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When you're down and low...

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week. 

On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall. 

Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him.

There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will happen. Until then I just sittin'
waiting for the bus all day. So many sounds, mowing way off in the distance, wind rustling, tarps blowing, crows crawling, chickadees, water sounds, eggs boiling, noises from the camper.

It is now Wednesday, September 1st. Good morning. Sour Girl by Stone Temple pilots from 2000 is in my head. It was a song written about someone name Jeanette Jania. Another long night with hardly any sleep. Soon we will be out and everything down for the winter beyond the sound of the river there is the subtle undercurrent that the diabolical forces of winter await. 

September 1, they now begin stepping this way.  Don't you dare say that it cannot happen even now?  I have had seen snow very early in the season in my life. The earliest I have ever seen it was on September 11, 1979. 4 inches fell in Bristol Connecticut that day.

The coffee now officially begins to perk. The sound and the smells of coffee perking in a true percolator, on an open flame, are some of the finest interactions with our senses there can ever be. Decades ago everyone knew how to make coffee correctly (passive-aggressive dig intended I guess).  Around 75ish, a few people had automatic drip coffee makers or Mr. Coffees as they were referred to back then. But they were a joke. Lukewarm, weak, and plasticky. A disgusting assault compared to that stovetop bliss they left behind.   

So I started reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I must say that I am severely impressed with Mr. BourdAin’s stark honesty to admit the things that everyone else is too internally shocked. The honesty makes the rooms take on an almost holographic materialization. 

At times I wish I could go back to 1982 and kick myself right in the rear end. I’d like to believe that all of this literary regurgitation somehow is blog-worthy at some point. Isn’t that right Mr. Terry Ward? When I think of the hours that I spent reading Terry’s bleeding heart hemorrhaging off of computer dot matrix tractor paper by the light of a kerosene lamp in the cabin in East Alstead!  Wow!  My dad too was finding an interest in this person that was doing the same job as him and making a little bread on the side by sharing his hippie generation manifesto. As the pages rolled out of the printer, Terry found and then lost love much to our own discomfort as readers. But we stuck with you, Terry. Something about you was so maverick, that eventually, you graduated to a blog. The Internet bringing forward so many others just like you. There in Langdon New Hampshire, a tragic star was born or perhaps fell off the back of a truck. 

Nevertheless, we loved you, Terry, in all your whiny self lamentations. Why? Because somewhere in you, each of us saw ourselves. You, who did not worry about how embarrassing it was to bear your naked soul to strangers. We were thinking it, but we were too scared to say it. LinkedIn says that Terry Ward has published Notes from the Dump for 34 years and 11 months now. Yes, that is November 1986 through the present day. Terry is listed as going to the high school of Hard Knocks High 1957 through 1962. Terry is a reminder that we can all bring something new to the world yes anyone can, even you.

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