jan 14 Mon Plus The Tired Lion

I said like a hair salon. And now I'm thinkin' Tired Lion.

Oh my God, a flash. I was cleaning out the garage...a bat here, a discarded shovel there and there's Bren's gun on it's side, laying down.

and then i thought he never plays with that anymore. and then I thought of BB guns. and i went into a swoon in the past, that gun i bought James Jeremy.

i haven't heard beans from him voice wise since his oldest son was born...but i thought of the first conversaz he had with me when he called my Seward phone number and I talked with him at length and i remember saying "Remember that BB gun you bought me?" and i said yes, of course i did. and then he went on to say that it was right there in front of him.

i still have those early letters. he was looking for some remuneration--aren't we all? and they were well written and moving and an overture of friendliness but once he found out that hit will take a few hog sheds to clean and not a little time to prove your worth and merit insofar as you don't mind one bit grinding feed and cleaning out a shed or two that maybe then...but, understand, son, you've got to get with the blood..

and how his dad and he went out into the mountains and shot it.

i do remember having to go out of my way to get it packaged. it was that toy store not too far from the Chelsea hotel where Mark and I hooked up with some fairly good quality mary jane though today it probably wouldn't meet the standard or excellence.

and then i thought, lookin' at J's dad, how maybe he might've thought, "Well, what have i done for my daughter?" but blackstone was much more interesting, outgoing. it wasn't the hard cold hatred.

and they went out in the mountains and shot the bb gun and that was a good gift...maybe it was the only one I got that was of any note sent out there--far and few between, one doesn't know what avenues to explore (Legal Aid and trying to get that going then Dakota County and Judge Frank Kniefl, like the stuff of high sentence and nonsense wouldn't hold or hear the case my own overtures and then sandy inkster finally bringing it to bear but it was a court date and I should've let the judge hear it...when i was back in Ne from the NY Timex.

what that idiot inkster done was not once talking about my head injury that i was, when all was said and done, disabled. and, less than a year away from my accident, a divorce staring me in the face--what the fuck. oh no, she was like "You gotta pay up." and so that I was dutifully bound and swore to do. However, as a college student, living in NYC, the spirit is willing but the flesh, she be weak. That ding bat inkster, i always thought. Never thought to bring the medical records to court. Which was probably the biggest and largest mountain us head injured folk has got to climb.

Gee, it's hard to tell.

but then i thought last night, and i meant to rise from my slumber and put in that sudden flash of superiority.

She said, "When the going gets tough, the tough get awesome." it was in encouragement to her brother David who daughter was undergoing chemo for cancer. That's when I got the Dakota County Star, Uncle Pete from Pigeon Creek and all of us in our baleful innocence, the smoke coming out the chimneys, a farm every other hill or so, and no, that's when i never thought of myself being a writer but could see myself penning that easy prose and talking about some of the wiles of the country.

No, we don't get the star no more. but i see Aunt Margaret..Rod McKuen fame--we would delve in these horrific debates, me calling McKuen a chameleon a fake a phone, nobody ever figure out what was with her marrying this ignorant Pollock that was Hank the paper's editor who still has his hair parted like he always did, still a believer strong in replica politics....no, that's not what you'd call anything but your typical weekly....but, at any rate, the star in those days, when was it.

Dear Joby gives us all the post of when he moved back to Nebraska in 1994 and then, completed h.s., did the catholic school sojourn, headed on back. he gives me those dates and deadlines and what all.

But, at any rate, that's when the Ginties came back to these parts and built a house on the Dunes. I think there was some high favor. Blackstone said that he was at a party with M & K and he said "hi M" and M just ignored him. Blackstone, bein' an ole ironworker, and now married to Barb, M's former main squeeze before the parting of the seas between me and the missus why we just couldn't you know...did not get the greeting in return.

But, what I'm tryin' to say is they built the house on the hill or on the river in the Dunes very up and coming some very hot flashes of brilliance but part of that went away and, with the easing of time and the turning of the pages we see

"When the going gets tough/
The tough get awesome."

I know she was offering true inspirational message to her niece. But beyond that cloud, beyond what everybody knew, reading between the lines,

we have an RD interjection--is there a wait lifter around here" later "I can't wait to tell who I ran into." who would he tell. maybe nobody. but he was that part of So Sooo that after awhile, was pulling for the New York Times.

and back to that...Not a few of her peers read it. M's fellow classmates, the entourage that followed his success saw the way it shook out and then, thinking okay, victory here, that's for sure..

but then down the path a little, the pix of my two daughters in the Star, both running for the Cornhusker Flyers, both in their track outfits going to run for the national championships or high caliber stuff and then they thought again, Hey Hey Hey, check out this...and then they had to think who is the going and who is the tough.

oh my gosh. and now i'm thinkin. Did she sign it Aunt Kerry? No, she loved her name. She always thought a great deal about it, that core strength and I'm sure she just wrote Kerry. and this pissed people off all the more.

The tired lion.