The other week I walked outside the front door and sat on the stoop. Was on the phone, talking with my dad, back home on the farm, and figured I might as well try weeding, mainly since I was offended at the beds and heck, I was the man living here. So I start pulling out all those annoyances that have names and real taxonomy, but I call based on temperament or a rough sizing up of looks: alien trees, wheat, blueberry grass. As Pops was talking about pouring himself another nip, I about … [Read more...]
On Cuts.
Just now, I was able to book an appointment with a barber I’ve never met, to sit in a chair I’ve never seen, to give him jurisdiction of my crown for 15 minutes. I will give him $25 and I will leave. It will have been a transaction of necessity and ease and I will be back in a month. I will walk the cobblestone back to my office and will, for the rest of the day, shed. This will happen exactly four more times this year. I will remember getting my summer cut back in … [Read more...]
On a spring morning
George often wondered how many people in the city realize how much the life of the great city meant to him and countless others like him; how, long ago in little towns down South, there in the barren passages of night, they listened to the wheel, the whistle, and the bell; how, there in the dark South, there on the Piedmont, in the hills, there by the slow, dark rivers, there in coastal plains, something was always burning in their heart at night – the image of the shining city and the … [Read more...]
On the line.
When it would drop below freezing, the denim would become ice. My rec-league soccer shirt would stretch, pull at the collar, form a semicircle of crystals. Once I took a bat and swung at a frozen apron. It exploded. It was clean and it was red and it was in hundreds of pieces by the brick wall. We grew up without a dryer. There was a washing machine that looked like it was made during the Carter administration, in the small room in the back, that was beside the small enclosed porch, behind … [Read more...]
