Summer Solstice 2022

Yesterday was the official summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The day lasted almost sixteen hours in New York and the sun never set in Murmansk, Russia. I woke well before the dawn and went to sleep far past sunset, as the Earth polar cap tipped toward the nearest star 93 million miles away from our home planet.

Five hundred year after the discovery of beer by the Celts the Druid priests gathered the tribes to erect this monolithic bluestone clock to record the rising and setting on the sun and the passage of the stars. To this day modern archaeologists will not attributed this great feat to the Celts, because the true tribe supposedly arrived in Britain in 600 before Caeser's reign over Rome.

Fucking Brits haven't even discovered its ancient name.

No one has come even close.

No one.

Not even us remaining Neanderthals.

The Avebury henges followed Stonehenge's creation.

Back in 1994 I drank in a good pub at the northern entrance.

I also climbed to the top of the div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">

Juneteenth 1900 Texas

The above photo was taken in Texas thirty-five years after the morning of June 19, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free, although not in the border states until later.

Still free, but the fight for equality is not over by a long shot.

Happy ‘tenth.

Information from Wikipedia.

Trans Europe Express 1980s Paris Bruxelles

1985
Paris
The Trans Europe Express
Out of Gare du Nord
Two hours plus
To Bruxelles
Christine et moi
A Bruxelles.
To record a 45
‘Take Me Higher’.
Train leaves the station
Northbound
Paris left behind
Clackety-clack
Picking up speed
Only clack-clack-clack
Through Ile-de-France.
Early morning
Gray sky
Comme toujours
Petite dejeuner
In the dining car.
White table cloth
Silver service
Maybe a glass of wine.
Picardy
Flat fields forever.
Clack clack clack
Back in our seats
Christine asleep
Last night drinks
A Le Privilege
Clack clack clack
Wallonia
Out the window
Gray sky
Rain
Rows of plowed dirt to the horizon
Thinking of Jaques Brel
Le plat pays qui est a mienne.
Clack clack clack.
Christine still asleep
Maybe dreaming
I cover her with a SCNF blanket
Le Trans Europe Express
Le Classe of Old Europe.
Clack clack clack
The main station of Brussels-Midi
Less than an hour away
Clack clack clack
Sixty years ago.
A horrible war was fought here
Millions died on this soil.
The War To End All Wars.
Nothing but farmland today
Clack Clack clack.
Thinking of Jacques Brel
"The flat country that is mine."
Clack clack clack
And Brussels
Chocolate, beer, a deeper gray than Paris
Soon to come.
Tonight
In a studio
Christine at the Mike ‘
Take Me Higher.
Clack Clack Clack
Trans Europe Express.

of course who can't forget TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS by Kraftwerk.

Bruins June 17, 2012 - The Cup

Twelve years ago

June 17, 2012

That morning I was at work on 47th Street and my coworker at the diamond exchange said there was a big crowd before the NHL store.

I realized that the Bruins might have come to show off the Stanley Cup. My boss Manny asked where I was going. "Personal business."

Sure enough inside the 6th Avenue store Bergeron, Chara, and Tim Thomas stood on an interior balcony. Bruins fans were ecstatic. The trio descended to leave and as Chara passed I asked if I could touch the Cup.

"Touch it. You can hold it."

He handed the trophy to me and I kissed it. Tears of an eighteen year old remembering #4's goal against the Blues.

Tears of joy.

The Aroma of Paradise / Gaspe Quebec

The ride from the ferry landing on the south shore of the St Lawrence to Gaspe took longer than my father and I had anticipated, even counting for a Quebec trooper stopping my father for speeding. 160 KPH in a 100 KPH zone. My father received a warning and we were back on our way, wheeling along the rugged coast line. The peninsula ended at our destination. A small fishing town famousized by the monolithic islands trailing into the Atlantic. Both of us were happy to arrive at sunset. We booked a hotel and asked the clerk for the address of the best restaurant.

"Bonne Vue."

"Tres bien." My father had learned his French in college. 1940. Mine came from working at the Bains-Douches in the 80s. The clerk didn't understand either of us. Quebec's dialect dated back to the 1600s.

We walked to the restaurant. The evening air was free of mosquitoes. A delightful fragrance traipsed with the breeze. My father's keen nose smelled the same aroma. The source was a restaurant without a name. We entered like a pair of Lagotto Romagnolo hunting a motherlode of truffles. I knocked on the wall of the kitchen. The chef turned from his frying pan filled with seafood.

"Deux plats comme ca." I lifted two fingers. He smiled back at us. Every cook likes someone appreciating their efforts. The hostess sat us by the window. Our meal was a bouillabaisse of local fish, clams, and shrimp. Delicious was an understatement. We were transported to paradise. The wine came from France. This was a foreign land. Tomorrow we would be heading back south.

Away from the distant Quebec and its food.

Nothing like it south of the border.

THROWING LIKE A GIRL by Peter Nolan Smith

My introduction to baseball came in the early spring of 1958. My father dragged me away from our Zenith black-and-white. Our favorite show, THE THREE STOOGES, was on the TV. Even a six-year old boy knew better than to resist a man his size.

"Too nice a day to waste in front of the boob tube." My father hated TV's grasp on his children. He came from the age of radio. I followed him out of the house into the backyard. A line of trees struggled to sprout leaves after a long Maine winter, but at the end of the street the sun sparkled off the million mirrors scattered across the harbor separating Falmouth Foresides from Portland. April would soon be May.

My father handed me a brand new baseball glove. I needed his help putting the enormous mitt onto my elfin left hand. My older brother stood on withered grass twenty feet away. His left hand buried in another new leather glove. A Red Sox cap shaded his face. He clutched a baseball in his right hand.

"Time for you two to play America's Pastime." My father had served with the Army Air Force in World War II and fought the Great Maine Fire of 1949. Standing close to me he demonstrated the proper stance for a right-handed batter. "Legs apart with your body square to the plate and your eyes on the mound.

"Yes, sir." I had watched a few games on TV and thrown the baseball with my older brother. I knew that Ted Williams number was 9, but my mind was better suited to Hide and Seek. No one could find my secret places.

"Okay, let's play some ball."

My father crouched behind the piece of wood serving as the plate and told my brother to throw a strike. The seven year-old looked over to my mother in the breezeway. She nodded her approval and he chucked the ball with every ounce of his skinny body's strength. His lucky first pitch thudded into my father's glove. The bat never left my shoulder. I had been too scared that the ball was going to hit me.

"You're supposed to swing at the ball." He stood up and acted out the motion of batting with an imaginary bat. The 38 year-old Maine native had the same athletic build as the baseball players on TV. He resumed his position and smacked his fist into the glove. "Give it another try.

I obeyed his command and swung at the next pitch with closed eyes. Something struck the bat and my hands tingled with shock of the accidental meeting of two objects. The ball floated into our new neighbors' backyard.

The eleven year-old girl with short red hair fielded the ball on one bounce and winged it to my father with teenage accuracy. His clean-shaven face grimaced from the impact in his glove. My father was an electrical engineer and he tried to analyze the source of her strength. The girl was mostly bones.

"That's some arm."

"My father wanted a boy, so here I am." The freckled redhead was a classic Tom Boy and I fell in love the second she taught me how to grip the ball with my fingers.

We spent the rest of the morning throwing the ball with the lanky girl, whose name was Charlene. My father stopped to pick up my errant throw. There had been many.

