Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. -Helen Keller
Written in diary or journal form, this is a coming of age story set in Ohio in the early sixties. It follows a young writer who wants to make a name for himself and his search for love and companionship during the folk music craze in the early 1960’s.
Friday – May 10, 1963
I got my little article on the California trip called “Hard Traveling” back from the Plymouth Traveler. They said it was most interesting, but that they do not use unsolicited manuscripts. Their stories are written on assignment––usually by one man. I got another letter from Rogue magazine. I sent them. “Apostles of Glory” over a year ago, and it never made it up to the top. The letter was from Frank Robinson, the editor. He said he came across the cover letter in his files, with the manuscript. He said that if I would care to resubmit it to him directly he would read it and give me an evaluation. So I’ll rewrite it and get it in as soon as possible. I’ll start on it this afternoon. I mailed the novel off to Bobbs-Merrill. I still have two short stories out––one to Ladies Home Journal and another to the New Yorker. I expect nothing of either one.
Saturday – May 11, 1963
I went back to working at Corning Glass Works on the line. I may not be doing much for Corning, but I’m keeping the men in good spirits. Today, for example, I had a few seconds to let my imagination run away, and thus got to wondering what it would feel like to find a body in the skid of pads that we count and sit up on the line. Larry K., a new fellow, my age, helped me sit up a skid while Bruce I., another new fellow, was in eating lunch. I colored a handkerchief with red crayon until it looked like blood and stuffed it in my mouth, then I crawled in the skid and they papered me with pads until only the “bloody” head, the rolled back eyes, and the twisted arm showed. Bruce came out from the cafeteria and opened the pads. He turned as white as a goats hind end and slammed the lid back shut, “Get the bander, quick,” he said. “Hurry, get the bander. He didn’t know why he wanted the bander afterwards. I guess he thought that the safest thing to do was to, seal me up. It shocked the old crapola right down into his jockey shorts.
May 22, 1963 – Wednesday
Last night I sang again at the Lemon Tree Coffeehouse in Dayton, Ohio. I was met with a very warm response from the audience.
Today, I wrote a letter to Shirley that I must include, because it expresses my feelings so vividly. I met her when I attended an assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the urging of my parents a year ago. She expected that I would share her views without question, but that never happened.
Dear Shirley,
It looks like you’ve blacklisted me again. I’ve owed you this letter for the longest time, but I’ve really, honest-to-God, truthfully, been too busy to sit down and think this letter out.
I’m back in Greenville again, stuck in the pits of Darke County. In my present mood, the name seems very appropriate. My novel is in Indianapolis with the Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Company. I’ll have to run over to talk with the editor’s one of these days. I’ll try to stop by and see you when I go through, if you want me to. Its best to break with the past completely if you decide to go the way you seem to want to go.
I just want to give you a piece of’ advice. To make it not sound like advice, I’ll sort of paraphrase it: Once upon a time there was a pile of’ wood stacked high by a woodsman. This was no ordinary woodpile. The chunks of wood could converse with one another freely.
Out of the entire woodpile there were only ten chunks of wood who looked forward to the day when they could be carried into the house and burned in the wood-burning stove. They spent all their time talking about how it would be a grand privilege to spread the warmth from their own burning over the house and make it warm. One day their time came. A man carried them into the house and they were laid in the fire. The fire began to burn. It felt very good to be in the fire. They could feel their heat pouring out, and the pieces of wood just couldn’t have been any happier.
Then a strange thing happened, the fate that befalls every chunk of wood destined to be burned in a fire. They turned to ash. They were no longer useful. Their time was very short-lived. They could no longer talk with one another, no longer live for the day when their heat would warm the very heart of the house. They ware dead, burned out.
It’s easy to want to fall in with new found friends in a new found faith, but you’ve got to be careful that you•re not the one that’s stuck in the furnace fires, because after that you’re nothing. In other words, it is awfully easy to burn yourself out. Afterwards, you wonder how you could be so stupid.
It is not that I am burned out, but fanaticism cannot last.
I quickly jumped out of the fire. The fire is not the main message. The message is this: don’t go hog-wild on fanaticism. If you ever had any desires for other experiences in your life, then let time pass. On some depressed day when you are longing deep in your heart for things that you’ve let slip by, then the things that you once longed for aren’t the only things that have slipped through your fingers. Life itself has slipped by, too, and that, in is the capital sin.
I’m not taking about religion, but fanaticism. There is a big difference. Fanaticism can also be called zeal to a certain extent, it all depends on which side of the fence you’re on. I’m not trying to pull you, away from what you believe. I am asking you to think.
As for dating boys outside your active congregation, much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. Few are virginal, though they delude others into thinking that a sensual thought is the farthest thing from their mind. So many of the religious boys are practiced deceivers. They go away to get drunk, but they get drunk just the same. They step behind the barn to light cigarettes, but they light them just the same. They travel great distances to crawl in the backseat with that cute little thing they keep in the back of their minds.
The more I travel, the more I found great people. I long ago came to the conclusion that if God were going to judge all these people as sinners and condemn them to a death that knows no end, then that God was an unfit God, that should not be worshiped at all.
With that conclusion my religious world came tumbling down around my ears. The primary doctrine was shattered and all the other building blocks had no where else to go but down. How can you buy as a primary fact that there is going to be an Armageddon and everyone who is not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses will perish in an everlasting death? I think it is preposterous.
