Work: Down on the Farm

“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work” – Thomas Edison

My earliest memories associated with work are captured in three distinct images. The first is sliced apples. The second is stalks being chewed up in the combine. The third is bumblebees.

The Apple Slices

It doesn’t get any more American than this. Eating a packed lunch while sitting on a rock with your back resting against a huge, white barn door. The treat of the lunch was apple slices, which at that point of my life, fascinated me. We had an apple slicer, a metal one where you pushed down, and it cored and sliced the apple in one quick motion.

My brain tells me this is my first day of work. I might be five. I might be four. Heck, I might be younger. The little that I recall other than the apples slices is that it might be cloudy out, and it might be planting season.

The only possible reason this memory remains filed away with any importance has to be the lunch and the apple slices. I mean, you’re really a working man when you have a packed lunch and you eat it outside. Toss in your favorite snack, and that must have been the “bee’s knees.”

Before I get too far, I should explain. My father farms what is now a centennial farm – a farm owned by the same family for a century. Until I was five or six, he did this exclusively, but sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s, he was forced to take another job in town. My mother stayed at home to rear the three kids, take care of the house, and perform all the other work that probably went underappreciated.

The narrative in my mind says this is before my father took his day job – working at an animal feed mill – and for some reason, he was watching me while farming because my mother had something to do with my two older siblings.

I’d like to say there’s a big life lesson in this first image, but the closest thing I can garner is that it’s the first food association I make with anything. It’s sort of like how I think of noisy grade school lunchrooms when I eat a PBJ. It’s wonderful in the gold-shaded lenses of the memory, but at the end of the day, they were just apple slices or a sandwich.

The Corn Stalks

My mind plays funny tricks here because it tells me that those slices were ate on a day that seemed pretty spring like. There’s a dampness there, and that’s all I can recall. Yet, it also wants to tell me that later on I rode in the cab of the combine as my father picked corn.

As years later Tom would tell me after the election of Donald Trump that we live in the “Post-Truth” era, I think memory often forgets the truth. I certainly picked corn with my father at some point, probably not as often as I should have, and it’s possible it was the same day as the apple slices or the same day as I ate some apple slices, but not the ones in my memory.

I like to dramatize both scenes in my head. The eating of apples slices on a day with maybe threatening weather. The destruction of the stalks before me, as if my young mind was drawing some sort of deep meaning of life from the harvesting of a crop. I don’t know. I think there was always a part of me that feared farming. Maybe it was a voice – likely my mother’s – urging me not to get interested, but it’s not right to place that decision on my mother. I never wanted that work growing up, and maybe both of my memories are tinted with a bit of regret. In my mind, regret is tinted orange.

Mostly, I think farming scared me because of the bees.

The bumblebees

A few years ago, I was driving home after deadline during a time when I was serving as the assistant sports editor at Sauk Valley Media. From the start of the shift sometime in the afternoon to finishing the paper late in the evening, the world disappeared behind a wall of white snow. Never in my life have I been out in a storm like that, and hopefully I’ll never be driving in one like that again.

The headlamps on our Ford Ranger were devoured after only a few feet in the falling and blowing snow, and I made it about a half mile before slamming into an insurmountable drift. I wouldn’t discover until the next morning that I was driving almost four lanes farther to the left than I meant to be. This story probably comes up again later, as one of the times I risked my life for the sake of finishing a shift or completing a task.

After spending a few minutes trying to dig out, I returned to the warmth of the truck realizing I couldn’t risk walking back to the office because I’d either get lost in the blinding snow or get hit by a car. In those shivering moments, it came to me that if I weren’t very smart over the course of the next few minutes or hour, I just might not make it out alive.

When retelling the story, I’d like to throw out that it was the first time in my life I’d felt that sort of imminent danger. Until I started to think about the bumblebees, I thought I was telling the truth.

But the bumblebees were a danger and, even at a very young age, I sensed just how very real that danger was to that burning spark of life coursing through my limbs.

We’re back behind the barn for this one, and work is swirling around me as my father and my siblings unload a rack filed with bales of hay onto an elevator one bale at a time. The elevator carries the bales up toward a door and the loft behind.

I am wearing blue shorts. I am pretty sure about that, and the grass on the hill leading up to the barn is tall, maybe tall enough to reach over my head. Dreams of adventure dance through my head as I play and work commences in the world around me.