Her mother came out to introduce herself. The slender blonde worked as a nurse for Maine Medical and her husband captained an oil freighter out of Bath. They were from Bar Harbor.

"That's some baseball player you have." My father nodded at Charlene.

She cut the air with the swing of the bat.

"Her father played semi-pro. I told him to quit and get a real job or else we were through." Charlene's mother had a nice smile. Her teeth were perfect. "I suppose having a tomboy is his revenge, but baseball is a love they share."

My mother invited her inside for tea and a chat. My sisters sat on the porch. My best friend, Chaney, rounded the corner of the house. One look at Charlene and he ran back home for his glove. Some older boys appeared to mock our playing with a girl. One was our school bully, Skeeter Kressee. My father challenged them to a game.

Five on five with my father the umpire. Charlene knocked in all our runs. It was my first win in a game. Most boys in America worshipped Mickey Mantle, but Charlene was my baseball goddess.

Every day after school my older brother, my best friend, Chaney, and Charlene practiced baseball. By the end of May my brother and Chaney could toss a baseball over the peaked roof of our two-story house. I had broken my sisters' bedroom window on my last attempt. Charlene took the time to teach me the mechanics of throwing. Her father must been a great instructor, because after an hour my toss cleared the peak of the roof by ten feet.

Throughout that spring three other neighborhood boys joined our team and we played 7-on 7 pick-up games in the dirt lot next to Route 1. Charlene was our ringer. We routed the boys our age. Our winning streak continued against 3rd and 4th graders. My father would coach us on the weekend. A bunch of 5th graders came close to beating us in early June. Charlene smacked a flat pitch so hard that the ball cleared the state highway. We called ourselves the Red Sox and there were no Yankees in our town to challenge our team.

We were six boys and one girl.

One afternoon Chaney, my older brother, and I came home from Pinewood School to find Charlene sobbing on the front steps. Her Wilson glove and bat lay on the ground. My younger sisters' crying jags were over lost dolls and our teasing. Charlene's tears came from a greater disappointment. We stood on the lawn and watched her for a minute without saying a word. Her sorrow was that deep.

"What's wrong?" I asked and my older brother elbowed my ribs.

"Leave her alone."

"Did someone bother you?" I looked up the street. Skeeter Kressee was tormenting a neighbor's cat. I picked up the bat.

"It's not Skeeter." Charlene wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt. "I went to try out for Little League and the coaches told me to go home and bake a cake."

"They would have never told Frank Malzone that." Chaney barked with boyish anger.

"Frank Malzone is a man." My brother idolized the Red Sox 3rd baseman.

"And Charlene is the best player in our town." My favorite Red Sox was Pete Runnel. I had traded two Frank Malzone baseball card for one of his. "Did you get a try-out?"

"No, they said girls should play with dolls not with balls." Charlene walked away from our house without her baseball and glove. "You can keep those. I won't be needing them anymore."

We had a game that afternoon. The 3rd graders beat us 15-0. We were too young to play anyone without Charlene.

That night at the dinner table I told my father about Charlene not being allowed to play Little League. My mother frowned at the information.

"You can't always get what you want." She had given up a singing career to raise five children. The strength of her voice had stopped the Portland Cathedral choir in mid-chorus of AVE MARIA. She understood sacrifice.

"She's a very good baseball player. Better than I was at that age." My father appreciated talent. He watched THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW every Sunday night. "They should let her try out."

"Boys and men don't like playing with girls or women." My mother served my father another portion of roast beef. "Mostly because they're scared of losing."

"You may be right." My father cut into the meat. He loved my mother's cooking. "But she deserves a try-out and I'm going to get her one."

"Good luck." My mother was sincere in her wishes and stood up to clear the plates from the table. The boundaries between male and female had been carved in stone for centuries.

"Thanks." My father winked at my older brother and me like he had a magic lamp in his back pocket. "I can't promise it will happen, so don't say anything to Charlene or your friends. You can keep a secret, right?"

"Yes, sir," My brother and I answered in unison. We were good sons and did as we were told 99% of the time.

"Because telling a secret means it won't happen."

"Just like telling someone your wish after snapping a wishbone." My older brother nodded with understanding. He and I fought for wishes with dried chicken bones. He had won each and every time and I believed that his wish was to always break off the wish part of the wishbone. We bought our empty plates to the kitchen sink and went upstairs to our room. Our lights went out at 9. I listened to the Red Sox game on the radio powered by an alligator clip attached to the steel of my bed. The rocket-shaped radio was made in Japan.

Chaney once told me that the Japs played baseball.

My uncle said the same thing and he had been in Japan after the war.

I fell asleep before the game's end. The home team was playing the Yankees. The Bronx Bombers never lost to us.

The next few days were typical for the coast of Maine. Rain, cold, and windy. Our baseball gloves remained on their hooks. We didn't see Charlene once during that time. She went to school and came back home before us. Twice I went over to her house. No one answered my knock on the door.

Friday night my father came into the house.

"You didn't say anything to Charlene about the try-out?"

"No." I didn't like the sound of this questioning.

"To your friends?"

"No." I searched my mind for something that I might have done wrong.

"Your teachers?"

"No."

"C'mon, we're going to talk with Charlene."

I grabbed Charlene's baseball glove and bat.

The three of us crossed the backyard. He rang the doorbell and Charlene's mother opened the door.

"Can I help you?" She was wearing curlers.

"I'd like to speak with Charlene. It's about baseball. I tried to get her a try-out, but everyone said that she couldn't"

"She already knows that." Charlene's wife lit a cigarette and offered my father one. "She's giving up on baseball. Talking to her won't change her mind. This is a man's world. She knows that now. So there's nothing to talk about. Thanks for coming over, but that's the way it is and she'll have to live with it."

"But___" I looked up the stairs, hoping to see Charlene.

"No buts." My father lit the cigarettes with a Zippo lighter. Charlene's mom leaned closer to him. They inhaled at the same time. "Charlene has made her decision and so has the Little League. It isn't right, but like her mother said, "That's the way it is." Thanks for your time."

"Thanks for your effort." Charlene's mother smiled at my father. They nodded, as if they were allies in a greater fight.

"What about her glove and bat?" I was sure that I could convince Charlene to play with us. I just needed the chance.

"Leave them with me." Her mother took them out of my hands. "Her father can decide what to do with them when he gets back home."

"Have a good weekend." We returned to our house and shut the door. My mother and father spoke in the dining room alone. They were having an adult conversation. Nothing else was ever said about Charlene's playing baseball. My parents became good friends with her mother and father. The two couples went out together. My mother always said that they had a good time.

I saw Charlene later that summer. Her hair was longer and she was wearing a dress. I tried to speak with her, but she ignored my attempts. She was almost 10 and I was definitely 6.

Two years later we moved from Maine to Boston. My older brother and I were on the same team in the town league. I told the other kids about Charlene. One of the boys laughed at my story.

"Girls can't throw a ball."

"Can too."

"Can not."

I punched him in the nose and he cried to the coach. I got in trouble. It didn't matter too much to me. I was no good at baseball, but some of her skill wore off on me. Opposing players would shout from the bench.

"You throw like a girl."

I ignored the insults.

My throws reached the plate fast and hard same as Charlene, because that girl knew how to throw.

BACKWARDS ON ICE by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in 2014 the Bruins overcame a horrible 1st period to tie the Blackhawks and force another sudden death overtime. This time the flow of time was in the Bruins' favor and Paille scored the game winner. Game 3 will be in Boston.