I have another philosophy, one of my own making. I don’t suppose you want to hear it, but if you ever do, I’ll tell you bout it. It’s not so abstract, just logical.
Write to me if you will. Preach to me if you must. Love, Ken
May 23, 1963 – Thursday
Last night I was in another fight. Ronnie S. and I had a little entanglement in the locker room. It all started when he playfully, I thought, tapped the back of my knees while I was walking in the restroom. I acted as though I were going to boot him in the ass and missed purposely. He got mad because I tried to kick him but I didn’t even lift my leg hard. He can dish it, but he cannot take it. He’s one of those. When I went into the locker room, he started a little scuffle. I called him a son-of-a-bitch and he really flew off the handle. We broke it off in time so we didn’t get fired, as they can fire you on the spot for fighting in the plant.
We had our annual beer game at work today, the hot end against the cold end. Our team, the cold end, won. I didn’t do much. I didn’t bat in any runs, but I did catch a ball to make an out. I’m a lousy ball player. I was the catcher, because I can’t do anything else. I’ve never played ball and don’t really care for it, but that game was fun. We went out to the motorcycle club and drank beer afterwards, sixteen gallons–a gallon apiece. I staggered home about four in the afternoon and threw up all the beer. There was no hangover after I vomited, but I did dream.
I dreamed that we had a field day at work and some of the foremen, my shift boss among them, and the workers went out for a walk along Greenville Creek. Though the creek is small most of the time, the creek was roaring and wide, the way they seem to be in dreams. There was a suspension bridge that went halfway across, then turned into a log.
I don’t remember too well, but I know that one of the foremen said that you can tell what kind of a worker a man is by how dirty he gets his pants. He was proud of the fact that his pants were always stained.
My foreman was not around to hear this statement. He always wears clean pants. Later, I asked him if he was a lousy worker because he had on clean pants. Then I found out that things had turned around in his mind. Lousy workers wore dirty pants now. Anyway, a fight ensued with one of the bosses and I was told not to come to work anymore. That suited me fine.
We had a party in some dimly lit dance hall and I was dancing with John G.’s wife. She had a great figure but her face was all puffed up and wrinkled. John sat at the table playing cards while I played with his wife. If there were some sort of’ a conclusion to the dream or any lesson to be learned from it, I immediately forget what it was.
Saturday – May 25th, 1963
I went down to Covington, Kentucky for a folk festival that was held in DeVoe Park. It’s a beautiful park, but the folk festival wasn’t much. It was roped off so you had to pay a dollar to get close.
They performed in a bandshell to a sparse audience that sat in the grass and tried to keep from rolling off the hills. The region is almost mountainous. I took Darlene and my brother Billy with me. We went for a drive along the banks of the Ohio, then came home about nine. We did get to see John Jacob Niles, the Appalachian folk singer. He’s quite old now and there is not a lot of energy left in him, but he was certainly the best of the group.
They had a swarming crowd of old men and women who usually sit on their mountain cabin steps and sing without accompaniment. “Ethnic singers” is the term. Anyway, they were quite good, but Billy and I could have torn the place apart if we had been performing.
Tuesday – May28,1963
I am singing at the Lemon Tree on Tuesdays now instead of Thursdays. It works out better that way. I don’t really warm up f’or quite a while when I perform. It is not until the third set, that I really start belting songs out. I get a little better every week, I think.
Anyway, after I had finished a set, Sheri, one of the waitresses, called me over and said somebody wanted to see me at table three. I walked over, and there was a really beautiful girl sitting there. “You wanted to see me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been here before. What is your name ?”
I told her, and asked for hers. It was Elle Tiara, or something like that. I forget. She said to call her Rickie, so I did. “This place is fascinating,” she said.
Everything worth seeing was the lobby where some ingenious pictures were being shone by a UD student. I tried to show her the artwork, but she grabbed hold of my arm and went from one image to another without looking.
She had kicked off her high heel shoes because she was taller than me with them on. “Are there any more?” she asked. I showed, her another room. She just glanced at the art.
“Fascinating,” she said, “Simply fascinating.”
We went back to the table, hidden in the dimness. The lights from the kerosene pots were the only light.
“Do you drive?” she asked.
“Yes”
“Did you drive tonight?”
“Yes?”
“I was going to ask if you would take, me home.”
Her words came out so shyly, so blushingly. Could it be that she has never tried to pick up anyone before and was trying for the first time tonight? I told her I would be happy to take her home.
She wanted to leave as soon as I finished my last set. Her words were clipped and strange, but when she wanted something it drove into you like the blade of a dull knife. The only word I can get her to use was “fascinating.” I had a hard time keeping the conversation rolling. She was the strangest mixture of shyness and downright audacity that I have ever come across. Her manners stiff, her speech, was shy, but she was the type to get what she wanted. It turned out that she was a junior last year and will be a senior next year at Belmont High. That is a bit young for me, as I am twenty.
Her father, she relayed, is a sot. She wants to be an actress. She wants to write a novel, “something that when a person reads it and knows me, they will see me in it, with all my emotions. They will know my emotions and the loneliness that make me what I am.”
She was one of the loneliest girls I have ever met. I took her to the car. She wanted to drive, so I let her. I wanted to help her find herself. I didn’t mention a date, but she took it for granted that we had a date Saturday night when she said I’ll see you Saturday.
