I seem to be on a ghost tangent lately. And as a side note, Mrs. Surratt requested that I spell her name correctly as opposed to the French-ified way I spelled it in this piece originally. I think I’ve corrected all mentions of her, if…
I called Mr. George again this morning. Mr. George is a plumber. We are fairly well acquainted. My life is an interminable episode of Green Acres.
Someone answered after a few rings.
“Hello?”
I thought maybe the voice was too young to be Mr. George’s voice. It sounded like it could be his assistant, whose name I had forgotten. It was very early and I had had no coffee. When you wake up and find Lake Michigan in your front yard, you become preoccupied.
“Hey, uh, there. This is John Hicks out on Coburn Mountain Road. How y’all doing?”
At such times I employ the local dialect. John becomes Junn, doing becomes doon, etc. I have solid hillbilly genes and several years in-country. Someday I will rotate back to the world and speak like Sir Laurence Olivier.
Like the rest of what we had seen of Dallas, the mall was something akin to Epcot: a stray piece of someone else’s world that Texans just had to have. It could only be compared to Vegas and Disneyworld. The big attraction for my girls…
This weekend, while on a peaceful hike in Shenandoah, I saw another hiker scrambling back up the path, eyes wide. He slowed down when he saw me, and explained in a breathless North Carolina accent, “Bear! There’s a bear just around the bend. I’m not kidding!”
Why do you have a middle name if you never use it?
Displaced Aggression League Report — Week 1
Greetings Team Owners, and many apologies for the delayed report in this, our opening week. Blame the bull skunk that left your League Manager blinded by unholy stink, as collateral damage in its 3am showdown with the League Dog. It was a horrifying turn of events that necessitated a hasty evacuation of the Command Bunker until the situation could be contained. But scientists tell us that, just like the start our football season, the sudden influx of these toxic rodents in urban areas is a sure sign that Fall is here and Summer is a distant memory.
Indeed, it’s hard to believe that, just a few weeks ago, many of us were still in family vacation mode: With personality conflicts sharpened by rolling blackouts and a maddening heat index, and in-laws forced to take shelter on shady porches in resentful groups. We draped ourselves over sticky wicker furniture and struggled to suck oxygen out of the steamy air, while the relentless screaming of cicadas was punctuated by the thumping of fat black flies the size of sparrows, trying to force their way through the screens to drink our blood. It was too hot to do anything – too hot, thankfully, for any of us to act on the paranoid and murderous impulses that skittered around our brains every time we glanced at each other.
I first met her on my way home from work. I was walking down the sidewalk; she was showing off her belly. She knew how to get a guy’s attention. I greeted her by stroking her chin and rubbing that belly. But I had someone…
People are always telling me how great it must be to live in the country and how they’d trade places with me in a second. Uh-huh. I grew up in Mississippi, and I’ve lived in Texas (twice in Dallas, briefly in Austin), Washington, D.C., and…
Back in Dallas, I was into my “all hotels are the same in the dark when you are asleep” rant. This has never had any effect on my wife. To me, it’s better to sleep cheap. The hotels she picks are disgustingly over-priced restaurants where…
before you were born
the years stretched into the past
it was a world without you
Please go here to read part 1 of my interview with Joseph Crachiola. It sounds like for most of your life you’ve identified primarily as a photographer rather than as a musician, or am I misreading that? Well, I don’t know. Photography was my…