I love hockey.

Several years ago I beat my cousin Oil Can on his $15,000 table hockey game at his house on the North Shore.

4-3 with a stomping on decider.

"I'd like to see you do that on ice." Oil Can wasn't a sore loser, but he had lost four games at home. His son was disappointed since Harrison had been working hard to be the first person to beat his father.

"I'd be lucky to score a goal." I was useless on skates.

"It'd be a four-game sweep with each one a shut-out." Oil Can wasn't bragging about his prowess with a hockey stick. He had started for our high school as a freshman. Harrison was playing basketball.

"Your hockey team went 0-17 my senior year." 1970 was forty years ago.

"And the next year we reached the playoffs." His team had challenged the hockey hierarchy through 1971 to 1973.

"You were a good squad." I had seen them beat BC High at Boston Arena. Our home rink was Rindge Arena off 128.

"We could go play a one-on-one right now on Route 1. I've got all the equipment." He had starred in his high school re-uniuon game the previous winter. He was even better in baseball.

"Not a chance." I was intent on enjoying my victory at table hockey. "I can't skate backwards."

"What was that about?"

"My father brought us down to the pond up in Maine." My father was from Westbrook. Boys were expected to skate six months after they learned to walk. There was a pond overlooking Portland Harbor. The smell of bread from the Nissen Bakery mixed with the smell of the sea. "He told us he was going to teaching us how to skate backwards. My brother was 5 and I was 4."

"A good age to learn."

"We had walked down the street with skates over our shoulders. Mine were CCM." Skating backwards would help me play for the Bruins in the future. They never beat the Canadians. I was going to be a star, since I could skate forward faster than anyone in our neighborhood, except for Charleen Davis, but she was a girl and girls didn't play hockey. "The ice was clean and my father showed us how to position our feet. My brother and I got on the ice. We should like him. He pushed off and tripped over a crack. His head smacked the ice and he stood up with a smile."

"Your father was a good skater." Oil Can had lived up the street from our teaberry ranch house on the South Shore of Boston.

"Yeah, but blood was flowing down his face. He had cut his head and the smile was from a concussion. He had broken his leg skiing the year before and I thought that he would have to wear a cast on his head." He told me that he wasn't hurt and I believed him." I loved that man.

"Ice is hard, but not that hard."

"After that I never wanted to skate backwards." My father gave up on teaching us how to skate backwards.

"So no game today?" Oil Can wanted to show his son that he wasn't a loser. Harrison loved him either way.

"Not a chance, but I'll play another game to seven on the table hockey." I was happy to give him a second shot at shining for Harrison. I have a son and Fenway loved his father too.

"You're on." Oil Can popped open to beers and we clinked bottles. "Here's to our fathers."

Harrison toasted us with Coke. He was 11 and one day soon he would beat his father at his own game. It was only a matter of time.

ps I took Oil Can in the second series 4-2, because in table hockey I didn't have to skate backwards.

GO BRUINS.

Wind River Mountains 1998

Wind River Mountains 1998

In the Spring of 1998 my seventy-eight year-old father and I embarked on a road trip through Wyoming and Montana. We picked up a rented car in Bozeman, Montana and stopped the first night in Chico Hot Springs. The next morning the two of us continued down Paradise Valley to Yellowstone Park.

Buffalos grazed the new grasses in the low valleys and my old man marveled at Old Faithful's punctuality. He had never been to this part of the West.

"I wish your mother was with us." She had passed away in Boston from previous year.

"Me too." My mother loved to travel and before her death she had asked me to be her eyes.

We spent the night near Inspiration Point and headed south in the morning.

Snow tipped the jagged high peaks of the Grand Tetons, but my father didn't talk much of the long stretches between towns. His thought rested on his dear Angie.

When I was behind the wheel, we listened to the country-western stations. My father switched to his classical CDs during his driving shifts. Sometimes he cried during the opera arias. My mother had a great singing voice.

On the fourth night we stopped Pinedale in Wyoming. The mountains to the south were painted pink by the setting sun and the clear evening sky shone with the cosmos. My father marveled at the remote beauty and I told him, "Back in the 1830s mountain men hunted beaver in that wilderness."

"Doesn't look like it's changed much since then." My father had fought Maine's Great Fire in 1947.

He knew his woods.

"Probably not."

There was only one way to find out and during our steak dinner at the hotel restaurant I pored over a map of the Wind River Mountains and plotted out a day's hike across the range from south to north.

"What are you thinking?"

"That tomorrow I might take a walk." I pointed to a trail crossing the mountains. "I calculate the distance to be about fifteen miles."

"Distances in the mountains are different from distance on the road," my father cautioned with the wisdom of a Boy Scout leader.

"I should be able to cover that distance in ten hours walking two miles an hour. You drop me at the southern trailhead and pick me up at the northern end." I was in good shape for a man my age.

"These aren't the White Mountains."

"I know."

Back in the early 1960s our family had climbed Mount Monadnock, whose summit was a little over 3000 feet.

The Wind River Mountains' highest peaks towered above 12,000 feet.

"That hike could end up being a long fifteen miles." My father didn't walk anywhere. At Yellowstone

I had to drag him to view Old Faithful's eruption of steam. "And you're not as young as you think you are."

"None of us are, but Mom asked me to be her eyes on the world and I know she would like to see those mountains."

"She would be just as happy with a postcard." My father liked playing it safe, but he was only in condition to talk me out of attempting this hike and not accompanying me.

"My eyes are to see for her."

"If you say so." My father regarded my life a reckless journey. He wasn't too wrong, but I finished my wine and refilled the glass with water. I didn't need a hangover for tomorrow's trek with the trail cresting two 9,000-foot passes. "I don't like you doing this on your own."

"I'll be careful." Only two years earlier I had hiked in the Himalayas.

"It's your funeral, so please don't take any shortcuts. That's how people get lost."

"Yes, sir."

The next morning we woke at dawn and ate quick breakfast.

"Looks like clear skies," I said getting into the car.

"The weather down here isn't the weather in the mountains." He gazed at the peaks.

"There isn't a cloud in the sky."

"Now."

"I'll be fine."

Forty minutes later my father dropped me at the southern trailhead.

I checked my bag for my map, compass, knife, water, food, whistle, matches, flashlight, an all-weather jacket, fleece, and camera. It was 7:34 AM.

I looked at my watch.

"Sunset's in twelve hours. I should get to the northern trailhead before then."

"I'll be waiting on the other side."

My father hugged me and I set out on the trail to soon be surrounded by wilderness. Bighorn sheep danced on rocky tors and elk herds groomed the alpine meadows.

Back in the early 19th Century Indians had hunted these animals and trappers had caught beaver in the glacier-fed streams. I fell into a good pace. No other bootprints marked the trail.

Within an hour I topped a bald promontory two miles from the trailhead. Mountain peaks barricaded the western horizon. My mother would have loved the view and I toasted her in heaven with a sip of water.

I surveyed the trail map. The path divided into three directions. The northern fork led to a nearest col. The distance to my destination was thirteen miles. I was making good time and I anticipated seeing my father in seven hours.

The weather changed at this height and light clouds obscured the steep pass. A sharp wind swept chilled air across the bare rocks and a strengthening flurry obscured the peaks. I pulled on my cap, fleece and jacket, then trudged down into the aspen forests, where the sun broke through the overcast and I took off my jacket to eat an early lunch of salami and cheese.

