BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY, WHERE CHUCK CAME TO BE IN THE HOSPITAL HAVING OPEN HEART SURGERY

Chuck is the X Mrs. Bulletholes Uncle and she was very worried about him. In fact she was worried enough about him that she started bustin’ my chops everyday. It was the first week of December.
“You are going to give yourself a heart attack. You probably have Diabetes and Prostrate Cancer and Scarlett Fever and God knows what else. Look at you! You eat like a pig and all that dope you’ve done has probably fried your brain. I'd almost rather be your wife again than your liver! Think about your kids. Don't you want to see your grandchildren?” she would say.

That darn Mrs. Bulletholes! She don't miss too many chances.
But I took her words to heart, harsh and pointed as they were and went to the Doctor, who sent me to the Emergency Room and now I have my Sugar and Blood Pressure and Cholesterol under control.
After I got out of the Hospital I went with her to see Chuck. He was in ICU, his chest cracked open like a pecan, hanging in the balance between an aborted Triple Bypass and the Eternal.

Now the Ex Mrs. Bullets has one of the most terrific bedside manners you’ve ever seen. She can talk the ears off a Wooden Indian. She told Chuck, who seemed to be almost unconscious that I had just gotten out of the hospital. Her manner must have rubbed off on me as I began to speak:

“Yeah Chuck, I was getting Bitch bites all over my ass for a solid week from her (pointing to Shila) because of you and so I went to the Doctor. I rode my bike 5 miles to the office and when I got there they had me on a couch before you could say “Colonoscopy” and my blood pressure was thru the roof and my heart rate was to the moon and my blood sugar was just a few points off of me going into Diabetic shock and the Doctor said “Son, its all over for you if you don’t go to the Emergency Room” so I went and I was there for three days and I’m better now. Chuck, buddy, I don’t think any of this would have happened if it weren’t for you being in here.”
With that, I took his hand.

He looked at me through his Oxygen mask and gave a little nod of acknowledgement.
We looked each other eye to eye and there was a lotta emotion between us ‘cause we go a long ways back
There was a day 12 years ago where Chuck had spent the day with me while the Ex moved out. I told him a few years later that he might have saved my life that day.

So as I held his hand now I looked at him through his Oxygen mask and said
‘Chuck, your being here, right now ,may very well have saved my life” and I let loose a little tear, and with a cracked voice choked out the words
“That’s twice now, you know, twice that you have saved me”….
Chuck nodded and managed a smile. I was really kinda surprised that he seemed to know what I was talking about.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?’ I asked, just to be sure.
He opened his glassy eyes a bit wider, managed another nod and squeezed my hand.
Like I said it was all very emotional and I wondered had Mrs. Bullets (Shila) noticed this exchange.

An hour later, in the parking lot as we got into her car, Shila asked
‘What did you mean when you said he had saved your life twice”
I thought again about the day she had moved out, and how Chuck had listened to Dylan records with me, and how upset, depressed and hopelessly downhearted I felt that day and how kind he had been to hang with me.
And I thought about how to try to explain this to Shila without old hurts surfacing and to what possible good it would come of it.
They say that "explanations are accusations" and so it could be with this.
If you have been reading me for long, you know I don’t keep many secrets.
I grinned at her and said...
" Shila, I guess this one is just for me and Chuck”

TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF

Uncle Chuck checked himself out of the hospital the other day.
He had gone in for a trple-bypass in December, but they had to abort when they found his lungs in bad shape. They had him all the way split open too, barely able to perform even one procedure. He has had a few bouts with pnemonia since then and has become increasingly impatient with his doctors and progress to the point that he checked out of ICU against medical advice.

The X Mrs. Bulletholes wanted me to call him at home and try to talk some sense into him.
I wasn't sure what I could tell him, then I remebered a comment I left for my pal Ric O'Shay:

"I had a friend named Billy about 20 years ago that had a heart problem. He didn't change his diet or nuthin and so many people stayed on his ass for so long that he moved a long ways away so that he could do what he wanted... which was to smoke and drink and eat ribs and stuff without having to take a ration of shit from all his friends.
At the time, I didn't much blame him, but we lost him within about 2 years and I feel differently now.
I wish he'd have made some changes, but I don't blame him, and I just want you to know that a lot of people miss Billy.
And I added
You can do what you want, Chuck, and we will all miss you too, only you ain't got two years in you....you'll be lucky to make two weeks."

Anyway, I called 'ol Chuck to tell him this.
Luckily, I didn't have to...
Seems he spent a day at home, then decided he better get his butt back to the Hospital like the Doctors said. Those Doctors, they are pretty smart. They told him if he didn't come back, they weren't going to write any prescriptions.
Chuck said he will be a good boy and not do that again.
I just laughed and didn't say anything.

