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The place was Memphis, had been for the longest of times. We all knew this was a lie,
but we went along with it. You know how it is: all those movies with Egyptians, their
skinny little snakes and knives, brick making, jew chasing; all that shit was fed to us
in passing lumps that we believed because there wasn™t much choice it the matter.
No one disbelieves the essence of their own childhood, except perhaps the Lutherans.
Not many Lutherans in Memphis though, Theo. ran the Catholic church from across the
street, in a small back room of the butcher shop. He was a shitty little man, always
cussing at nothing and prodding at the truth as if it was his personal mule. Now looking
back at it all, there might even be some truth in that. Theo. had red eyes and odd
worms coming out of his ears. Red and I tried to guess the cause of the worms, but
we had no success at it. Others spoke of Theo., but not the worms. The Catholics had
a school to go along with the church, the students wore matching suits and were good
at sports. We particularly admired the girls because they wore short pleated skirts
and it was great sport to look up those dresses on windy spring days. Theo controlled
the school also, and we greatly admired his choice of uniforms.
Theo wasn™t the only freak about these environs, to be true to it all; he was fairly
normal compared to a good many. I could tick them off, but to make a list wouldn™t do
em justice.
Casey lived next door and ate baby cats, he had plenty. He worked on the railroad and
had a big dick. When not sleeping all day, he hung out with Bear who was a retarded
black guy, big as a moose, and was smitten with modern jazz: which was a good
reason for most to think him retarded at that time. It was Bear that turned me on to
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, on and on.
Bear had a brother, named Walter who was way wicked. In those days it seemed that
most people had a mean brother of some sort. James had a brother that was truly evil
and insane, a potent combination in a time when the only ready form of physcho drug
was booze or reds. Theo™s business associate in the religious business was called
Wildroot, that wasn't his name just a monicker, but was highly connected to the chief
bullgoose loonies in rome, new york, boston and new orleans. It was whispered that
he ran a whorehouse in new orleans, but like Theo™s worms; this subject was
considered ut of the field o basic redneck gentleman.
Down the street from our house lived Mrs. miller, who was a catholic and had a lesbian
daughter and some collies. She was one scary bitch.
As we got a little older, we did some pretty mean shit to her; or
we thought so at the time. Dad and Granddad built a brick wall around the back yard,
they said it was for œambiance, but we knew it was to keep the freaks out. I think it
functioned more to focus the freaky energy into a small space, but I have no empirical
knowledge of that: just a long lasting combination of pain and numbness in my balls.
Not that its there all the time, but it has come and gone since the sunday morning in the
Ozark mountains when the existential truth about basic bullshit seeped into my
awareness. That was one long fuckin day, but then again: there seemed to be allot of
those kinda long days then. Not so long ago I used a satellite web thingy to zoom in
on the old homestead,,,that fucking wall is still there.
Growing up in this mische en schine of angst, hatred, dreams and the insanity of the
inbred; was a series of negotiations and ontological revelations. It was only in being
gone and returning could I develop a bit of perspective on this. So, what follows is
a series of vignettes, as random in the telling as the living of. But I lie, as always. For
it was designed to appear random at the time; a means to confuse, obsficate and dodge.
I have come to believe now that it was a gritty, gut wrenching precursor of what we now
call video gaming, or virtual reality. This was played out in an odd way in an odd time,
with astronauts, evangelists, chromonasonal abnormalities, deviant kron winches,
black blues cats who sold there souls, young men who fought hitler on the continent,
cotton men of note going insane from their wives™ chatter, bar b Que. with heroin in it,
the explosion of pop culture inside a wall designed to keep it away....away for all time.
Time was the error, for like some vonnegut tale; it was the slippery eel of time that was
the normative agent in the action: even the hands behind the game didn™t know with
which they played. some simple tales that make no sense.
James big brother was adopted and older. His parents had lucked into some amount of
money via hard work, cunning, and accounting tricks. It was this big brother that Elvis
stole his schtick from. we though it was kinda cool, before he made it. But when he
did, this added to the insanity of the older brother. He was already plenty nuts. He
used to seek out the more inhibited kids at the park, buy them popsicles and then tie
to a tree and cut them with his very sharp knife. this went on for years and progressed
into all manner of debauchery. No one wanted to break his mom™s heart. I™ll never
forget the last time I saw him: he was driving a shitty 56 plymouth down the street,
with one front wheel missing; fighting the wheel with sparks and asphalt flying.
Ultimately, he smashed into a cop car and spent thirty days in what my dad called:
œThe Shelby County country club.
He joined the marines got kicked out before basic was over and
died a mysterious death on an untoward movie set in the Hollywood hills. Elvis is
dead too, the meta programer works long hours: the game itself has worms imbedded.
Mr Fred ran a very small bar b que joint, he had been a tanker in the battle of the bulge
and had a big nose and caddy even bigger. there was four stools and two tables, which
were mostly empty except me and James. The drive-up had a steady line of
customers who were served so rapidly it made us wonder why it took us so long to get
a bar b que sandwich. this, another mystery to young dumb boys of no meaningful
breeding or promise. Stan was the man manning the drive up chores: a young, tall
black guy in his twenties who spoke with a most strange twang for a black man of
that day and place. He moved without effort, passing paper packages out the funky
slide up glass window with clear tape on the cracks; the cars lined up large and clean.
One day we came unto the bar b que place to find it surrounded by state troopers, and
occupied by men in ill fitting gray suits, we were nabbed and gray guys flashed the fbi
credentials and asked questions. It turns out that œStan was from Ghana and was a
fairly minor drug dealer, selling heroin in the bar b que.
Fred got out on an ignorance plea and fled town. Stan was not so lucky, he got serious
time upstate.
That was the end of the bar b que shop , and the sad beginning in the death of a
metaphorical culture that lived in a sacred box in the basement of the Catholic church.
Without the ease of easy bar b que james and I ventured further afield, our worlds
expanded by this romantic metaphor of southern culture.
My grandfather had been the anchor of my life in this plumbers bad dream of hot wires.
But, as we fanned out in supposed search of bar b que, something in the old man had
changed; it was brain cancer accompanied with the increasing doses of morphine to
dull his spirit dulling pain. It really sucked to see. I would be hard put to describe the
love and respect I had for my grandfather,,, even to this day. But, the cheap
corkscrew of pain continued to wind its metal curly cue though the synapses of his
cortex: it was worser than having no easy, bar b que shop at hand. A metaphor could
be drawn from induction in this matter: the rest is but the bad dream of all of us. The
old man shriveled in pain, then came the brain burnt insanity; and he finally died.
For me, the act of his death and the nature of it was the beginning of œaccidental
existentialism.
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