Reinforced by the meal I followed the trail up-and-down over several aretes, then switchbacked down to a creek.

The spring melt flooded the path. I swam from one side of the torrent to the other somehow losing my way and I backtracked a mile in soaking clothes.

Cold and exhausted I sat on a flat rock and dried my boots in the sun.

Thirty minutes later they were merely damp. I took out the map and realized that I had only covered three miles in the last two hours.

A family of moose wandered across a boggy swamp. They were thin from a long winter. The wind carried my scent to them and they trotted into the forest. I pulled on my boots and tramped over a 9000-foot high pass. The air was thin and my heart thumped out a rapid beat. Not having seen anyone all day I wondered whether I was on the right trail.

A sign post confirmed my suspicion. I had missed my turning.

I gazed at the wet ground. Bear tracks marked the path. The paw prints were three times the size of my feet. People died in these mountains and died easy from cold, starvation, and animal attacks. I ate my last chocolate bar and counted my blessing. At least I wasn't lost anymore and I spoke to my mother every step of the way downhill.

At 7 O'Clock I arrived at the parking lot. My father stood with two rangers. I must have looked a wreck and the rangers shook their heads, thankful that they didn't have to traipse into the forest at night to find my body and returned to their pick-up truck.

"Twelve hours on the nose." My father tapped his watch.

"Better than thirteen."

"And certainly better than twenty."

"How was it?"

"Beautiful. Mom would be happy."

"She's happier you're in one piece. You hungry?" My father opened the car.

"You bet." I hobbled over to the passenger side on noodled legs and threw my bag on the floor.

"Thirsty?" My father started the engine.

"And then some." I unlaced my boots. The smell was wretched.

"I got a six-pack of beer and a half of a cold pizza." My father cracked the window. "I thought you might need some nourishment."

"You know me all too well." I popped open the Coors and drained the can in one go, feeling every seconds of my forty-seven years. The pizza had an extra topping of pepperoni.

"You don't know how good this is going to taste."

"Oh, yes I do. After the bulldozers stilled the last flames of the Great Maine Fire of 1947, my crew and I had celebrated our victory with a pizza in Portland. It was the best thing that I ever tasted outside your mother's cooking."

"Same as this pizza."

"You know it."

We toasted that thought with beer

Neither of us were mountain men.

We were simply a father and son on a road trip.

Cold pizza.

Colder beer.

And my father had a bottle of white wine in the cooler.

My mother would have liked that.

And so would we later.

Happy 63rd Father’s Day Poo Frank

My father passed away over twelve years ago.

Today would have been his sixty-third Father's Day.

Frank A Smith II was my best friend.

Still is.

He loved my mother and mourned her early passing from this life.

My father loved his kids.

All six of us.

Frank III, Regina, Pam, Patrick, Michael, and me.

He was a native of Maine.

And Watchic Pond

I loved that lake too.

It always felt like home.

After my mother passed in 1996, my father and I traveled the world.

We voyaged by car through France.

He came to stay with me later in Ireland and we found my Nana's house.

We went west to Utah.

North to Quebec.

And Poo Frank voyaged around the world to Thailand to meet my family.

Frank A Smith was a good man and while I don't carry his name, I will follow his path around the world.

A MAN OF SPEED by Peter Nolan Smith

Father's Day has complemented Mother's Day since 1910, although the holiday remained unofficial for decades and most Americans treated Father's Day as a joke, until LBJ proclaimed the Third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six Years later Richard Nixon signed a bill to include Father's Day in the American pantheon of holidays.

"The only thing I get for Father's Day are bills," my father had said at a dinner on that day in 1971.

He was right, even though I recall having given my father a tie on several Father's Day.

After I had passed the legal age for drinking, he had received a bottle of wine, which we had drank with my mother.

He was lucky, because many fathers get nothing for Father's Day.

1 in 6 according to one survey.

Of course some fathers were total bastards and none of their kids celebrated Bastard Day.

My father was a good man. He had raised six kids the best he knew how and I loved him for his many sacrifices to better my life.

Some of his effort was in vain and my father liked listing my failures on various occasions. The list rarely changed from time to time.

"You're sloppy with everything. You traveled the world like a tramp."

"Our family voyaged around the world. My great grandfather had died in a ship wreck off Rio."

"Their travels had purpose. You were just a hobo."

It was the truth and I accepted his accusations without any defense, although after my mother's death the two of us flew to France, Ireland, Utah, the Olympic Peninsula, Montana, and Wyoming for long road trips. We were both hoboes.

My father was an excellent driver, but his foot weighed heavy on the pedal and we argued about his speeding. He was never wrong and refused to give up the steering wheel in fear of having to permanently surrender his license.

One of our last trips had been to Quebec.

"Why Quebec?" My father had usually picked our destinations.

I told him about the Manicouagan crater.

"It's the largest 'visible' impact crater on Earth. It hit the earth over 200 million years ago."

"And why do we want to go there?"

"There’s nothing like it in the world. I tried to get there in the winter of 1991."

"And?"

"There are two seasons that far north. The season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding."

"It was definitely bad driving season north of the border that year." The snow had deepened in Northern Maine, but the road was passable, however my English travel mate had been an illegal alien and Phillipe had refused to cross the border. "I turned back at Fort Kent."

"And you want to go now?" My father was increasingly more comfortable staying at home

"It's almost always day that far north. No snow either."

"I don't know if I'd like the endless day. I like my sleep."

"Me too, but we'll have a good time."

"Doing what?"

"Driving, playing cribbage, eating good food, and drinking wine."

"Okay." My father was an easy sell and two weeks later we headed north from Boston.

July 2000 was a warm month, but his new Mercedes had superb AC. We reached Quebec City in one day and stayed at the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec City, where we dined on crepes and sipped white wine overlooking the Plains of Abraham.

"Our ancestors fought with the British under General Wolfe."

"I know." I had been a registered Son of the Colonial Wars, until I had realized that the association celebrated the conquest of the Northern Tribes

"So if we won that war, why don't they speak English?" He was talking about Les Habitants.

"Because they're French."

"They're not French. They're Canadian, which is almost American."

"They don't think that."

"That's, because they're too French to know when they're beaten. You know our ancestors fought here with the British under General Wolfe."

He had a new tendency to repeat things.

I played my part and said, "I know."

The waiter arrived before we had to relive the previous dialogue.

Having lived in Paris, I ordered the wine in Boston-accented French.

The waiter ignored me and my father told him, "We want a Mer'Lot."

Mispronouncing wines was one of his favorite jokes.

The waiter laughed in anticipation of a good tip.

My father would not disappoint him.

"I thought you could speak French."

"The Quebecois speak with an ancient Gallic dialect."

"And you speak French with a Boston accent?"

"Maybe I do."

"You know our ancestors fought here with the British under General Wolfe?"

"I know." I sighed knowing I had not heard the last of General Wolfe.

We finished a second bottle of wine and he told the waiter, "We're going to see Lake Manicouagan."

"Why?"

"My son says it's the biggest impact crater in America."

"It's also called the Eye of Quebec. It can be seen from Space."

"Okay." The waiter shrugged with the same smirk everyone wore on hearing our destination.

"No one seems to be impressed with Lake Manicouagan," my father commented, as we took the elevator to our floor.

"None of them have ever seen it."

"Neither have you. It's probably just a big pine-covered rock in the middle of a lake hundreds of miles from anything."