Ya'll need to know that Chuck might would listen to me. He has saved my life twice....
To be continued

I'll mend my wounds and wait out the winter...

j. mcmurtry

I WAS MOVING THE XMRS. Bulletholes, Yvette, last weekend.
She and her present day husband, sometimes referred to as the New and Improved Future XMrBulletholes have been separated since last Christmas.
Yvette had actually rented an apartment 4 doors down from me.
We really are good friends, and I was looking forward to having her as a neighbor and hopefully being invited for dinner several times a week, not because I imagine candlelight, wine and roses, but simply because while I may be a world class Chef, my cooking lately really stinks.
I am thoroughly disgusted with my own cooking.
I have eaten everything that I know how to cook.
I have been reduced to making Quesadillas on my Combination George Foreman Grill and Laundry Press.
But as bad luck would have it, when she went to get the key for the apartment and took a look inside, she found more than three roaches, which constitutes a swarm, and she went to the office and ripped her lease to shreds.
She will not abide no Roach, no sirree..
I wasn't just disappointed…I was terrified!...
...that with no place to move her to that I might be having her as a houseguest for some amount of time.
We are not that good of friends.
She made arrangements to move her stuff to storage and she will stay with her friend Tara.
She was unable to conjure up any friends or family to help with this move, so I helped her for the next 8 hours, and we finished up about 2A.M. in the morning.

It was during the move that I remembered back to a day 12 years ago that was one of the worst days I ever had.
She was moving her stuff from our house. “Her stuff” meant whatever she wanted of “Our stuff”.
If that were not bad enough, she had about 25 people helping her do it, mostly her family and a few of our friends.
I was not allowed to help that day.
So I sat in front of my Stereo and played really sad songs for her Uncle Chuck.
I think they probably paidhim extra for that.
As I watched I knew that in a few months I would be moving what was left, but that I would probably be doing it alone.
The only bright spot was when they told me some chick showed up that had the hots for me and caused a real scene.
I can't even remember her name, and besides that I wasn’t even there at the time.
But thats a whole 'nother show.

“Dry Martini”

George: "I wish to God Jerry had put me out with the rest of ‘em. What’s the good of coming through for this sort of thing? What’ll you have?”
Wimsey: “Dry Martini” Cheer up. All this Remembrance-day business gets on your nerves, don’t it? It’s my belief most of us would only be too pleased to chuck these community hysterics if the beastly newspapers didn’t run it for all it’s worth. However, it won’t do to say so. . . .How are things going for you?
George: “Oh rotten as usual. Tummy all wrong and no money. What’s the damn good of it, Wimsey? A man goes and fights for his country, gets his inside gassed out, and loses his job, and all they give him is the privilege of marching past the Cenotaph once a year and paying four shillings in the pound income-tax.”

This Isn't Happiness

THE BREAKTHROUGH

"Evening upon evening, I would weigh out bucketfuls of equal sized balls of clay.
Barbara would throw an item, say, a simple cylinder.
My task was to make many, exact copies.
I rather balked at this, I did not see myself as some sort of industrial machine! I was an ARTIST!
So this was my introduction to zen. I would do a full day's work, then, after everyone else had gone home, I would start my practice. And after a couple of hours she would come back into the pottery, and chuck all my work into the clay bin. Day after day, week after week. until, one night, she only threw about fifty cylinders out, and left three on the table. She sliced them in two, so we could see the thickness of the walls and base. "Those aren't too bad... make another twenty, and I'll come back"
...The breakthrough came on a day when I stopped thinking about what I was doing, and my conscious brain let go of the motor skills. When I came back to consciousness, there they were, lively shapes, not lumpen, but turning still."

My friend Soubriquet, on his introduction to Pottery.

A PANCAKE PRIMER, PART 1

AND BOY SCOUT EGGS

Some folks call 'em Griddlecakes.
Then you got your Hotcakes, Hoecakes, Johnnycakes, Crepes.
You got your Dropscones, Latkes, Buckwhweat Blini, and Dutch Babies.
Some are the size of Silver Dollars, others as big as a skating rink.
I could write a book about Pancakes, I'll try not to here.

Dad called 'em Flapjacks. I remember standing on the Hico three step ladder when I was a boy as Dad showed me how to flip 'em. Thats the best part of making them, you know, when you flip 'em over, and you get to see what a beautiful golden brown creation you have made. Its one of the most highly anticipated things in the world, the first appearance of the first side cooked.

It may seem a small thing, but it is not.
Ask any child if they would like Pancakes for Breakfast. Watch their eyes sparkle, see how quickly they get dressed. Tell them that they can help cook the pancakes and you have them won over for life. The only thing better than eating a pancake is making a pancake, any 6 year old knows this. They know what most adults have yet to realize....