“If you don’t mind riding around in my little Studebaker,” I said. The car belonged to my Father and I did not have it yet, but I hoped I’ll get it use of it for the weekend. She said she would meet me at the Lemon Tree Saturday night. I rather doubt that she will. She drove home and circled a block twice, then got out at the corner. I didn’t see where she lived.
There was not much to do at the Lemon Tree during set breaks but talk with the patrons. There is one fellow there named Dave Whitcomb. He played the guitar well, both flamenco and blues style, but he’s a little odd.
I overheard a conversation about him, not with him. “Dave can really play the guitar. How long has he been playing?”
“About two years.”
“He learned all that in two years?”
“He doesn’t do anything else but pluck.”
“No job or anything?”
“No, he’s sort of a bum.”
“What does he do when he doesn’t play the guitar?”
“He makes sandals out of old tires. He ties them to his feet with baling string.”
“Sandals? Out of old tires? God! How many pairs has he made?”
“Just one. And it took him three months to make those. You can hear him walking down the hall every time he comes in here. Squish, squish, squish.”
The kids from Antioch college hang out at The Lemon Tree. Many college men have solid opinions on everything, especially about subjects they know nothing about. I listened as one compared the ages of man to the seasons: “The spring of childhood comes of age insummer, between the ages of twentyand forty, then the fall, between forty and eighty, then winter between eighty and… oh, hell, I’ve got the dates all screwed up somewhere.”
On Robert Frost: “His poetry is like a balloon bursting in the sky. “Now how in the hell can you describe Robert Frost’s poetry as a ballon bursting in the sky?On and on the endlessly stupid, ridiculous, corny, and blatantly pointless conversations roll on like a baboons bursting from the sky.
I met a fellow that just rode in from Montana on a bicycle. He’s from Greenville and his name is Ray Mac. I called him up today because I heard that he’s planning to go all the way around the world on the bike. I have the same plans, although I have doubts as to making it all the way. He thinks he’l1make it back around May 1965. The winter would be sent somewhere in France or Germany. We’re going to get together and make some more plans.
Saturday – June 1,1963
I went to the Lemon Tree tonight, hoping that the girl I met Tuesday would be there. She was not there so, I sat around with a few members of the “in-group” and talked. I drove by Cleveland and Rosamond Streets where I let the girl off last Saturday, but couldn’t see her. I didn’t really expect to see her.
Tuesday – June 4,1963
I kissed goodbye to thejob at the Lemon Tree. I’ve been pre-empted––starting next week––by Adam and Alan. It was getting tiresome anyway––and that’s not sour grapes. It can really be a grind. I have to sing whether I’m in the mood or not. To put on a good performance, you’ve got to be in the mood.
I took Ray Mac with me to Dayton. We were together this afternoon making plans for the around the world bicycle trip. Right now the plans are to leave for Halifax Nova Scotia around August the first, or before, money and financial responsibility permitting. From there we will try to hire out on a ship for Ireland or England, or buy the cheapest passage on a cattle boat––even if we have to sleep with the cows. We’ll tour England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, then spend the winter in Germany. There are supposed to be a lot of jobs open in Germany, and all you have to do is take one. We’ll see. It’s definitely set.
Wednesday – June 5th, 1963
I had one of those pleasant surprises today. I sat down to write what I thought would be a short story that I would never finish, just practice exercises in writing, and my thoughts suddenly congealed. The story had a purpose, thick with plot, and turned out to be very entertaining. I called it “Somebody Down There Don’t Want You.”
Tommy, the light-skinned negro manager or the Lemon Tree, committed suicide back in April. The other night, one of my Lemon Tree friends told me a little more about it. Tommy was a great guy, really. He had a heart full of love and it often overflowed. He worked in Yellow Springs, possibly a teacher; I forget. One thing about Tommy, though… he couldn’t understand why people could hate him just because he was black. Tommy had time for everyone. He had his own domestic troubles, but he would listen to the troubles of the college kids that came in and help them out when they needed it.
Tommy was having an affair with a white woman. Her husband found out and threatened to ruin him. His wife received harassing telephone calls. His children were almost run down in the street. This probably wouldn’t have happened to a white man, not in this torturous way. A white man could have fought his battle with the irate husband, but a black man had to suffer. A black had committed the unforgivable. Harassments became worse and his life became unstable. They found him Tommy had a bullet through his head.
Suicide, they said. I wonder.
June 14, 1963
I had my teeth cleaned at the dentist’s office today. First they jabbed at the tartar with a pick, then they swabbed bleach on them, then polished them with a drill and different drill heads, Now I have a little work to be done and they will be healthy as can be.
Billy and I walked back to the cliffs, today… the ones where I used to play years ago. Then they were granite western walls and the creek was a clear mountain stream. They never were much, just banks of eroded dirt on pitiful slow flow of water, but they used to be my haven. The place has changed like all things do in time. The clear open spot, where we pitched our tents at the place we called Camp Cat Tail, was now grown up with stunted willows and shrubs. The whole place is turning into a young forest. The old trees have fallen and died. The creek is practically dry and runs in a thick trickle. I can remember the old times back there vividly. I remember the knotted American Elm that looked like illustrations of the muscles of a man’s arm, the spot where we used to swim beside the fallen log that had bridged the creek. All was gone. The swimming hole is dry, the log bridge had rotted away and lay chucked along the opposite bank. The cliffs were just dirt mounds that have finally eroded away.