"Exactly. We might get there tomorrow if we drive fast."

"100?"

"Why not?"

We entered our hotel and he fell asleep searching the TV for WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

I read Kenneth Roberts ARUNDEL about Benedict Arnold's invasion of Quebec. Our ancestors had also fought in the Revolutionary War. I put down the novel and shut off the light. Tomorrow we had an early start.

The following dawn we skirted along the northern bank of a foggy St. Lawrence. The shore was dotted with fiords and falls. Whales gathered at the river mouths. My father drove like he had late for work.

"Can you stop a minute?"

"What for?"

"Before today I've only seen one and that was off the coast of Hawaii."

"Your great-grand-uncle killed hundreds of whales."

"Aunt Bert's father." She had lived to a 103.

"Her father slaughtered a blue whale for her eighth birthday."

"I know. Maybe she saw hundreds, but I want to see one closer.”

"If you've seen one whale, you've seen a thousand."

Traffic on the North Cabot Trail was non-existent and my father stepped on the gas. We flew at 110 MPH down the smooth two-lane road.

"Why are you in a hurry?"

"We're not making it to your crater today and I want to catch WHEEL OF FORTUNE at the motel." He enjoyed this simple pleasure, even if his show aired in French north of the border.

"Baie-Comeau is only two hours away."

"You been here before?"

"No, but our ancestors fought under Wolfe in Quebec."

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing."

"As usual."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Just that you wasted your life and I can't begin to count the ways, but there was the time you drew submarines on the bedroom walls and set fire to the woods on Easter morning."

"I'd didn't light it." My older brother Frunk was a pyromaniac. I was simply his acolyte.

"Then who did?"

I said nothing and my father put on a classical music CD. Mozart filled the silence to Baie-Comeau, where the road turned north to Lake Manicouagan. We stopped for the night at a small hotel overlooking a crystal blue bay. We were a mere two hundred miles for the crater.

After signing in, the manager asked where we were going.

"Lake Manicouagan."

"Why?" He regarded us with bafflement. "There is nothing there."

"It has the biggest impact crater in North America.

"And also biggest Maringouins in Quebec.” The manager shrugged with a smirk.

"What's Maringouin?"

"Mosquitoes, the most savage mosquitoes south of Hudson Bay."

"How savage?"

"You’ll see in Lake Manicouagan."

We ate fresh salmon in a small restaurant, where the locals sat outside eating corn around a bonfire. We returned to the hotel and I opened a cold bottle of Frontenac Gris. The two of us admired the glow of the near-endless light of summer, although the stars were fighting to be bright through clouds of merciless mosquitoes and blood trickled the bites on our heads.

"You still want to see Lake Manicouagan?"

"It's only two hundred miles away." I swatted the map at our tormenters, which proved useless for killing the swarms of mosquitoes.

"On a dirt road." My father was from Maine. He knew dirt roads.

"With bigger mosquitoes than this."

I slapped my forehead. A glut of blood dripped on my shirt.

"I've had enough of this."

"Me too."

We retreated inside the hotel room and finished the wine. My father watched his show. His snores kept me up until midnight. I fell asleep reading ARUNDEL. Kenneth Roberts failed to mention mosquitoes, because Benedict Arnold had invaded Quebec in the winter of 1776. The Revolutionary army had broken under the city walls.

Early the following morning I examined the bites in the mirror.

"What do you think?" My father was scratching at his lumpy skull.

"We're so close. It seems a shame not to try for it."

"There's nothing there, but more Maringouins according to that man."

My father was right and I agreed that there was little sense in braving the vicious blood-sucking mosquitoes.

"So what now?"

"There's an ferry crossing the river at 8am."

"How far?" He checked his watch.

"Thirty miles."

"Let’s go."

My father never dropped below 100 and we made the ferry in time for the 8am crossing.

I spoke with several travelers about the drive to Gaspe.

They warned against speeding.

My father ridiculed their advice.

“I’ve been driving over sixty years and never got a speeding ticket. Not like you."

My last moving violation had been on the Mass Pike for driving 85 in a 65 zone. The year was 1975 and I muttered, "It's a miracle you haven't."

"Not a miracle. Just good driving." He exited off the ferry like he were chased by clouds of bebittes, which was another Quebecoise word for mosquitoes. I supposed they had more.

Towns were clustered closer together on the south bank of the St. Lawrence. My cautions about his speeding were dismissed by his nasty rancor and he swore at me for opening the map.

"It doesn't matter where we are. Only where we are going."

"I want to stop and see the sights." The chances of my coming this way again were nil.

"There's nothing to see, but trees and sea."

My father motored past every stunning vista with a vengeance. He was the captain. The Benz hit 90.

No other car came close to that speed. I studied the long straight-aways with binoculars and spotted a police cruiser in the distance.

"Slow down."

"Slow down for what?" All he saw was open road.

"A cop car. He's going to stop us."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about." My father had never used that type of language with me or anyone else.

Something was rattling his brain.

The police car passed us, then 180ed in pursuit. The siren was loud and the lights flashed behind us.

"He wants you to stop."

"So I'm stopping."

He pulled off the road and recited a list of my many sins; not delivering my newspaper route fast enough, losing a scholarship to high school because I didn't believe in God, getting arrested for a high-speed chase, drugs, drinks, and not giving him grandchildren. If that provincial trooper hadn’t knocked on the window, my father would have covered my every trespass since birth.

Worse his accusations were spot on target, but I said with a smile, "So much for not getting a speeding ticket."

"Like always you don't know shit." My father put down the window. "Why are you talking like that?" “Like what?” He didn't hear my question and rolled down his window. The hills to the south were covered with a pine forest. The air smelled of cut wood. Somewhere men were working lumber. My grandfather had put himself through Bowdoin College chopping trees in the northern woods. The trooper asked for my father's license and registration in Quebecois. "Is there something wrong, officer?" My father respected the law. The officer said in French that he had clocked the car at 90 and looked at me. "Le Limite de Vitesse est 60. I will have to take your father into custody." "Really?" I asked in French. "Cuffs and all?"

"Oui." He was dead serious about provincial laws.

My father smiled with a practiced innocence.

"So if you arrest him, you’ll take him which way?"

The officer pointed in the direction of Gaspe.

"Excellent." I figured booking and arraignment was a two-hour ordeal and I could use the break.

"What if I pick him up in 3 hours?"

"We are not a baby-sitting service. I will give your father a warning. No ticket."

"C'est pas vrai?" I was disappointed by his decision to let off my old man.

"Roulez moins vite, Mssr." The officer handed back the license with a slip of paper.

"Bien sur, officer." My father understood that he was supposed to drive at a slower pace.

The officer returned to his cruiser and wheeled away from us in the opposite direction.

My father smiled with satisfaction.

He pulled off the shoulder and we were soon up to 90.

"I told you that I wouldn't get a ticket."

"You told me a lot of things back there." I slinked into the seat defeated by his escape from justice.

My father talked of our watching bears eat at the town dump, a vandal throwing a rock at our station wagon at South Shore Drive-In, and my coming home late after a night with Janet Stetson. I had been 15. My father had picked me up at 3 in the morning.

"You hit me."

In the face.

"You should have called home. Your mother was worried."

"Sorry.” I had said it then and I said it now.

"Save your sorry for hell. You sinned with that girl. You didn't care about anyone. All you cared about was sex."

This turn in the conversation was as unexpected as a verbal barrage of curses.