PANCAKES ARE LIKE SNOWFLAKES!
THERE ARE NO TWO EXACTLY THE SAME!
THEY HAVE THEIR OWN LITTLE PERSONALITY.

When I was 11 and in Boy Scouts, we went on Campouts and we had to cook for ourselves on Saturday Mornings.
The menu was usually Bacon and Eggs.
We generally fared pretty badly, with the bacon either burned or undercooked, the eggs too runny or out of the pan entirely, spilled into the fire.
And even on the off chance that our meal appeared edible you would find bits of earth had fouled the bacon with a gritty crunch and there were leaves and bark and other organics stirred in with the eggs.

I wish I had a dollar for every bug, cockleburr, tuft of hair, and twig I pulled out of Boy Scout Eggs.
They are like their own food group.

This is why we kept a box of cereal in the Chuck Box. If we had remembered to ice the milk and it had not spoiled overnight, then we could have Lucky Charms or Apple Jacks and would not starve before it was time to fuck-up lunch.

But on Sunday morning, Chan, the Scoutmaster, would fire up his huge griddles.
Chan had seemed like a hard ass, with his requisite that we obey all orders, any orders on the spot and without fail. In charge of 60 boys in tents, with knives, axes and fires everywhere, will make a man a hard ass I suppose, and cause him too go to great measures to insure obedience, like "Chan-Hikes" at 1 A.M. where he pulls all the boys out of their tents and takes you on a 5 mile jog through the woods in your underwear to wear you out so you (and he) can sleep. The first night of any campout the boys are too excited to sleep, and all the chatter keeps Chan awake.

And on Sunday morning Chan would fire up his huge griddles.We would line up for all the pancakes we could eat, flushed down with ice cold milk. It could be cold, or raining, or both, but every boy had a smile on his sticky little syrup face, eating the best breakfast there could ever be.


To be continued...

THE EARWORM

Did you ever hear a song that you hadn’t heard in a long time, and the name of the song eluded you, its such a pity too, because it was always such a damn fine song for being an instrumental, and you can’t think of the name of it and its driving you mad and being an instrumental there is no chorus, there is no lyrical clue there, but the bass sounds like Kool and The Gangs Jungle Boogie, and the horns maybe like some Chuck Mangione would do when he isn’t starring in another Simpsons episode, so you just keep humming this instrumental over and over again, making that mouth music to the point where you are really getting pretty good at it, the bass line, then the sax, now you are a coronet, and totally syncopated, and suddenly you are throwing in a whistle or two when the flute kicks in, and then back to the bass, very stylish, and its still bugs the crap out of you what is the name of this fucking song, and its really too good to be Mangione, and it might be Miles Davis, except Miles Davis never got played on AM radio that you are aware of and this tune was such a hit it got played on AM radio while you cruised the loop smokin’ up a couple J’s so it might be Herbie Hancock because Watermelon Man was pretty good for that and you are humming it over and over and finally decide to crank up a Mangione tune on Youtube.

One bar in to “Feels So Good” you know it aint it, you hope to God is the only thing Mangione has ever done you are vaguely familiar with, you discover something horrible has happened.
That tune you had gotten really good at, especially the bass line?
Completely forgotten.
The only thing worse than a 24 hour earworm is having it go away bofore you get an ID on it.
So I googled up “Great jazz instrumentals of the early 70’s”.
It was number 5 on the list...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAJLGFWxYo

PAYING ATTENTION

"No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention."

— Chuck Palahniuk

Ki-Yi-Yippee-Yippee-Yay

"In person the cowboys were mostly medium-sized men... quick and wiry, and as a rule very good-natured; in fact, it did not pay to be anything else. In character, their like never was or will be again." Teddy Blue Abbott



The Cowboy Way
Being a Cowboy is doing the right thing;
common wisdom born of simple virtues and strong ideals.
Above all, it is a strict adherence to honesty even when it is not in our best interests.
It is having an inherent sense of justice in a world where the cards are often stacked against us.
We try to hold enough common sense to recognize the value of a lost cause and the cost of lost values.
Generally speaking, we are quietly reserved in all things except freedom, fresh air and Saturday night.
We have an eye for a good horse, a good gun, and a good Cowgirl.
(Cowgirls may insert the word Cowboy here.)

Constant to friends, we are more so when friends need us, less so when they don't.
Familiar with hard work we also know hard knocks and hard roads.
Often given to tears when lesser individuals would display indifference; we are as well given to joy in a few places others would only find disdain.