The place makes me think of James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” which has always been one of my favorites. It is on of the most nostalgically beautiful poems ever written. Today, as I walked through this place where my memories abound, I remembered the innocence of my childhood. I lit a cigarette and remembered the time when I ran the length and breadth of those fields, across the creek and up the cliffs and darted between the thorn trees, playing some silly game of childhood.
The only person who smoked then was my father. Only fathers smoked. It was something almost sacred and only for men. Now, I sit in the open air and tarnish my lungs. The air I used to breath was pure. Now it is mixed with cigarette smoke and fallout. I remember how I used to take my bike back into woods and lifted it across fences. When the going was too rough, for a bike, I would travel on foot until the brambles became too high and the sun too hot. Then I would turn once again homeward, having gone perhaps half a mile. Now I am about to embark on a trip around the world on that same bicycle. I marveled at how perspectives change.
I suppose I should write things I think about in my life in order to remember from time to time before they all fade away. That is why I keep a journal.
It seems to me that all a man’s life is spent crawling through a tunnel. There is nothing but the future ahead of him and the past behind him. A man can look ahead and judge what is going to be before him, but when he is in the tunnel it is too narrow to turn around. All he can do is turn his head and in some contorted way, look back upon the land he has already crawled by. He cannot turn around. He can glimpse the past, but the farther he gets along the tunnel, the more distance and time separates him from the beginning and the less he remembers the first few feet that were his childhood.
A short story, “Death Stalks at Sunset,” my first and worst writing attempt, was written from memories of this land I am living on.
We lived in a remodeled one-room schoolhouse surrounded by huge trees about two miles from Greenville. Dad had brought in a chicken coop and sat it in a corner. I called it my cabin. The folks called it “The Playhouse,” a term which irked me to no end. I spent many hours and many nights out there on my little cot. I had a desk and candles for light that I sat in tin cans I had split to hold the candles. I wrote by candlelight. Anything I could scribble, I scribbled. I wrote for the love of writing, the desire to put my words on paper. I kept diaries and secret codes, but the main thing, the enjoyment, was the actual process of writing.
I had a little wood burning stove there in my cabin. We would hold patrol meetings for Boy Scouts there. I was active in scouting and it was my chief enjoyment. I loved camping, hiking, and the outdoors. I would sit back by my campfire alone, or perhaps with a friend, and think, “Ah, this is the life.” There could be nothing better than living this way. I have enjoyed practically every minute of my life. The more I am away from the pressures that this dehumanizing civilization puts on us, the happier I am. The life of a nomad, a wanderer, that
is my chosen existence. Roots––I need and roots I have. Here athome, my family and friends, they are my roots, but unlike a tree, I enjoy breaking away from my roots, then coming back and resting once again for a while.
Sunday, June 16, 1963
I had a little more trouble at work. We have one fellow named George Y., who is what you might call a company man, even though he works on the lines and makes the same amount and does the same thing as I do. Anything that’s not done in strict accordance with the rules annoys him. He thinks he is a second foreman. Everybody laughs it off most of the time.
Tonight his little walls sort of came tumbling down. He’s a young fellow, about twenty-one, my age approximately, my size––but heavier. I was working a line that used four hole cardboard pads that the seal beam reflectors are placed on. We are having trouble getting enough of these pads. We put them on a skid called a pallet pack and them wrap them with cardboard wrap-a-rounds. The skids then come back to the factory in the same way, unless they happen to be out, then we have to dump them and break the boxes down, which makes an already hard line three times as hard. Last night, once again, we ran out of the skids of 4-hole pads and would have had to dump boxes. A train had come in during the day and some four-hole pads were on the train, but they hadn’t bean unloaded because it was Sunday and the men who do the loading and unloading did not work today. Instead of working my ass off dumping boxes, I sneaked into the car and pulled down the cross members so I could pull the skids out as I needed them with the lift truck. We had one truck driver on duty on our shift. I had to keep out of sight of both he and the foreman, because I was stepping on somebody else’s job. Really, it made no difference, and the foreman would not have minded anyhow, but it being just a little shady pissed George off.
Later in 1 the evening, after I had snitched enough skids of pads to get his goat, he told the truck driver what I was doing. The truck driver got mad. If I would have been him, I couldn’t have cared less, but he cared and told me so. I told him I didn’t give a shit, then found out that old Georgie boy had squealed. I went up and gave him hell on the spot. I told him, among other things, that in my book a squealer is lower than spit on the sidewalk. George is a pugnacious bastard and wanted to fight on the spot, but I kept it down with words. Everybody else joined in with me telling George about his shortcomings. This was the chance we’d all bean waiting for, and old Georgie boy finally got his payback.
June 18, 1963 – Tuesday
It is a shit life, now that I’m back at Corning. I will be happy to get back on the road, away from this ridiculous life of make a buck spend a buck .
I had this dream last night. I walked into a department store. It seemed as though it were in Dayton. I went down to the basement on the stairwell and at the foot of the stairs was a sales counter. Behind it were shelves stocked with shirts. A pretty girl in a blue dress was working boon the counter. She wasn’t beautiful, but she appealed to me from the first moment I saw her––her sparkling smile, her firm, small-breasted figure, her rounded butt and the graceful curve of the spine rounding into the buttocks. She was beautiful to my eyes and I fell in love with her then and there. I had to get acquainted.
I went back and forth between floors several times and each time I descended the stairwell I felt that I floated into the smiling heaven of her charms. I asked her name she held up a little white card, her name printed on it in large letters, the word “Mrs.” preceding the name. She was so young, so beautiful, and so married.