"You've been a bum all your life. You should have been working. Instead you traveled the world. To do what? To be a bum."

“Mom said I was her eyes and ears on the world.”

"Only a mother can love a bum."

"You can't talk to me like that." I had worked all my life, but not as a member of the 9-to-5 society.

"Why? Can't you stand hearing the truth?" His face was turning red.

"Stop, Dad." I was worried about his heart.

"This is my car. I can say whatever I want, you dirty bum."

The speedometer was at 100.

"Maybe you can, but I don't have to listen."

"Then you can get out of the car."

My father stomped on the brakes and the car veered onto the shoulder.

"Fine with me. Pop the trunk. I want my bag."

"Get out. Now."

I obeyed him and waited on the asphalt for him to tell me to get back in the car.

Instead he hit the gas and drove east. The Mercedes disappeared over the next hill.

He had a funny sense of humor and I tried his phone with my cell. There was no service. This was not a joke.

I had my phone, wallet, binoculars and a map.

I was two miles from Mont-Louis. The another road cut south from 132. Either way I was over twenty miles from Gaspe. I stuck out my thumb. No one stopped for hitchhikers in the 21st Century and I started walking east.

Ten minutes later a provincial cruiser stopped on the shoulder.

The driver was the same officer from before.

I explained what happened and he said in Quebecois that driving long distances with family was a little like 'le fierve noir'."

"Black fever?"

"Qui, cabin fever."

He told me to get in the cruiser and we rode to Gaspe at 100 mph.

"What make you so sure he will be there?"

"He will be there. Everyone stops there."

"You don't know my father."

"Peut-etre, but I know Gaspe."

We topped a rise and below us lay a stunning archipelago of jagged rocks ran off into the boreal blue Atlantic.

"Gaspe."

The officer pointed to my father’s Mercedes parked before a small restaurant overlooking the bay.

"Everyone stops here. Bonne chance." The officer left me and cruised to the west.

I entered the restaurant. My father sat at a window table. A glass of white wine was in one hand and a photo of my mother was in the other. Another glass was filled with the same wine. He lifted his head and said, "Your mother would have loved it here. You know she said you were her eyes and ears on the world."

"I know."

I sniffed the air.

"According to the waitress the bouillabaisse of wild salmon, native oysters, and fresh shrimp is the best in Quebec. I ordered it for two."

She was right. Neither of us had tasted anything better in years and we drank two bottles of Seyval Blanc toasting my mother, our family, the Red Sox, and traveling the world.

The day lingered long in the northern latitudes and we walked along the cliffs of Gaspe in a shimmering dusk.

There were no mosquitoes.

"I've been losing my temper without any reason these days. Whatever I said I didn't mean. You've been a good son."

"I could have been a better son."

"Everyone could have been better. We can only do what we can do. Nothing more."

"And you've been a good father."

"I tried."

It wasn’t an apology.

We knew each other too long to need those.

My father was old.

I was 51, which is closer to 80 than 20.

I was old too.

"I wish your mother was with us."

"She is, because I am her eyes and ears."

"Maybe next year we'll get to Lake Manicouagan."

"And see those Maringouins. I don't think your mother would have like them."

"No, I think you're right about that."

He had loved my mother more than us, because she loved us all more than she loved herself.

That evening I kissed my father’s head before going to bed. The face mirrored mine.

"You know our ancestor fought the French up in St. Louisburg?" My father shut his eyes.

"A long time ago."

"Good night."

Thirty seconds later he fell asleep.

Tomorrow we were driving to Maine.

My sister’s camp on Watchic Pond was 500 miles away. We were both at home on the lake.

My father would drive through the endless forests of New Brunswick and the potato fields of Aroostock County with his right foot to the metal.

Those roads had been built for a man like my father, because men of speed drove fast and even faster if they didn't get tickets.

A Monk's Summer Leaves

Stayed in two days A monk No talking two days A monk. Walking Down the Avenue. Silent The sidewalk alive As are the trees The branches The green leaves Arching Into the summer sky Oh summer Oh summer Oh summer I silent A monk oh summer ps there was no fasting. Not for this monk

June 13, 1978 - Journal

This morning a knock on my SRO door.It was Ernie the porter for 27 11th Street. An eviction notice in his hand. He was about fifty. I never saw him outside the building. No one had, almost as if he were in hiding, but he always said hello. Friendly.

" I have nothing to do with this. If you pay right away. There's no problem. This is an SRO. The owners are used to people having no money."

"Will they change the locks?" I owed three weeks. $45 per week. $135. I had $63 in my pocket. I already had borrowed from everyone I knew. Alice had given $60. She only earned $120 a week. No one at CBGBs was rich.

"You have a couple of days."

"That's all I need." I shut the door and sat on the sagging bed. This SRO was bad, but not the bottom. Flophouses like the Palace Hotel over CBGBs were worst. Drunks and junkies were there. Here the residents had jobs. Not in banking. Not union. Just jobs like mine. A waiter in an executive dining room on Wall Street.

I sat with my nerves jangling, wondering where I was going to get $75 more. I had my last unemployment check from my teaching job in Boston for $110 coming. Not tomorrow and probably next week. I could ask my boss at Ebasco for an advance. Until then I'll have to avoid the manager. Arthur hates all of us. like we were to blame for his having a crappy job. George, who worked as a dishwasher at a hotel, said the manager had been fired fom the Plaza for stealing. No jail, just sentencing to sit in the office at the door. Like Ernie. He never left the building.

S*** this does wonders for my nerves. My boss at work get in advance on money. He doesn't know, it said to ask Arthur this afternoon. I avoided him yesterday cuz I thought this wouldn't be a problem. I was wrong it is a problem

Work isn't going to answer this problem. Hustling be able to get some money. $ 200 is my soul worth. I have to get a new job

Comparative standing at the windows the dining room 27 floors above Wall Street. Jersey across the river behind that the monster continent of America stretches in some 3,000 MI. For the last month I've been confined to this island 2 miles by 15 Mi is all I know. I have no idea. Boris looks like anymore concrete sidewalks asphalt streets and steel skyscrapers cover Manhattan break 4th Central Park boys dog s******* mothers I crave real nature

Later

The end of the road in Seattle I-90 Hobos under the bridge This is Skid Row Nowhere else to go Alaska to the north No roads go there Only ferries No money Stay in Seattle On the continent's edge.

Cbgb's was really boring last night I need a break from that place hang out at a bar enlightened one the smoke from other people's cigarettes belongs I can't hear what anybody says the light is poor your senses deprived by the punk rock drunk. I just gave it all up and headed west. America's first step from here is New Jersey. And that thought is enough to make me go nowhere

Later

I get my check early from ebasco.

Hopefully Ernie will let me back into 11 West 11th Street very sweaty. There are tramps camping kind of Bleeker Street he has a Barcalounger the lamp plug into nothing I'm so comfortable I wish I could be as comfortable he needs no money I have no money I should just hit the road. Obama's cultivating a rock garden. He doesn't take his boots off bums do and they put them under their heads don't get stolen sleep drunk. This one is different his name is Jim. He comes from Kansas. He hasn't been back there in over 20 years

The highway is lonely play tonight they're still strangers driving Westwood so I'm leaving their wives of their homes others their jobs sway Last Chance in Interstate bar girls beer booze all you want open all night to all the lights nowhere Nevada.

Later

And over the phone at the SRO dropping quarters $3 for 3 minutes. We both express our love and she told me," it was a mistake to come back to West Virginia."