We enjoy plain living, not because we relish doing without,
but because we have discovered the treasures within.
And, finally, we have that elusive emotion called
courage which is, at worst, a badly directed sense of
conceit and, at best, it is the stuff of
which dreams are made. . . .
Judge Charly Gullett--1995





Edward C. Abbott was born in Cranwich, England, and brought to the West in the 1860's by his parents as a boy. Hoping the open air would improve his frail health, his father let him help drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Nebraska when he was just 10 years old.
The experience, Abbott said later, "made a cowboy out of me. Nothing could have changed me after that."


The cowboys' average age was 24. They were paid so badly, and worked so hard, that two-thirds of them made only one trail drive before finding something better to do. They owned their saddle, but not the horse they rode -- and they rode it day and night.

After up to four straight months in the saddle, often in the same clothes every day, eating every meal at the chuck wagon, drinking nothing but coffee and water, the cowboy's job was finally done -- he was paid for his work, and turned loose in town.


"I bought some new clothes and got my picture taken... I had a new white Stetson hat that I paid ten dollars for, and new pants that cost twelve dollars, and a good shirt and fancy boots. Lord, I was proud of those clothes! When my sister saw me, she said: "Take your pants out of your boots and put your coat on. You look like an outlaw." I told her to go to hell. And I never did like her after that. "
Teddy Blue Abbott


For a man to be stove up at thirty may sound strange to some people, but many a cowboy has been so bunged up that he has to quit riding that early in life.

And so it was with Teddy.


"Then I went home. After I got home my father said to me one night: 'You can take old Morgan (a plow mule)... and plow the west ridge tomorrow."

Like hell I'd plow the west ridge.

And when he woke up next morning, Teddy was gone."
Teddy Blue Abbott

THE MASK AND THE MIRROR l.mckinnet

I have owed ya'll the last several posts for some time. My story can't be told without the telling of Arnold's story, and my story may be my confession; if my story is not unique, my confession certainly is. So I shall consider the last 3 posts to be the first of the tag titled ""Share five off the wall, strange, unusual or just little known facts about yourself.” My mask removed.

I think the music I listen to would qualify here. Take a look at my profile to start. Even the ones that are World Famous somehow manage to fly underneath the Radar of Popular Music. Lets add on to that list with Bob Mould, Jack Johnson and Ben Harper, the Oyster Band, Three men and a Dog, Hopskip&wobble, Jimmie laFave, Christine Lavin, Cheryl Wheeler, and Sonia Dada.
While you may have heard of some of these, most of my freinds had not, and really don't care for what I have found. They are too into either "Classic Rock" or the Commercial Songs of the week as performed by Cellebrity Artists of the week...
There is some Classic Rock I can enjoy...the cuts from an album that are forgotten while we hear the same 'hit" time after time as though we have never heard it before. 'Stairway to Heaven" may be a great song, but I have heard it... enough to hold me for many years. right now I would like to hear ' Battle for Evermore" from that Album.

I like a Middle-Eastern sound...from what I understand Middle Eastern music has many other scales besides major and minor... whatever that means.
Music creates a sense of Truth and Beauty through Aesthetic expression.
I know what I like.
There are some songs that just aren't supposed to be popular, that are not to be measured, that are just to be enjoyed for depth and texture. They are beyond the BOOM-BOOM-CHUCK that seems to be the order of the day. Possibly they were not written for anything but for the pleasure and experience by the Artist. I think it is this type of artist, the one that does not write with the listener in mind, but seems to write for the Art itself, that I am drawn to.
Loreena McKinnet has probably made the biggest impression on me the last 12 years.

I love looking through the throwback shelves at the Half Price bookstore.
I love listening to something I have never heard before.
I have great admiration for those that may never achieve fame, but continue to produce their Art, their way.
I don't have XFM Radio, but I hope that it will continue to promote the lesser known Musicians and educate the listener.

DEAD MAN DREAMING
Once I had a name,
forgotten now
I breathed the air in a century of wonder

I can hear it now
in the darkness of the earth
Gorgeous machines, the sound they made like thunder

Great gardens drip honey-
jewels and bright birds
The pageants pass down avenues of splendor

Ah, long afternoons
by enchanted lakes
Upon elephants, so well I do remember

Lords and priests and talking beasts
Golden calves and telepaths
Crystal skulls and screaming gulls

Women glowed tattooed with woad
Colored mists and amethysts
Men were strong and days were long

Dragons glide on mountainside
Mandrake root and angel fruit
Sighing winds on silver skin

Creation transubstantiation
Unicorns, electric storms
Tunes and runes, we laughed till noon

Sweet release, eternal peace

The Church from "Sometime Anywhere"

This is a very strange band. I looked up one day and I had more of their stuff than anything else. They always seem to finish their album with a very beautiful song, usually an instrumental and this is the last tune on "Sometime Anywhere".

Don't run out and buy this Album; get "Preist= Aura" instead.