“Mrs.?” I mouthed the words. I loved her. She shook her head and sadly sighed. “It makes no difference,” I said. “My love is pure and cannot be ruined.” I took my identification tag that had been tied around my neck with a piece of rawhide and placed it around her neck. She smiled and kissed me and it led to a lot more of the same. We had intercourse.
Later, her husband,a short, pudgy man showed up. Her husband had a fierce temper and immediately saw my raw leather strap hanging around her delicate neck. She pleaded to me with frantic eyes. Her husbands eyes smoldered behind great globs of whiteness.
With empty heart, I took the strap from around her neck and told her that I would buy it, pretending that I had been testing it out to see how it would look on another girl. The husband calmed down and he left, but my love went on and on and I awoke in the light go morning still loving, still wanting.
June 24, 1963 – Monday
Saturday, I did some chores around home and Ray and I booked passage on the Queen Mary for August 22nd.
Next weekend I am supposed to sell my car. The folks will be gone. I am alone all this week. I don’t know how I’ll manage stuck out here without a car, but I guess I’ll will someway. I’ll try to have the bike fixed and running, but I doubt very much if I can do it. Dad took all the tools with him.
I left with the folks last Saturday for a weekend of camping in eastern Ohio. We tried to make it all the way to Atwood Lake, but didn’t leave until around four o’clock, so around ten we decided it would be best to stop at something closer. We chose a place called “Clear Fork Creek” or “Pleasant Hill, Park,” something like that.
We had a nice little weekend, then packed up in the morning and started off to Interstate Route 71. The folks went one direction, toward Cleveland and a New England vacation, and I went another direction, towards home.
It was near the Clear Fork River, but I think the camp was called Pleasant Hill State Park, They used both names. It was a very pretty place for Ohio. It’s near Mansfield, with all the rolling, eye-pleasing hills. I played the guitar several times on Sunday. The campers around me enjoyed it.
There was another camp across the gulley where I saw a man strumming a guitar when we first arrived. Late Sunday, a. man and woman were trying desperately to move a picnic table across the gulley. Dad and I gave them a hand and struck up an acquaintance. After that we were invited over to have a little guitar strumming session.
Saturday night I had a dream and awoke remembering it. I wrote it down immediately so that I would not forget it. I remember what happened to that last dream I recorded, the one about the girl in the department store and my giving her my identification tag. I had lost most of the content by not recording it immediately.
I awakened thinking how beautiful and complete that dream was and how fine a short story it would make in itself, because it was so realistic and complete. It was not flighty as this dream I’m about to record is. The dream of Saturday night was episodical and turned time and landmarks around as it jumped from location to location. The other, the dream of the girl, was like a page from real life.
This is the dream as I recorded it when I awoke Saturday night: I am walking along the streets of Greenville to get a job. I go down the main street past all the stores. There is a place that when you look at it from a distance, it is behind Dottie’s––a barn out east of town where our school bus used to turn around––but when you close in on it, you are walking down Greenville’s main thoroughfare. The street turns unexpectedly and you see mixed up four places from many places, like Cleveland and Lake Erie, Greenville ‘s downtown, Dottie’s barn, and other buildings, which I have seen but cannot place.
I go into the tall brick building and up the elevator. The door opens and I step, over to the only door in sight, just to the right down the hallway. I ring and go into where the receptionist sits, looking very much like the girl I dreamed of that was working in the department store.
I am taken to a man in a blazing-white shirt who is to be my boss.
“I’ll show you where you are going to work,” he said. “Go find the building down Broadway and see it rising new and shining against the lake.”
When I got there, it was no longer a lake, but a sea––an ocean that is swelling turbulently and threatening to wash the buildings away.
I take the folks up an elevator to a hall with a single doorway, but it is locked and no one is inside.
Pfft.
We are riding now in the dark on big fast bicycles like the one’s we have had at home, only bigger and faster. We are going up state route 121 near Dick T’s home. Just before we get to his house we come to two long, imposing structures that look like a Catholic convent that has been deserted. The buildings are jacked up, supported by rafters and ready to move. It is dark and it feels as though no one is around, so I decide to go over to the buildings and steal some building materials. I filled the baskets on our bicycles with materials. The air is filled with suspense and the terror of getting caught. A thousand eyes are peering all around me as I scramble back to the road with my illicit gain. Mom and Dad are anxiously waiting. I throw the materials that I stole into the baskets just as the lights of a car arcs over the brim of the hill behind us. We must ride fast. We will be caught. Hurry.
So we roll down the road, pedaling as fast as the tires will spin. We outran the car and somehow go far, beyond our house. Dad and I are ahead of Mom and stopped on the roadway. Mom comes up behind us too fast and rushes by with a hiss of the brakes. She plummets across a ditch and is thrown over the handlebars headfirst into a wire fence. I hurry over to her and hold her up. She is scared and crying, but unhurt. For that I am thankful.
Pfft
We are riding in the car going towards Dottie’s barn. “I’ll show you where I’m going to work,” I say. I felt I had said this before. They pay no attention to me and go on talking. What I am saying is idiotic. We are almost there. Just behind the barn is this new office building where I’m going to work.” I say. “You can see the lake behind it.” They look at me as though I am a madman. We are in view of the barn now and only the barn is there. The buildings and the lake have disappeared.
“It’s not there,”I cry. “It’s just not there!”
