IN VINO CALOR

The wind drives the snow across a barren field.

Spring is a century away from today and I shiver in the cold, knowing a fire awaits me not far away and a glass of wine.

In vino calor.

A Hobo's Song

The other day I was driving down Dekalb Avenue and read an open-call sign for workers.

DRIFTERS WANTED.

I blinked and the offer of paradise vanished jarring my eyes back into focus.

DRIVERS WANTED.

What a difference a single letter makes, then again I've always sought something more than the world has to offer and sometimes less.

Johnny Cash - Hobo Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_uMvQ9Ji4

Black Ice

According to Wikipedia black ice, sometimes called clear ice, is a thin coating of glaze ice on a surface, especially on roads. The ice itself is not black, but visually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it. Eric Mitchell sent this photo of his skating across a frozen lake in the Berkshires. The ice looked as smooth as glass. I love pond hockey, but it has become as rare as black ice.

Dakota from the 169 Bar had heard my tale of skating on the sidewalks of the East Village in 1992. He laughed in disbelief, however the rock-n-roll bartender hailed from Tucson and no one from the desert knows anything about ice other than ice cubes for a drink.

This winter has been exceedingly mild with no snow. Maine was beset by a deep freeze and a circular floe of ice formed on the Presumpscot River upstream from the old SD Warren paper mill in Westbrook. Newspaper reported the phenomena as a galactic apparition. None of them have lived through a New England winter where trees in Aroostock County exploded in the arctic cold.

Another time I was driving taxi down Clearwater Street next to the Christian Science Mother Church in Boston. The asphalt of the back road was covered in black ice. I tapped on my brakes the the Checker Cab went into a side slide. Two Boston cops were eating donuts at the end of the block. The driver noticed my approach.

Slow and elegant.

He tried to pull ahead, but the cop cruiser’s rear tires caught no traction. Both officer watch in anticipation of a crash. The Checker stopped an inch from the cop car. All three of us smiled at each other.

Back in the 1970s ice was ice. Sometimes good and maybe times in the century of climate change not good.

Back in the 20th Century the ice was thick on Watchic Pond. Twelve inches thick.

Good for skating once the snow was shoveled off the surface, but nothing beat skating up 2nd Avenue. Nothing at all.

Frozen Niagara

Obviously if they had filmed NIAGARA in the winter, Marilyn Monroe would have never gone over the falls with her murderous husband played by Joseph Cotton.

Belgium Beer Research

My first beer was a Miller in 1965. I drank it behind Our Aunt of Jesus Catholic Church. Two more followed fast. The contents of the three bottles disagreed with my stomach and I spewed out the beer like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.

On the following Sunday the pastor, who looked nothing like Father Charles Coughlin, a devout Nazi, dedicated his sermon to the evils of teenage drinking. His words came too late for me. I had already vowed to never again drink beer.

That pledge was later adjusted to restrict Miller beer from touching my lips. My friends were fans of Bud, but something was off about beer hauled by the Clydesdales and I only drink it when there is nothing else available like at MLB baseball games and barbecues in Iowa. Schlitz on the other hand slid down my throat as smooth as a vanilla milk shake on a hot summer day and I remained faithful to the beer that made Milwaukee famous throughout my teens.

American beer has rightfully acquired a bad reputation thanks to Budweiser, for as Oscar Wilde said, “I find American beer a bit like having sex in a canoe. It's fucking close to water.”

Over the years I've drunk Olympia, Coors, Busch, Iron City, Narragansett, Carling, Labatt, Molson, Pabst, and hundreds of other brews, until American beer was wiped off the menu by Heineken.

Soon I extended my exploration to foreign shores to taste the beer in their native surroundings. I drank Corona in the Yucatan, slugged down Karlsberg in Denmark, swilled 1664 in France, quaffed Tiger in Malaysia, soothe my thirst with Bintang in Indonesia, and savored Leo in Thailand along with beers from every country in between.

I even created a special holiday for beer.

Beermas sounded good to my ears.

I celebrated it almost daily with pleasure.

I returned from overseas three years ago. My favorite bar was five blocks from my apartment. The lovely Chinese bartender served cold Stella-Artois in a glass. The clientele became my friends. I had downed several thousand at Frank’s Lounge on Fulton Street from August 2009 to September 2011. I left the USA for Luxembourg to further my knowledge and told my fellow drinkers at Frank’s that I would return a better man, because my next destination bordered Belgium and nothing goes down better than the Trappist beers of that country.

Leffe, Duvel and Stella Artois are good supping beers, but they pale in comparison to the Achel, Dubbel, Chimay, Orval, and dark Rochefort. None of them are under 7% alcohol.

Several years ago my good friend from Florida Vonelli conducted a tour of a Trappist monastery south of Charleroi. We were two versus a couple of hundred bottles of beer on the walls.

The abbey was in ruins. Not a single monk inhabited the property. Abbeye d'Aulne was served at the nearby restaurant overlooking the canal. We had a fine meal of fish. Three courses cost $30. We drank three beers. I had never tasted better and we ordered a fourth.

"What I like about Belgium is seeing little old ladies drinking beer in the cafes at noon. It make me feel good." Vonelli has been living in Belgium for a number of good reasons. Beer was one of them.

"That's the only reason you live here?" The first sip of the fourth glass was as good as the fourth sip from the first beer.

"That and the beer."

There were other attractions and one of them was Charleroi, the ugliest city in all of Europe. It also has good beer. Beer defines Belgium as much as frites with mayonnaise. In fact beer was so popular in Belgium that a low-alcohol version was served in schools up to the 1970s.