Then there is the buzzing, and it’s like the rest of the world stops. I freeze, nothing moves, except for the bees, which swarm around in angry circles. Below my feet is a hive. The buzzing drowns out everything else, and I focus on the tiny wings that flutter at god-awful speeds. The attacks come from all angles on my arms and my legs. I must cry out, because somehow others are alerted. I don’t hear my cries. I just hear the buzzing. I am scooped up by my father before the stings become too numerous and the buzzing fades.

I am certain death will be quiet except for one sound. I fear that sound will be buzzing for me.

As I look back, I realize that my time spent growing up on the farm was an opportunity, and not one I took great advantage of. It all seemed hot and dirty, and somewhere fluttering in the extremities of my senses lingered fear.

Four Curses: Part 1

Note: This started as a bit of free writing. My hope is to develop a longer narrative for this, but I don't know where it is going really. Enjoy.

 

The rain came just as Sarah commenced the latest battle in the long-standing war with the rusted, metal latch of the barn door. The barn, built with the sweat and ingenuity of her great-grandpa on her momma’s side, had a lean from tornado winds in ’78, and likely since then, the door latch stuck in the ring on the inside every morning, and that malady struck worse on days of rain, snow, wind, ice, sleet and, as grandpa liked to say, “on days when grasshoppers refuse to hop.”

From inside the barn, she could hear Gingersnap whinny and snort with impatience. Sarah pulled the hood of her slicker over her frazzled hair, glancing back toward the house, where only the light outside the front door glowed. Rose and Faith hadn’t woke when she left the house, and by some divine grace, appeared to be still in bed. All the better, Rose was old enough to handle herself, but the two together would have the house in tatters, if they woke while Sarah was doing chores.

The frigid raindrops slapped against her back like the icy fingers of death playing piano up her spine. She cursed the latch twice, using the “shit-fart” combination of the four family curses under her breath, before the latch clicked open as the wind changed direction. The door burst to life, and Sarah yelled, “Oh hell,” reaching out with both hands to catch the edge of the door as the wind tested the strength of the hinges. A stab of pain pulsated from her yellow work glove on her right hand, as her finger tips pinched down on one of the splinter-ridden boards. She hurried inside, managing to fight the wind to close the door and then force the latch into the ring with almost no trouble.

Flipping the switch, Sarah assessed the scene before her while pulling off her glove. Gingersnap, an aging draft horse, stuck his head out of his stall, the spots of white on his otherwise brown face looking grayer today than ever. He was blind in one eye, but never failed to see everything. A larger stall housed two quarter horses ­– Jack and Diane ­­– the forever bickering pair who were unhappy together and miserable when separated. The final stall on the far end housed Stinker, Rose’s pony, purchased by her papa when she was born. Stinker was probably sleeping, and like a kid being harassed to get ready for school, would want to remain that way when Sarah tried to lead her out of the barn to the pasture in a few minutes.

“Morning ya’ll,” Sarah said. “Oh, damn.” She added seeing the half-inch long splinter buried under the skin of her index finger.

Sarah studied the sliver, knowing it’d take tweezers to pluck it out, and thought about using the four curses. It had been in this very barn, up the ladder in the hay mow, where Grandpa John taught her the words. She was nine or ten, probably slightly younger than Rose, when the two sat down on one of the prickly bales of hay. This was before the barn had been converted for horses, and the main floor was filled with stanchions for their Holsteins. 

“You’re old enough for this,” Grandpa John said in that way he had of making a phrase both a statement and a question at the same time. He wore a pair of spectacles that were always spotted with dirt and his gray beard stretched in tangles down to his shirt collar. “Sometimes the world gives you a slap, sometimes a punch, and sometimes it drops the big bomb on you.”

“The bomb!” Sarah giggled.

“Now, hush,” he said. “When the world beats on you, whether it’s a tiny bit or a whole wagon load, it’s gonna make you want to say things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like the word your momma used soap to wash outta your mouth awhile back.”

“Oh.”

“I ain’t scolding you. The fact is you can’t run around screaming them words, but sometimes you need them just to fend off the world a bit.”

“Really?”

“It’s true. But some of them words are too naughty no matter what.”

“Really! Which ones?”

“Ha. I ain’t going to tell you, because I don’t use them. I only use four of them, and trust me, that’s all you’ll ever need. The rest can be for the rest.”