“Of course not,” Dad says. “There has never been a lake or buildings around here.”
“I must have been dreaming,”I laughed. “I’m not really cracking up. I had a dream that was so real that I thought it was really there.” At that point, I had dreamed that I was dreaming and I was aware of it.
Pfft.
I am riding home on my bicycle in the dark of the night. I can see my house ahead of me in the open countryside. People are milling around, flying kites of fire that light up the sky like lightning bugs. The fire kites drop into the field and the people––evil people with breath like gasoline fumes––are everywhere, behind every rock and tree.
I am afraid but I go on home because it is my duty. The people are scattered over our lawn and house watching my approach into the shadowy dark outside. The light is on.
Pfft:
I put my bike up against the wall and step outside. Suddenly, it is no longer night, but day and the sun is shining bright. Children are playing, tagging along at my heels, tormenting me with words.
“You know Richard?” they ask.
“Yes, I know Richard.”
“He says he owns this place and you have to leave.”
“I won’t leave.”
“Then you will be his slave. We are all his slaves.
“Richard also says you are a chicken.”
“Richard is a God?” I ask. “Where is Richard?”
A little boy pipes up: “Lying on a blanket worshipping his father, the Sun.”
People are watching.
Pfft.
I approach this despicable despot, Richard, whom I have never seen. The people are cowering in fear of him. To my surprise, Richard is a boy of fifteen. “You are Richard,” I say. “I am not afraid of you.”
“Seize him,” he says.
“Wait!” I call. His eyes begin to show fear. A wire trash incinerator was next to us. I pointed toward the incinerator. “You belong in there,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I’ll leave. Please.” I pick him up by the scruff and the seat of his pants and throw him headlong into the burning garbage. The people cheer and laugh and evils float away one by one, until they disappeared altogether.
I’m having one of many bluer days today, though not as blue as others have been and not so blue as the weekend will probably be. I imagine that this weekend will be pretty lonely. I am going to sell my car.
By Saturday, I’ll probably be without transportation of any sort, unless I get the motorbike up and running well. It’ll be strange and lonely without a car, but I guess I’ll have to get used to it. The folks are gone on vacation. I just this moment had a call from Dad saying he was all right and in New York State. They were atNiagara Falls yesterday.
The blueness of today comes not so much from lack of companionship or the family, but lack of female companionship. I stopped by to talk with Herb tonight. It’s the first I’ve seen him in months. He has broken up with Laura and is going with another girl in town. He doesn’t have much trouble getting dates and he can get some pretty decent looking girls.
As for me… if I do get a date, I screw something up somewhere along the line. I’ve never really had a girl fall in love with me. Herb has had several that have for him. The girls I want don’t care for me.
I get looks on the sidewalk. My personality isn’t exactly repugnant. Yet, I always strike out. Clara is always busy. Darlene, we just do not seem to mesh. That blonde that I dated once about seven months ago, Jewel, wouldn’t see me after we had that one date. I don’t really know what the trouble is. Shirley and I are quits, for sure, but that’s because of religion, among other things.
Herb is his usual affable self, but he’s a bit of a braggadocio and completely content to slave away in Greenville to pay for a brand new car he’s thinking of buying. He’s always telling about what a success he is with the women.
That’s something I like to keep to myself. I think it is obnoxious to talk of it.
I got a letter from the Anne Elmo Agency in New York. She says she’ll be glad to look at my novel and help with manuscripts about around-the-world experiences, but that sending her short stories is out. There is no market for short stories these days.
Anyway, I’ve got an agent, maybe.
Sunday – June 30,1963
I knew this would be one of my blue weekends. This blueness, as usual, stems from girls, or rather, the lack of them. This time it was Darlene that gave me the run-around. After all the kissing and petting that we’ve done, I thought she was in love with me, but she is without her class ring and she had a date this evening. It was her date that got to me. The guy was a skinny, fowl-mouthed, trashy-looking bastard. I wouldn’t want to be seen with him, but it looks as though she is going steady with him. I am not in love with her and I don’t want to marry her, but she wants to get married. The very fact that she spurns me for a guy like that nauseates me.
I am now at home in the process of getting drunk. I would think that somewhere, someone in this damn world would be able to love me. I do my best when I have a date. We have fun. I am loving enough. Even if I don’t love Darlene, I really think that she should love me. I know that’s sexist and unfair, but that’s how I feel. I am no where near ready for marriage.
Russene was the sophisticated type with beauty surrounding her like a cloud. I couldn’t have a steady enough relationship with her, so I picked Shirley who was both talented and brainy. And now I can’t even keep Darlene. God knows, I loved Russene and I was in love with Shirley (at least during our first date). I loved Darlene for a while, but we had little in common but a mutual attraction. I want a girl who will love me and want to be with me, a girl that will want caresses and will sit close and lay her head against m my shoulder when I drive. It pisses me that I couldn’t make it with any of them them: Darlene, Russene, Shirley, Jewel, Clara, and so many others. When I watch movies and television, all I see is love stories. I watch the passing cars and the lovers on the beach oblivious to all but themselves and I wonder what could be wrong. I am ready for love, but love, it seems, is not ready for me.
Is it me? Am I to blame? I can make small talk, love-talk, caress and kiss and make girls laugh. I can sing and write and I am looking forward to a glorious future and yet I have nothing.