I never Wonder and I always thought she would go and not come back

" none of my friends live here anymore. One friend Jane. . She's in the hospital he just gave birth to triplets. My brother Bobby. I never see him. I've been here 2 days already I want to leave. What should I do

May 31, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Everybody was watching Clover at the party. Anthony said that she had told him an older man pays her rent. The Texan oilman visits twice a month. He pays for sex. I had heard Andy Reese the Serendipity crowd say that she was a prostitute. The ballet dancer tricked out of Cowboys on 53rd Street. I had figured he was just being catty. Her fucking for money doesn't matter to me. I wish someone would pay me for having sex. I guess Alice does since I make no money for the rent

Later

Alice's play is soon. She'll be leaving right after for West Virginia with no plans to come back to New York other than she can't stay in Appalachia and she does have desire to be here, not necessarily with me, but in the East Village.

At Dojos I spoke to Anthony about his upcoming exhibition of our photo roman in Bridgehampton. He said, "The prints were all mine it's my show. I'm calling it Clover and Nolan."

Sounds good to me. If you sell any photos, do I get a cut?"

"I'll split it with you, although I don't know why"

"Because I came up with a story and casted Clover and Klaus and everybody else in it."

"I got Cookie."

They were lovers and dope fiends, although Anthony was a rookie.

"I give you that." I loved Cookie. The Baltimore native was real unlike most poeple on the punk scene, having starred in John Waters films with Divine.

"Okay we'll split it once I pay for the expenses The prints and everything else and we should give 10% each the Clover, Cookie, and Klaus

"Agreed.

This was Anthony's first show and he was planning a beach party. Punks at the Hamptons.

Later

I got paid for only 2 days this week had Ebasco. I'm barely working at the executive dining room. Te executives are starting summer holidays early. The Boston School Committee is sending my last unemployment. $100 check should be in the mail.

Why can't I find a job? Thankfully entertainment and drink are basically free. Kyle, Kim's sister works at Yogurt Delight. Kim at CBGBs. Cyrena at Cornelia Street. To DeMastri at McBell's. Like Henry Miller I don't need money. Just friends. Right now I'm on 6th Avenue dodging the rain at Dazzle on Columbus Avenue, watching the young ballerinas with their tight buns and dance tights coming from a dance class. I don't stare at them or follow them. They have enough of that from every man in New York.

At the Cornelia Street Cafe Kyle doesn't invite me to a champagne party to meet Sean Hausman. "You people are always free loading."

The Red Sox in first

Post Vietnam America has retreated from the world stage under Carter. China tried to invade Vietnam to save Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Eritrea and Ethiopia are battling over a desert. Russia and China have exported revolution to Africa, latin America, and Asia. Leftist revolutionaries battle the States of the Free World in Europe. The while word hates the USA and out threats of nuclear war to defeat the workers' paradise.

As for Cuba the USA should normalize relations with the island by offering Havana a major league baseball franchise; the Havana Bananas or Reds. Cincinnati Reds would have to surrender that name for purpose of international peace.

I love food, but have been starving myself. My body is thin. My muscles are taut. I want to eat, but I have no money. More I want sex. Masturbation is not sex. Just release.

May 23, 1978 I - East Village - Journal

I was at the Cornelius Street Cafe with Alice Kim Amos and Serena, Sean's wannabe girlfriend. We are making plans for the four Gemini party. Amos Kim Serena and me. At Kim's Bleecker Street apartment. We have given out over a hundred invitations that's CBGBs, work bars, and restaurants.

My back was to the door which I never like always worried that someone with whom I had a fight they hit me in the back of the head like Jack McCall shooting Wild Bill Hitchcock in Deadwood while he was holding the dead man's hand.

A finger poked me in the back in the mystery voice said, "What doing here?"

It was wrong being very plain but you lost that I'm a bitch protect myself look. She looked very vulnerable and has since coming back from Paris. Our past barely crossed in our meetings dance really last more than a minute.

Talking to my friends everybody but Alice later scolded me, "You never introduced me to anyone."

"Ro, this is Alice."

I said without explaining who was who Ro was to me. Basically I wanted to shield Alice from knowing that I was still in love with Ro. Maybe not now but maybe yes.

"We're planning a birthday party."

"Am I invited"

"I'll tell you later/ You have the same telephone number right. 255-3035."

Across the old man hold on her jacket. I said nothing and then asked, "Are you thinking of fuckign her?"

"No, I have you."

Kim ever mischievous asked, "Who was that?" The next fuck of yours."

"Who isn't?"

Chemistry more than a few alliances set a word to Alice. I've never said a word what about hers. In many ways they only exist for sex to be shared fucking someone else.

Marooned in the city Seeks exits Once disguised As walls To stand on an Eastern ocean seeing Atlantis Beneath the waves He deserts the city To wade in the tide.

I was in north of the Arctic the resort fully mechanized early decor for several days rumbles have been felt there are no natives to this island the researchers say it happens

This one day there was an extreme Quake shaking me up to a friend's house on top of a hill and beneath his house was a widening crack look down the hill at the ocean surf was unusually rough somehow Antarctic was ending

My friend brought his wife and child his yard we boarded and took to the Sea through the heavy Breakers. The other inhabitants of the island ignore the signs. It was too late anyway Wild tremors and the island split into pieces which slipped into the sea The water took on a glass effect glass with Swirls and curls usually High thin

A whale shark we try to go faster and filling our sales Dream City

The monster was upon us the auto part is lost at my legs torn off but a nearby ship rescued us and I was saved along with my friend's wife and child. Wife was Alice

Fix my legs became a sheep herder. I won't attack my flocks Until it detects Alice then I killed it

Alice sup with me during these dreams. she has gained weight but it's still very cute like a young Shirley MacLaine. I loved her in the movie the apartment, but not in a sexual way.

When she woke, when she woke she felt her stomach and said, maybe I should get pregnancy test and

Later

On the 26th floor the Ebasco the rest of the waiter staff for the executive dining room it's not a Papas plot to the Protestants like having waiting on them the subjugation of the peons I don't understand a single word they say

You smoke Marlboro said the drinks man to Antonio farro Toro Antonio are fighting about the position of the Bermuda Triangle wanting to have it down to Puerto Rico photos in Panama Farrell being a sailor is adamant as to where it is it is the entire ocean ships sink under the water they are gone is perfect for an artist .

Antlers - Kingsley Amis

I woke up this morning with a hangover so bad, I thought I had grown antlers. - Kingsley Amis

The Last Babylon 2007

Walking Street was crowded with drunken marines, dok thongs, Englishmen on Ecstasy, tattooed go-go girls, shouting Arabs, Amazonian transvestites, and wide-eyed Chinese tourists. These diverse groups threaded through the gauntlet of dueling music from various beer bars and discos. The heat drove everyone insane and alcohol was behind the wheel. The collective madness left me in the dust and I realized vengeance was better suited for the Bible. All I really wanted was a cold beer.

The opening of final chapter of LOVE YOU LONG TIME dedicated to my cousin David Barry

Mistaken Hemingways

Back in 1979 I ran into Margaux Hemingway at a disco. I introduced myself and complimented her on her role in MANHATTAN.

"That was my sister."

We had a good laugh and a few drinks.

Life is a laugh.