“Can I use them too!”

“Yeah, but they ain’t to be used all the time, you hear. Just when you need them. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good. Shit,” he said, and she giggled, “fart, hell, and damn. That’s all the curses you need.”

Sarah grabbed her stomach because it hurt as the giggle lost control, and she rolled off the hay bale they were sitting on.

Sarah smiled at the memory, but then repeated the four-word litany in her head again. Twenty years later, she was dripping wet while standing in the barn, knowing this is what grandpa had meant by the bomb. Her husband gone, leaving her for a single bedroom apartment in Lincoln and more freedom to spend evenings at The Corner Tap. Leaving her with two children to rear, a farmstead to manage, and these stubborn animals to feed. Sometimes the words didn’t feel like enough, but she used them just the same.

1,000 Word Challenge: Round Two - Curious Cat

Note: So didn't score points on first story posted below. Didn't have the best weekend to write this one, so unless this one surprises me and I get some luck, I'll likely be out after this one. Enjoy.

Synopsis: Catherine has arranged for a public meeting with an internet flame. As she waits for his arrival, she reconsiders risking her marriage and family for her carnal desires.

The ponies plodded dispassionately in a circle under the blazing sun. Some miserable child wailed on the back of one painted white and brown. The pony remained as disinterested in the ride, as the rider did in appeasing his parents. The mother and father, who circled with the animal and the wretched beast they’d created, snapped pictures with the hope of getting one with a smiling child. Catherine remembered similar experiences with her own children, and she knew the only will stronger than a parent insistent on projecting and producing an image of the perfect child was that of an obstinate toddler. Catherine pitied the pony the most. The poor thing was destined to traverse the same damn trail a million times at Buck’s Petting Zoo at the Eden County Fair.

She glanced down at her cellphone, pressing the button to get the time to flash across the screen. Only two minutes had passed since her last check. How long before he arrived? Would he be early, as she had been? Or was he a late arriver? Why the hell was she putting herself through this? Waiting out here in the sun for someone with the ludicrous screenname of “Silver Cobra” was antithetical of her normal behavior. Was her marriage so lame to resort to adultery via an internet hookup site? A willful voice she recognized from her own youth blared out “Yes,” in her head. She tried to silence it, thinking about his profile that simply stated that he was in his late twenties, tall, disease free, and into older women. She was older, in her forties, married for twenty-one years, and eager for something new, as she stated in her own profile under the name “Curious Cat.” Her husband always called her Cat, and the acidic taste of her betrayal rose in her throat.

The petting zoo meeting was her idea, since she didn’t expect that anyone in her circle of friends or family would be there. After the public meeting, she expected sex. At least, she supposed that was how internet hookups worked. Damn, where was he? Her nerves were wilting in the cursed heat.

She brushed her ponytail off her shoulder. Her strawberry mane was tied back with a neon green ribbon she’d borrowed from her teen daughter’s dresser. Her daughter liked wearing the ribbon in her hair to high school football games. Cat chased the thought away by walking toward the goat pen. Inside, kids of the two-leg and four-leg variety bolted around making frantic sounds. Two fat women were seated inside, testing the mettle of a pair of folding chairs. They jawed loudly back and forth to each other between sips from ridiculously sized fountain soda cups. One had a loaf of bread wrapped in plastic on her lap. It looked homemade, and maybe was some kind of specialty loaf like banana or zucchini.

“Anyhow, I got down to the cake walk, and the only damn thing left was this loaf of banana bread,” the Whale with the bread said. “Can you believe it?”

“Last year, I won that German chocolate cake. Me and Buck ate it up in one afternoon,” the other answered.

“You got all the damned luck.”

The two rested their jaws. Finally, the woman with the banana bread looked around and remarked.

“Ain’t it a shame these poor animals are caged up all day, and all they know to do is beg for food.”

Cat rolled her eyes and plodded toward a shade tree with a bench under it. An old black man sat alone at one end. The movement shifted her thoughts back to her intentions. She wasn’t one to deceive her husband, and it wasn’t like he deserved it. He didn’t beat her. Wasn’t mean. Didn’t cheat. Had a job, and treated the kids fine. So why was she risking messing it all up? The youthful risk-taking voice chimed in.

“You’re just tired of being led in circles.”