For lunch I'm drinking a Duvel for lunch with Cod fried in olive oil.

It's 8.5 % alcohol.

I think I'll have another.

I have no heavy machinery to operate in the afternoon or tomorrow either.

Another Happy Beermas.

From me and my son Fenway.

Poetry In the Ruins

Industrial ruins haunt both sides of the Hudson River.

Tall chimneys mark them from a distance.

On this winter morning no one is there but me.

Walls stand as tombstones.

They act as grafitti billboards

For my eyes only.

Black is our safe shadow. Scream into her earth and cry. Protect with unconditional love. Hold your echo mist important to death. I dare any dead mouth to test my ethics.

Poetry is the only magic left in this desolate world.

Like red hands on a cave wall in Sulawesi.

Or Legong dancers in Ubud.

Modern roads offer no enchantment.

Where are the hobos?

Only in books and photos.

And then in poetry.

There's a race of men that don't fit in They roam the fields and roam the sea There's a race that can't stay still And they climb the mountain crest So they break the heart of kith and kin For theirs s the curse of the gypsy blood And roam the world at will And they don't know how to rest.

Robert Service, Poet.

I know both the road and poetry.

Anyone who loves magic does.

A Winter Poem

Two years ago my friend Alison in Palm Beach found this poem. Her trees were dying from the cold.

" WINTER " by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

Shit It's Cold

The End

That was one of coldest weeks in American weather history.

Even Florida had snow.

Winters weren't always that way and maybe next year will be normal, but in April 1971 I escaped the cold in Boston by driving to Florida with Mark, John, and Tommy. It was spring break. We had rented a house in Fort Lauderdale across from the infamous Elbow Room.

The Sunshine State's drinking age was 18.

The four of us were legal.

We crossed the state line around 9pm. WBZ was on the radio. The Boston station was broadcasting the NHL play-offs. Bruins-Canadians. We were leading 'les Habitants' by 2 goals in the 3rd period. The station's 50,000 kilowatt signal gave out at the 'free OJ' welcome stand. We reached Fort Lauderdale at dawn. We swam in the Gulf Stream at sunrise.

At Wolfies we ordered breakfast and I read the morning newspaper. The Bruins has lost 7-5. None of my friends cared about the loss.

We were used to losing to les Habs and the girls on the beach were wearing bikinis.

I have my own short poem on cold season.

"Fuck winter."

Foto by Alison R

The New Ice Age

Most people in the world accept the threat of Climate Change or Global Warming, however over 13% of Americans along with the Saudis and Indonesians deny that the rampant greed of Mankind has any effect on the weather and another 40% of my countrymen are agnostics. Right-wing newspapers report the expansion of glaciers, while scientists announced that grass is growing at the foot of Mount Everest. I am not surprised, since the fossil fuel industry has spent billions of dollars to convince these citizens that 'we' i.e. humans are not to blame.

This winter in New York snow has only fallen twice without any lasting accumulation, yet the forecast for the next ten days predicts snow over the weekend. It might end up as rain, but however the Ice Age flourishes in my friend's freezer. Waffles are frozen into his mini-glacier and a small pint on vodka chills on the rim.

His ice pack is a thing of beauty for someone from the north, because in the last century we had snow and lots of it.

Falmouth Foresides, Maine 1958

What Snow?

The US Meteorological Survey has reported that New York City received a little over twenty inches of snow this winter. All I saw were a few dustings, then again throughout February I was in Kenya and Tanzania.

Snow topped Mount Kilimanjaro and some days ran down the slopes, however the equatorial sun melted the snow cover by noon.

The temperature at the Maranzi Hut was around freezing at night, but my sleeping bag kept me warm, so I spend another winter without snow.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Empire State Plaza

The 1825 completion of the Eire Canal opened the Wilderness to the World and Albany became the eastern gateway to an untouched continent. It was among the ten top cities in America up to 1840. A place to be.

Furs, lumber, grains, metals, and meat funneled through New York's capitol, thanks to steam-shipping on the Hudson, but the city declined over throughout the 19th Century, losing 20% of its population. By 1970 people claimed Albany was the asshole of New York and Troy was ten miles up that ass.

The Gut was still a vibrant neighborhood. Bars abounded throughout the South End. It was home to 10,000 people. Working class people suffered any advancement under the reign of Mayor Corning, who protected the poor from urban development.

The city was its people and the good percentage of the Gut's inhabitants were black, Italian, Irish, and derelict drunks.

The South End was doomed by a 1959 visit by Princess Juliana of the Netherlands.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller, later the Assassin of Attica, had been embarrassed by the squalor of lower classes and had said, "There's no question that the city did not look as I think the Princess thought it was going to."

98 acres of housing were razed to the ground.

The people were thrown into the streets without anywhere to go.

Nothing was left standing.

Nothing stood in the way of the Power of Progress.

Wallace Harrison overseered the destruction like Baron Haussmann's Paris boulevards.

In New York some of us spoke about the Plaza as the greatest example of Brutalist Architecture in the USA.

I had only driven by it on an Interstate.

It meant nothing to me.

As did many things.

But I've been up North to work.

My employers always asked the same, "Why are you late?"

None of them understand the light.

Or the frozen snow.

Winter was winter in the North in 2016.

Not in 2020.

December.

Emptiness.

Isolation.

Power.

And one man dead to the world sleeping in it all.

He owned everything.

Even a Princess.