Somewhere, someone is always saying, “Nobody loves me. Tonight, I guess it is me. Tonight, I see myself differently. What I see when I look into the mirror isn’t at all bad. Yet, even the homeliest of boys have found their loves. And here I sit, typing on this goddamned paper and feeling sorry for myself.
About two years ago when I was dating Russene, I took Herb to see Laura, the girl he loved but could not find courage enough to admit. He was so embarrassed that I stopped there that he kept throwing my car keys out the window and crouching down in the seat, hiding his head with his coat. Times have changed. Herb has been through with Laura and is now on another. He had both of’ them loving him in a way that I envy.
I can’t put my emotions into words right now. The thoughts haven’t simmered long enough. I suppose I am in love with love and love is not loving me back. I am beginning to hate the world and I am becoming an old, old man at the age of twenty. I am just about ready to give up faith in humanity and admit that the world is a cluster of maggots hanging on a manure pile.
After calling Clara and getting a no-but-try-again answer, after calling the girl at the Lemon Tree (who I finally identified last night) and getting the busy signal, after striking out everywhere I could think of trying, I went to see Darlene. I was expecting to hold her in my arms, caress her pink nipple, pull her brassiere away to and expose her flabby softness to my lips, and swim without clothes in the Miami River. All I got when I arrived was a short talk before she left to go skating with that bastard.
Not that I don ‘t deserve a kick. I do deserve a boot to the ass. I don’t say she cannot date other guys, but my God, her taste is despicable. Is that what they might say about me?
Ray Mac has chipped a bone in his knee and has to have an operation later this week. We had to cancel our reservations on the Queen Mary. It will delay our trip for several months, if not forever. Naturally, I didn’t sell my car when I found that we were not going to leave right away.
Monday – July 1,1963
I have touched the forbidden fruit and it is tasty. I have dived into unknown waters and they are warm. I have poured words from my lips and they are sweet. I have soared like a ballon into the boundless heavens, and I am inflated like a bursting keg that spews forth wine onto a mud-packed floor.
What I have written, I don’t know. I am drunk on the taste of’ that forbidden fruit that now takes on the personage of’ a girl––a once pimple-faced and sallow girl that grew up while I was unaware and suddenly stood before me today in a clinging white dress and said she loved me with glances and motions of a graceful body rather than words. ·
I am loved and I am celebrating.
“Oh, once I was happy but now I’m forlorn, like the old man who is tattered and torn.” Turn it around and you have: “Oh, once I was forlorn, but now I am happy.” It doesn’t rhyme, but it’s more cheerful. The girl? Her name is Karen. Forbidden fruit? Our families have quarreled fearfully over a little matter of five dollars that Dad thought was not paid on the rent. They parked a trailer on our lot a few years ago, for a modest rental of five dollars a month. Dad. thought he was gypped out of five dollars.
Then her family had trouble with Aunt Mid and Uncle Jack. Mid had bought Grandma’s house across the street and are now living in Greenville. Karen’s brothers often played ball in the street and the ball kept knocking down Uncle Jack’s flowers. After repeated warnings, he finally called the police on them.
That did not make for good relations. As a result, she is forbidden to see me, and though I haven’t seen her in two years, so today I went over to talk with her, her parents watching through the window with white, glassy eyes. She was very pretty––not utterly beautiful, but small-breasted, agile, with a radiant face and a sparkling smile, the type that could love me and give me the satisfaction of being wanted. She has always, from the earliest times of knowing her, had a crush on me. Tonight she said, “I wish time could be turned back and we could begin again without family squabbles. It make it hard on and we are not to blame.”
“I remember all the fun we had together once. She told me of things that she remembered, many things that had slipped through the creases of my memory. I came away and wrote a letter before I sat down to celebrate with drunkenness. I will stick a carbon of ‘that letter in here now.
What sort of a nut makes carbons of love letters? That’s the sort of nut I am.
I was talking with Aunt Mid and the subject of Uncle Paul came up. One thing that I did not know was that when he lost his fingers his left hand on a table saw, he was living with a sixteen-year-old girl from Detroit, Michigan. He and Aunt Lynne were working in Detroit. He met the girl, walked out on Lynne and brought her home to live with Grandpa and Grandma. The girl was pregnant and Uncle Tea gave Paul the money for an abortion.
July 29, 1963
I expected more help and understanding, more encouragement from my parents than I’m getting. We had a big blow-up this afternoon, leaving me disgusted to the core and ready to forget about the trip around the world and just get the hell out of Ohio. Dad says I owe him thirty-seven dollars for back board and room. Thirty-seven dollars is one damned big pile of money to me right now. They were on vacation for two and I need the money. Maybe I do owe it to him, but he’s so against the trip that he’s trying to flounder me in any way possible. Odds seem to be stacking up against me . I lost twelve dollars through my negligence this afternoon. I had my glasses repaired because they were scratched during tank repair and I paid the bill and turned it into Corning, They gave me the twelve dollars and I immediately lost it. It burns me, because the glasses weren’t that bad anyway. During the day I wear my colored glasses outside, and I hardly ever wear glasses except when watching a movie or TV.
I played some tennis this evening with Dick Johnson and got gigantic blisters on my big toes, as large as the toes themselves. They pain me badly and I walk with a limp if I walk at all.
So, I feel a large letdown after the weekend full of fun. I miss the girls from Pennsylvania and look forward to seeing them again. I finished the draft of the short story called”The Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill.” I thought it turned out well.