“Hush,” she responded in her own head. It wasn’t too late to run home. Instead, she plopped down on the wooden bench. The man, who wore a white cotton shirt with suspenders, wrinkled his face at her. It made him look like groundhog. Before them, a zebra paced back and forth in a pen.

“That ole boy misses bein’ free,” the man said and spit a wad of tobacco on the ground before his feet.

“What?”

“He’s got it worse than all of them.  All these other creatures don’t know no different, but he used to run free on the savannah. Now, they got him all caged up. It ain’t natural.”

The man finished his thought, and like he’d been waiting there just for the purpose of voicing it to someone, he stood slowly with cracking knees and a stooped back, and started at a snail’s pace down the path toward the fair’s midway. Before getting far, he turned back.

“It’s hell getting old,” he shouted.

She considered his words, gradually becoming aware of a figure moving on the opposite side of the zoo. She made out only a blur of a person between the fences and animals and people. All the objects melded together. In her heart, she knew it was him.
The figure continued to move closer, but she couldn’t make out his face. Her “Curious Cat” voice was screaming. Anticipation and apprehension twisted her stomach. She raised both her arms up and placed her hands on the back of her head. Her fingers touched the ribbon. She thought of her daughter. Of her son. Of her husband.
 
She pulled the ribbon from her hair. Looked at it. Looked up. Spotted his outline.

She slipped the ribbon into her purse. Her legs started moving away down the path. Her gait started slow then increased to a trot. Before she knew it, she was sprinting like she did as a girl with the smell of free air in her nostrils.
  

1,000 Word Challenge: Shallow Victory

Note: This was my submission for the first round challenge. The genre had to be Ghost Story. The location a boxing club. The item was neon sign.

The single light bulb above the eight uneven limestone steps cast a pale light that didn’t reach the edges where no doubt the rats waited. When they were youths, Carmen and Ricky took the steps two at a time much to the chagrin of Tony, the club trainer. One time Carmen slipped on the thin fourth step, slapping his elbow down hard on the stone, and costing him a spot in an upcoming tournament.

Those were the days when the room below was a respite from the chaos of the outside world. Carmen’s dad was a drunk that beat his wife bloody for sport, and Ricky didn’t have a family per se, he simply lived with a string of uncles and aunts, few of which he shared any blood with.

Descending the stairs at midnight to the boxing club housed below the VFW was a penance now for Carmen’s sin. With each step, the rats scurried in the shadows, hungry to witness his shaming. The sound of a glove popping a heavy bag below echoed to his ears above. Carmen sighed, his ribs still aching from the night before, and continued down.

The stairs opened to a cavernous room neatly organized after another day of training. To the right was a row of lockers with a bench in front and beyond was Tony’s office. The trainer was still going strong after 40 years of sparring with punks like Carmen and Ricky. Scattered around the room were heavy bags, speed bags, medicine balls, dumbbells and jump ropes hanging from hooks. At the top of the walls were promotional posters of bright yellow, pink and green.

The lighting was fine during the day with bulbs hanging from the rafters at regular intervals, but during his visits the electrical current was dim except for occasional surges when a bulb emitted a beam well beyond its voltage. The only natural light came from a window well on the opposite wall. At night, it revealed the flashing orange glow from a neon sign advertising for the bar across the alley, reminding Carmen of a traffic sign warning people away.

The ring, with droopy ropes and a canvas covering a plywood floor, was centered in the room. Ricky paced in the ring in ratty shorts and a pair of black boxing gloves. He was still the tall, muscled boy of 17, but his eyes were ringed black and his skin still had the grayish tone it had when they pulled his lifeless corpse from the river 20 years earlier.

“Evening, Ricky,” said Carmen, while removing his shirt. Ricky never spoke, just wore that same accepting gaze Carmen first witnessed that summer day as Ricky struggled in the water and Carmen pulled the boat away. The gaze clearly stated, “That’s the way it’s going to be then.”

Carmen grabbed his old gloves from the top of the lockers. Outside the ring, the rats squeaked and a snake hissed from some dank corner. The closer he came to Ricky the hotter, more humid it became. A pool of water collected at Ricky’s feet. The stench of death and the river filled Carmen’s nostrils. A worm crawled from Ricky’s mouth, and Carmen’s stomach nearly turned.

“I can’t keep going like this,” Carmen pleaded. “It’s been so long. I’m sorry!”