86ed from the Buffalo Bar

I first walked into Pattaya's Buffalo Bar on Third Road in 1997. It became my local after I moved to Soi Bong Koch. The beer was cold, the open-air atmosphere was a welcome change from the go-go bars' tobacco-reek, and more than a few of the hostesses were desirable. My ex-wife understandably hated the place and didn't buy my excuse for frequenting the bar.

 "I only go there because it's not far from home."

It was less than two minutes away by motorcycle.

Telling a lie would have sounded better, but the truth was much easier to remember.

I'd go there with my little dog Champoo. She'd sit on the bar and lap at a small bowl of Heiniken. The girls loved my Szhi-Tzu. They didn't even know my name, but nothing nice lasts forever.

Eddy, the fortyish owner, had taken up with a young Belgium thug. She relinquished the daily running of the bar to Sandy, an old crow from Isaan. The mama-san's constant cawing grated on the ears and she insulted the best girls like Cinderella's stepmother realizing that her beauty had faded for good. They left in droves.

Only Tuk remained, which was enough for me.

She had plenty of salacious stories from her past and present.

One night I was sitting with Tuk and Champoo. My dog was having her usual. Heineken. She didn't like Chang. It was either too strong or bitter. She's been doing this over three years. Everyone loves her, but this night Sandy tells me to get Champoo off the bar.

"Dog dirty. Dog smell. Dog not come to bar."

I thought about it a little. I had been coming there for years. Buying drinks for everyone. Never complained when they added a little chisel onto the bar bill.

I wasn't having anyone speak to Champoo like that.

"Just give me the bill. I'm leaving. You know what. I'm never coming back here as long as you work here."

"Good." The old harridan didn't own the place. She only worked there.

"Good for me too. Save money. And I tired of hearing you speak."

"Good you go too." Sandy screeched with her eyes wide. She was angry at me and Champoo. "You not special. You same all farang. Come and go. Come and go. One day die.

"And you're the same as all women. You get old."

The tone of the conversation descended down a slope slippery with expletives in Thai and American. The bouncers rushed into the bar, ready to throw out an unruly foreigner. Seeing me they stopped in their track. I bought them pizza. Sandy gave them shit.

"Don't worry boys, I'm leaving."

"And don't come back." Sandy shouted from behind a phlanx of bar girls.

"No problem."

Outside the bouncers begged me to incite Sandy to a fight.

"You slap her no problem." Dao the head of security winked at me. She was no one's friend, but my mother didn't raise me to hit women and to be honest Champoo was a little dirty, although no more than most of the old farangs haunting the Buffalo or me. At least she never sweats. Not even when she's drunk.

So there ends a beautiful relationship between me and a bar. Funny, not sad at all. Then again there are 3000 other bars in Pattaya. One of them has to be right for me, but in the end I knew Champoo and I would come back to the Buffalo.

After all it was right down the street and neither Champoo nor I liked driving home drunk.

Happy Sabaii Sabaii Happy

In 1972 Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck attempted to reform his country’s feudal economy on a Buddhist spiritual level rather than a capitalistic model. To best judge his efforts the king created a Gross Domestic Happiness Index based on life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The Wall Street Journal ignores the Happy Planet Index, which placed the Pacific nation of Vanuata at the top of the list. Zimbabwe understandably was dead last in 178th place.

Thailand ranked 38 in the 2006 Happiness Survey before coups, yellow shirts, red shirts, shooting in the streets of Bangkok, and burning luxury mall. Four years later the ranking is not lower, but higher.

# 32.

Maybe Thailand mai mi sanuk or not have fun, but they have about forty-three smiles for every expression much like the Eskimos have 23 words for snow. The present smile is known as sao sokh yim or unhappy smile. This mask of chagrin hides the basic dissatisfaction of the nation’s present state.

7/11s do not answer all our needs.

Although a little beer drinking never hurts.

Several years ago I stopped into the Janet Bar on Soi Excite. It was past midnight. Twelve ladies sat on the stool. Two westerners were at the bar. Natalee joined me for a drinking. She was typically looking very sexy, but complained, “Mai mi kak.”

“It’s low season. There aren’t customers anywhere.” Rainy season is lean for the bargirls.

“No good.” Her eyes begged me to bar-fine her.

“Mai mi taeng.” I lied about my finances. Natalee requires training and my long-term devotion to sloth has relegated my sexual prowess to an amateur level, plus I was faithful to Mam, the thinnest woman on Soi 6. She wasn't faithful to me, but one day she would be to our mutual happiness.

“Wah.” She faked crying and went to eat Chinese chicken feet at a table with the other girls.

The nearest westerner smiled sadly and said, “You speak Thai good. How long have you been here?”

“Four years straight.” My first arrival in Thailand dated back to 1991. I was only 39. A mere youth. So innocent. I never thought I would live here, but neither did I think GW Bush would win a second term.

“I’ve been here two years.” His accent was London. East End. He was about 30 and dressed better than most of the beer slobs of Pattaya. “Married a girl and lived up-country the last year.”

“How that working out?” I immediately regretted the question.

“Left her a week ago.” Alan introduced himself and signaled the bartender for two beers. “She is as good as gold, but her family was stitching me up for money. Her step-father is an ex-cop and drinks whiskey all day. And her mother took all the gold I brought my wife for her wedding. The old man wanted 50,000 baht and I told him no.”

“Good idea.” I had heard this story a thousand times. 90% of fathers of the bargirls are a good old rice farmer. Happiness is a bag of tobacco and a bottle of lao khao every day. Easy happy.

“That started the end. He called me a cheap farang in my own house. I bought a house up there. Okay, not much. 5000 pounds and spent 300,000 baht on a wedding.” Alan sounded more disappointed than mad.

“That doesn’t sound gra-dook kat man to me.” Up-country Thais consider farangs money cows.

“No, but the worst was that my wife didn’t back me up.”

"Supporting you would go against the grain. Thai women place their mother first, father second, then the rest of the family, the village, every other Thai before you.” I had experienced this first-hand with all my girlfriends here. The Thais are natural zenotropes. They hate everyone else.

“The old man came to house later with a gun. He wanted money. I told him I was leaving. Asked my wife to come along. She said no, so now I’m here.” He was looking for advice. Advice he wouldn’t follow, because he’s still in love. “My girl ain’t so pretty, she’s 31, but we have sex twice a day.”

“Sex has nothing to do with love.” Although spending a night with Natalee might come close. “Best to cut your losses. You’re from the East End. You’re not a square. Don’t let a rice farmer sucker you.”

“I don’t know.” Weakness of the heart is blood in the water to a Isaan grifter.

“What’s your old man say?” Alan’s father was a dry cleaner in the City.

“He said there ain’t no kids and you’re still young. I’ve been married before.” These failures rankled him. “I wanted this to work out.”

“Sorry.” I ordered another round.

Natalee came over to massage my neck.

“You still not want to go home with me.”

“I want, but have no money.” I was saving my money for Mam.

She frowned and joined the other menless women.

Alan’s happiness index had dropped below the UK average. Mine was someplace near Peru, which is #3.

Beer makes me happy as does hearing someone having it worse than me. We changed the subject and drank two more beers. It was 2am when I left for home. I wished him luck. Natalee blew a kiss. Alan stopped to speak with her. She smiled with enthusiasm. There wasn’t another man in sight.

I arrived back to an almost empty house. My wife has been up-country a long time. She wasn't coming back. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Thankfully my little dog was happy to see me, but then dogs are the only animal who loves you more than themselves.

Happy?

You should see Champoo's tail wag.

Now that’s happy.