzio and returned to become a vegetable-like alien electrocuted by the good guys in 1950's The Thing (watch the skies!) and showed his range by becoming all-around good guy Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke. 

But I digress. We took precautions in those pre-inoculation days. We stayed home. When we did leave the house, we wore whatever masks we could find such as the Colorado Rockies masks I found online late one night. Family members got their first shot in February, followed by another in May. There was something about that shot that gave me some hope, took me be back to a childhood where it was our patriotic duty to fight polio with infused sugar cubes and later lining up for shots at my elementary school. The scientists were in their labs! There was nothing Americans couldn't do! We soon would be practicing our golf swing on the moon!

Crazy days, right? I skated through, avoided the plague like the plague. It was so nice when life opened up again, when we could convene at the movies or at concerts. We went through some political difficulties when Prez T thought the plague was all made up and did almost nothing EXCEPT get the vaccines rolling out to all Americans or at least all Americans that weren't anti-vaxxers. He gets credit for that but it helped little in the election even though he had experts such as Rudy Giuliani and The Pillow Guy as advisors. Then came the pre-inauguration Capitol Riots and finally a president that believed in science and wasn't a buffoon.

Which brings us to today. My son brought Covid home and we all caught it. This surprised me as I had received five Covid immunizations including the 2023 booster and, for good measure, was inoculated against the seasonal flu and RSV. I shouldn't be sick, but I am. At the tail end of this thing, I hope. In our household of four, I am the only one still testing positive. Beginning in the second week of 2024, I accumulated the symptoms until I finally understood that I had a case of Covid. I thought I had Covid. We had used up all of our antigen tests so we ordered free ones from the Feds which took seven days to arrive and then paid for tests that rapidly flew off the shelves. I needed a trip to the hospital ER to get a Covid test. And I was positive. Hey doc, I asked the bleary-eyed resident, what are my treatment options? We have nothing for you, he said. I thought he was kidding but he was not. I was not eligible for the Paxlovid-type infusions my daughter was getting. Heart patients don't tolerate it, said the doc. And I am a heart patient. So, my treatment regimen became Tylenol for headaches and body aches, Mucinex DM and Robitussin for my hacking coughs, and don't forget to take your cardiac meds. He also said I should drink plenty of liquids and try some chicken soup. 

They released me into the wild and I still test positive which keeps me at home. I sit by the window and watch the snowflakes fall. Today the flakes are melting, providing nourishing H20 to my flower bulbs. 

I am lucky. I welcomed those Moderna-made shots into my body and for the most part they did their job. I am sobered by the fact that I was very sick for 26 days. If I caught it in Covid's early days, I would have been very, very sick. I am in Covid's bullseye. I am an elderly man with a heart condition. Covid would have ripped through me as it did with so many. I lost my stepmother and two of my high school friends. Millions died. We don't actually know the real numbers due to some of the lunkheads in charge of our larger states, DeSantis and Abbott to name two. I thought about this at 3 a.m. when a cough woke me up and sent me out to meditate in my easy chair. 

What if? 

It's time again for the Wyoming Governor's Arts Awards

This time every year the Wyoming Arts Council hires me to write the story on the annual Governor's Arts Awards recipients. Some of them I know from my 25 years working at the Wyoming Arts Council. Others are new to me.

I have worked or met all the 2023 awardees:

Mary Jane Edwards, recently retired director of the Jentel Foundation

The Munsick Boys, a father and his three sons from Sheridan County finding inventive ways to thrive in the music world

Geoffrey O'Gara, filmmaker and author from Lander

Milward Simpson, a live theatre guy in Cheyenne who was my former boss at State Parks and Cultural Resources

Mike and Jane Sullivan, Mike as Wyoming governor 1987-1993, and Jane as First Lady 

A great list. I learned a lot interviewing them by phone. We didn't do the Zoom thing as I am much more phone-friendly than Zoom-friendly. My background is in journalism and feature writing. I have interviewed hundreds of people remotely and in person. I prefer face-to-face but it's not always possible. For this assignment, I needed a firm desk to take notes as my right hand is still not behaving properly due to ulnar nerve surgery. Thus, my handwriting is worse than it ever was -- and that's saying a lot. People have looked at my notebook and asked: "Is this your kind of shorthand?" I usually answer in the affirmative, labeling my method Shay Script which sounds better that terrible penmanship. 

There's another aspect to the story. The nuns taught me cursive. When I began roaming around to find stories, I recorded interviews in cursive. I couldn't read it when I got back to my desk. I switched to printing when I began reporting for my college newspaper. Instead of long swoops and swirls, I now could just abbreviate words with a few letters and be able to translate it at the other end.  I sometimes get confused but that is what phone and e-mail and Internet are for.

I learned a few things. Mike Sullivan is a James Joyce fan and tickled Bloomsday fans in Dublin reciting snippets from "Ulysses" while wearing cowboy duds. There is a thing called cowboy rap which I discovered interviewing musician Tris Munsick. He sent me to YouTube to see his brother Ian's performance at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Ian brought his buddy Ryan Charles on stage and he rapped cowboy and the fans down in the pit loved it. Mary Jane Edwards has retired twice, once as a UW faculty member, and once as executive director of the Jentel Foundation and its artist residency program. She now is officially retired, or so she says.

Those are just a few tidbits from the features you can read in the February edition of Artscapes Magazine. I am busily translating and transcribing my notes. Wish me luck.

You will hear from the recipients at the annual awards gala on Feb. 23 at Little America in Cheyenne. Order your tickets here.