If Ricky considered the plea, nothing reflected in his eyes, which had been blue but were only black now. He raised his gloves, his signal to begin.

In life, Ricky was only a week removed from winning his final amateur match before leaving for the Olympic team camp when he climbed on the boat that fateful day. He was quick with a long reach and dominated Carmen, which was also true outside the ring. Grades, Ricky pulled good ones. Girls, he got the best, including the one Carmen wanted most. Breaks, the world was bending over for him. Carmen, on the other hand, the world never ceased squatting on. The difference in luck poisoned a friendship, and Carmen’s jealousy – the one thing he certainly inherited from dear old dad – planted dark thoughts and hardened his heart.

Ricky’s first jab darted to Carmen’s right and landed on his tender ribs. He doubled over. Ricky didn’t attack again until Carmen brought his gloves back up, and then the ghost moved in with a wicked combination that peppered Carmen’s midsection. Each glove felt like a brick being slammed into his flesh. Carmen stumbled away, spitting blood into a bucket in the corner.
 
Some nights Carmen let Ricky bash away. Others, when he was really fed up, he thrashed wildly, sometimes landing glancing blows on Ricky’s clammy skin. Sometimes the sessions were 10 minutes of pounding, and other nights Ricky jabbed away for an hour.

Ricky satisfied his latest need for a pound of flesh with an upper cut that tagged Carmen in the nose, buckling his knees. Blood gushed down his chin and a canvas of stars painted his vision.

Ricky walked through the ropes and floated to the floor, his essence slowly diminishing as he went. The rats scurried away, the room cooled and the puddle of water drained away as if a plug was pulled.

Dazed, Carmen thought about that last summer when they were 17. He lost at everything, and he was losing his only friend.  Ricky borrowed the boat from one of their boxing acquaintances as a chance for reconciliation before he left town. Carmen brought the beer and knew that Ricky couldn’t swim.

They were drunk and arguing when Carmen landed his first and last good punch on his friend, sending the young boxing star into the river. For once, Carmen won. Ricky flailed in the water, and their eyes met as Carmen pulled away. It was a shallow victory. The satisfaction lasted less than a minute.

Carmen turned the boat back, but his friend was lost. He staggered to his feet in the ring, sobbing just as he had that day 20 years earlier.

1,000 word challenge: Lysandrium Treatment

Note: I am planning on entering an online competition where you are provided a genre, location and object that all must appear in a story that is a 1,000 words or less. I'll have 48 hours to write the story. Below is a practice one from an example: Sci Fi, Drug Rehab Center, Wig, that I wrote. Hope you enjoy. I'll try an post my entries once the competition begins.

 

 

Down the corridor her steps kept time for those lost in it. Edna paced in rhythm and habit past closed doors with patients sleeping off their last fix of Lysandrium. She wore heels and stepped with force off the tiles, knowing in the waning hours of slumber, her time would count the patients into a new reality. Dr. Puck developed the process over years of trial and error for those addicted to the sleeping potion used for crew members for deep space travel missions.

Considering the numbers, the trafficking of humans beyond the stars seemed not worth the human toll. If Dr. Puck’s theories were true, then thirty percent of crew members experienced mild to severe addiction to the narcotics that keep the body young and mind in limbo during voyages hundreds of light years away. That’s the theory he offered for publication. In their long, private discussions, he insists the number is likely much higher.

“Don’t forget, so many go and don’t return. The politicians blame all those on malfunctions with equipment, unforeseen asteroid fields and contact with hostile beings, but that’s not always the case. I think some crews have nearly one hundred percent mental breakdown. Complete catastrophe.”

Dr. Puck’s passion enthralled Edna. Working with him tingled the very nerves that had pushed her toward becoming a nurse. And, Dr. Puck, he was so…. She nearly stopped pacing, but caught herself. Only a few minutes away from reanimation, and she nearly blew it. If only he’d let his guard down about mating with colleagues. Other nerves tingled with that thought.

 ***

 

“What time is it?”

 “It’s evening.”

 “That’s not what I asked!” The patient yelled. The man thrashed his head back and forth, and when that didn’t have enough effect, he slammed it back hard into his pillow. His wrists were secured to the metal rails that ran along each side of the bed. His door was the first to open that night, and he was the first to wake. Nights like this, she earned her money greeting all these pour lost souls.

 “Please, calm yourself. We need you to be calm.”

 “Then tell me what time it is?” The Lysandrium-rich mind fixated on time.

“It’s getting near time for you to return to teaching. We need to get you well.”

“Teaching? I’m no damn teacher.”

***

“Please, I just want to sleep. Don’t you understand?” The Lysandrium-rich mind longed for sleep, but couldn’t without a fix.

“Mr. Roberts, you’ve slept so long already. It’s time to wake and to live.”

This man was grossly overweight, and his stomach slipped out from under the cotton white t-shirt issued to all the patients. He sat in a white recliner, the walls were white, and he wept.

“Why do you keep calling me that name? I know that’s not who I am.”

“What is your name then, Mr. Roberts?”

He wept.

“I don’t remember. Please, can I just sleep some more?”

 ***

“God, what don’t you understand, you dumb beast! I need to know what time it is.”

 Two days and this patient had not relented the business about time, meaning he’d likely need to cycle through another small dosage of Lysandrium. Dr. Puck called it resetting. The mind remained fixated in a past a thousand years gone while the body had moved through space and time. The mind longs for returning to its previous environment, but that world is gone. Sometimes with enough cycles with the drug, the mind finally adjusts to the new reality often by fixating on something else. Edna shivered whenever Dr. Puck brought the particulars up. Why had man ever reached for the stars?

Edna closed the door, resolving to confess her love for the doctor after her shift.

***

Edna sat quietly next to Dr. Puck in the community room. It was her first time near him since he rebuked her affections a month earlier. Fifteen of the patients from the previous cycle had progressed to actualization sessions.

“I’m scared to ask it.” The patient seated across the table from them said.

 "Scared to ask what, Ms. Conrad?” Dr. Puck asked. He made a note on his handheld computer without looking at the patient. Edna loathed that he sometimes ignored them. Didn’t he understand the confusion they were feeling.

“Was I a man when I came here?”

 Dr. Puck laughed. It was a good impression of a real laugh.

 “I am a good doctor, Ms. Conrad, but I am not that good.”

 The patient, impossibly thin and bald, wiped at her eyes. Edna’s heart broke a little. The drugs were so unfair. They robbed these folks of everything, even their identity.

"I just remember being a man, that’s all.”

***

It wasn’t a date. Dr. Puck had made that much clear. The two sat alone in the cafeteria, eating the mush served to everyone in the facility.

 “The Lysandrium breaks them, Edna. You should know this better than anyone.”

 “The lying. I can’t handle the lying.”

 “It not a lie. They used to be someone, but that mind is broken. We build a new one.”

Edna slurped the mush into her mouth. How had she ever loved this man?

“Do you even care for them?”

“Edna, they are my life’s work.”

“Did you ever care for me?”

He swirled the mush around his plate, before tipping it and letting it slide onto his tray. Taking his napkin, he wiped the plate clean until it shined. Before she could react, he reached across the table and pulled her hair.

He tugged once and hard, and she yelped as it tore away from her scalp. Stunned, she glared at him holding what she clearly could see now was a blond wig in one hand and the plate toward her in the other.

"Care for you, Edna? How could I not? You’re my greatest success.”

Dropping the wig and the plate in front of her, he left Edna staring at a face in the plate.

 

Work: Two Fingers in the Air

Note: Hoping to turn this into a creative non fiction essay with several different parts. Total goal isn't completely clear, and this is certainly a draft. Just thought I'd share.

Work: A force is said to do work if, when acting on a body, there is a displacement of the point of application in the direction of the force.

Rosemary returned to her receptionist chair during the first week of the rest of my life, turned back in the direction she came and shot a double-barreled bird flip in the air. Welcome to your career change, Dan. Share a cramped, bland office and suffocate in the equally bland life of proposal writing for a surveying and engineering firm, and act as a referee between your boss and his receptionist.

Here’s the office: White painted walls and gray carpet, light gray desktop with light gray drawers, a gray bulletin board, a set of cabinets with doors painted white with a countertop shaded in a blue trying its hardest also to be white. The lone decoration – at least until I added a Cubs schedule to the bulletin board – is two maps - one of Illinois and the other a close up of Chicago. Both good for planning my escape.

The door to our office opens toward my desk, so my immediate scenery is the door and the back of Rosemary’s head. The door is wood. It is brown with a silver door knob. It’s nice. Rosemary’s hair is dark brown and curly. She is in her 60s, seems to hate this place, and is prone to outbursts. The person I replaced apparently left because of escalating conflicts with Rosemary. The outbursts don’t bother me, I’ve certainly dealt with worse, and I appreciate a good “Stone Cold” Steve Austin impression as much as the next guy.

Rosemary’s two-finger salute was directed toward Tom, our boss except he refuses to admit it, who no doubt was out of the line of sight in his own office, but most likely felt the force of emotion emitting from the fingers just the same. Tom professes to have 10 years left in his tenure and anointed me as his replacement about 10 minutes after arriving. Tom is a marketing robot bought on clearance from some sort of Cold War era robot-making factory in Siberia. He has the necessary information logged in his memory cards, but his brain wiring is so mish-mashed together that it comes out in fits and starts and oftentimes is lost in his programming before it reaches his lips. His nearly daily proclamation of adult ADD is probably as accurate as it is maddening to work with. In the end, he lives by our owner’s credo “Show up every day and do our best,” and while he has few scruples when it comes to business, he genuinely seems concerned about pretty much everyone and everything.
 
Rosemary hates Tom, and Tom inexplicably fears Rosemary. I am the buffer.

Which brings me to a memory from a wedding reception I attended several years ago with my wife. The best man – I think – was the brother of the bride, and delivered a toast where he commended his little sister for picking a man, who wasn’t afraid to work or to get his hands dirty. I suppose that’s a sign of living in the rural Midwest where work and the willingness to stick your hands into basically anything is valued over all other personality traits. Hell, for all I know, that beaming husband went home and mauled his wife, cheated on his taxes and refused to recycle, but damn it if he wasn’t first in line to help pull the engine out of my old Ford. What a guy!

The part about having a fear of getting one’s hands dirty actually stuck with me for a while. I realized sometime between my teen years and advancing into adulthood, or adulting if you’re on Twitter, I grew a distaste for doing anything that did get my hands dirty. Weird right, especially for a kid that grew up on a farm. I don’t know how it happened, other than that through a series of jobs and life choices, my hands rarely did get filthy, and when they did, I didn’t like it. Once I heard that speech, a shame for this condition started to brew. It’s probably why I eat so many sweets. Maybe officiating Rosemary and Tom skirmishes is my penance.

Working hands and hands working evolved us beyond the apes. Some of us make that step into constructive time consumption, stop and look back, and wonder why the hell we ever left the jungle. The rest of us put on our pants on each day and trudge through the tasks, quietly, diligently, lazily and sometimes with both middle fingers flashing above our head.

The modern way for measuring life is by work, at least in my mind it is, and lately my life ruler has been out seeing how I measure up.

Red's reading list

Note: So I decided a while back that I would log all the books that I've read. The problem being is that I don't remember all the books that I have read. There are two for sure missing from this list where I remember plot points of the story but can't recall titles or authors. They might come to me sometime. I am also sure there are more novels that I read in school, but its really a stretch to remember all of those. I also know I've read most of the Shakespeare's histories, but its hard to keep the Richards and Henrys straight. Just thought this was worth sharing. Updated 8-20-18

Will Adams – 1

The Exodus Quest

George Beahm -1

Stephen King: America’s Best Loved Boogeyman

John Berendt – 1
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Thomas Berger – 1

 Arthur Rex

Dan Brown – 2

Angels & Demons
The Lost Symbol

Kate Chopin – 1

The Awakening

J.M. Coetzee – 1

Disgrace

Joseph Conrad -1

Heart of Darkness

Michael Crichton – 2
Jurassic Park
Congo

Frank Deford – 1

Over Time

David Eddings -5

Pawn of Prophecy
Queen of Sorcery
Magician’s Gambit
Castle of Wizardry
Enchanters’ End Game

Nicholas Evans – 2

The Brave
The Loop

Tina Fey – 1

Bossypants

F. Scott Fitzgerald – 1

The Great Gatsby

E.M. Forster – 1
Howards End
 

Mick Foley – 1

Have a Nice Day

Tana French – 2

Into the Woods
The Likeness

Neil Gaiman - 1
American Gods

Susan Griffin - 1

A Chorus of Stones

Ron Hall & Denver Moore -1

Same Kind of Different as Me
 

Jane Hamilton - 1

A Map of the World

Jim Harrison – 1

The English Major

Kent Haruf - 6

Plainsong
Eventide
Where You Once Belonged
The Tie That Binds
Benediction

Our Souls at Night
 
Martin Heidegger – 1
Being and Time
 
Gerard Helfrich – 1
High Cotton
 
Ernest Hemmingway – 1
Old Man and the Sea
 
Frank Herbert – 4
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
 
Sheri Holman - 1
The Mammoth Cheese
 

Homer - 2

The Odyssey
The Iliad
 
Zola Neale Hurston – 1
Their Eyes Were Watching God
 

Aldous Huxley – 1

Brave New World
 

John Irving - 3

A Prayer for Owen Meany
A Widow for a Year
The World According to Garp
 
Tommy James (with Martin Fitzpatrick) – 1

Me, the Mob, and the Music

 

Robert Jordan - 6

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos

Garrison Keillor – 2

Lake Wobegon Days
Pontoon

Ken Kesey – 1
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
 

Stephen King - 35

The Shining
Night Shift
The Stand
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
It
Eyes of the Dragon
Four Past Midnight
Needful Things
Delores Claiborne
Nightmares & Dreamscapes??
Insomnia
Desperation
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Hearts in Atlantis
On Writing
Dreamcatcher
Full Dark, No Stars
Doctor Sleep
11/22/63
Gerald’s Game
The Tommyknockers

Rose Madder
Christine
 
The Dark Tower Series
The Gunslinger
The Drawing of Three
The Wastelands
Wizard and Glass
The Wolves of Calla
Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower
The Wind Through the Keyhole
 
As Richard Bachman
The Long Walk
The Regulators
Blaze
 

Barbara Kingslover - 6

The Bean Trees
Pigs In Heaven
The Poisonwood Bible
Prodigal Summer

The Lacuna
Flight Behavior
 
Alex Kotolowitz – 1
There Are No Children Here
 

Chuck Klosterman - 6

Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs
Killing Yourself to Live
Fargo Rock City
IV
Downtown Owl
Eating the Dinosaur
 

Dean Koontz - 9

The Door to December
Strangers
Lightning
Cold Fire
Winter Moon
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Phantoms
Midnight
Strange Highways

John Krakauer – 2

Into the Wild
Under the Banner of Heaven
 

Andrea Lee – 1

Sarah Phillips
 

Jim Lehrer – 1

Super
 

Thomas Malory – 1

Le Morte’ D’ Arthur

George R.R. Martin - 5

Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast of Crows
A Dance with Dragons
 

Cormac McCarthy – 1

The Road

Frank McCourt - 1
Angela's Ashes

Sue Miller - 1
While I Was Gone

John Milton – 1

Paradise Lost

Willie Morris - 1
North Toward Home
 

Toni Morrison -1

Beloved
 

Robert Parris Moses -1

Radical Equations
 

Iris Murdoch - 1

A Fairly Honourable Defeat
 

Michael Perry – 1

Coop

Ayn Rand – 1
Atlas Shrugged
 

Jane Rhys -1

Wide Sargasso Sea
 

Ralph Russo - 2

Empire Falls
Nobody’s Fool
 

William Shakespeare – 9 (plays)

Romeo & Juiliet
Hamlet
Othello
A Midsummer’s Night Dream
The Merchant of Venice
Much Ado About Nothing
Richard II
Richard III
Henry V
 
Sidney Sheldon - 3
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Windmills of the Gods
The Doomsday Conspiracy
 
Hampton Sides - 3
Americana
Blood & Thunder
Hellhound on his Trail

M.L. Stedman - 1
The Light Between Oceans
 

John Steinbeck – 1

Of Mice and Men
 
Elizabeth Strout - 1
Olive Kitteridge
 
William Styron (editor) – 1
The Human Experience
 
Jonathan Swift – 1
Gulliver’s Travels
 
J.R. Tolkien - 5
The Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Silmarillion
 

Leo Tolstoy – 1

The Death of Ivan Illych
 
Mark Twain - 2
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 
Tad Williams - 5
The Dragonbone Chair
Stone of Farewell
To Green Angel Tower
City of Golden Shadow
River of Blue Fire
 
David Wroblewski – 1
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Anthologies - 1

The Pushcart Prize XI: Best of the Small Presses