Tuesday – August 6, 1963
Big plans have come tumbling down around my ears. My European trip is definitely off until next March. I’ll have more money, better weather and be thoroughly sick of working for a living. The Al1 Travel Agency returned my ticket because I hadn’t paid for it. I could not sell my car. The folks will be appeased if I wait until spring and have the companionship of Ray Mac. All the talking I did of the trip was to no avail. Next spring is a long time off. Hard telling what will happen between now and then. My last short story called “Fantasy of Fowler’s Hill” turned out to be a real gem. If I can’t sell that, I won’t sell anything for years. So, here I sit, sad and patient, waiting for a spring that will probably never be as planned.
I was disheartened to learn that the bike trip to Europe was off until next March. I could not stand working at Corning Glass for so long a time, so a week ago today Billy and I decided to go to the Lemon Tree to play at a hootenanny. I have decided that I can’t make it alone. I have to have a group. Billy and I worked up a few new songs and sang them loud and clear. Adam and Allen were in charge of the hoot. Billy and I went over big. They called us back for an encore. Billy and I got a job on Thursday nights where we now do the entertaining all night.
There’s a waitress there named Sheri Stein. While practicing in the basement, she joined in and we found that we harmonized very well. We practiced all day Friday. I think we could really go places. We sound great together.
Sunday – August 10, 1963
Saturday night, Billy and I had an engagement to play at Snow Hill Country Club in Wilmington.
I was laid off at Corning, so the extra money was welcome. It was after the Wilmington show that I met a girl named Shannon, a very cute, blonde with black roots, as weird as a Halloween night. She was with Dick Bopp, but I soon found that she had been married, was separated, and had a two-month-old baby. She had tried to kill herself three times, twice with razor blade slashes across the wrists and once with sleeping pills. After the Wilmington show, we came back to theLemon Tree and Phil invited us over to his place for a party. After the Tree closed we hopped over for a few beers and ended up with drinking more than a few. We were having a ball. By this time Shannon had ditched Dick completely and was making a play for me. Fred was sleepy and had too much to drink.
On the way, Dick had picked up his date, a girl that lives in Columbus and was afraid that he could not make it home. It was late, so Shannon said that we could all come to her house to spend the night at her house. Dick had gratefully accepted. I looked at my watch and it was 3:30 AM. I called home and told them that we were at a party. Mom said just to stay over and come home in the morning, but Dad woke up and said that Billy had to come home immediately. I couldn’t miss out on all the fun and knew that something was hanging in the air, something that would possibly make a great story. I told Shannon that I had to get Billy home unless I could find a place to stay. She said that I could come on over to my place as I hoped, so I gave Billy the keys and chased him out. He stalled around and refused to leave for a long time, but I kept talking to him and finally got him to leave. I was sure that if he drove home at 5: 00 AM without me the folks would never let him go with me again. We went back into Phil’s. Inside everyone was drunk, discussing palm reading and yogi. Shannon read everyone’s palm. Phil and Dick were supposed to die young. I was supposed to live to a ripe old age, have three mistresses, quit my singing and writing, then pick them up again later and become a great success after the years have mellowed me. The hushed voice of doom had silenced everyone. The party broke up and most headed for home. Shannon, Fred and I went out to her house.
Shannon ‘s home was a new, high-ceilinged beauty with grass-green thick carpeting. She had left her six-month-old baby alone all the while we were gone. A neighbor was supposed to have come in and checked every now and then. I talked with her to find out what I could. She is studying psychology and has had five or six different psychologists herself. She ‘s very pretty, but it’s a wonder her parents haven’t committed her. She’s a schizophrenic, a split personality. She wasn’t ready for marriage. Anyone could tell that. We talked about her marriage and her almost successful suicides while the blood stains on the carpet glowed yellow and orange in the new-found daylight. She ‘s getting married again to a man named Tom out in Oregon. He’s a writer and so is she. Her ex-husband, whose name is Doug, is trying to take her baby away from her . That should only be so. She seems to be a loving mother, but she isn’t a fit mother. She gives the child phenobarbital much of the time to keep it asleep. I swear to God that the poor kid must be a drug addict by now.
I was lusting after her, naturally. We slept together that night, but we did not make love. The only way to tell this story is to go into the conversation or write it out in graphic language to make a short story of it. I was on the couch , dizzy, weary, wanting to make love her, talking about everything from the Bible to incest. I kissed her lips and she came to me passionately.
“Of course, you know I want to make love to you,” I said .
“Sure,” she said .
“And you •re not going to let me, right?”
“Right.”
“You hate men, don ‘t you.”
“They’re not very gentle.”
“I ‘m fairly gentle, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I suppose,” she said, “but I want a man that wants more than me for sex.”
“I can understand that. You can’t sleep with just anybody.”
“I offered it to Tom, but he wouldn’t even take it. I love him for that.”
“Some women have perverted ideas about sex.”
“No, men do.”
“Men do most of the raping.”
“That’s been done too, when I was fifteen.”
“You aren’t shocking me. You’re drunk.”
“No, not now. I was once but not now. “
“You know what? Nobody has ever loved you.”
“That’s true .”
“You know another thing? I think I could I love you already, even though what I’ve seen of your motherly instinct and those damn scars on your wrist ought to repel me.”
“You get to know a person psychologically and you can build your line on that;”
“I’m not building a line. I apologize for wanting to make love to you, but you have to overlook that, it’s only human.”
“Yes.”
On it went, this discussion and others.
Around eight Dick came in with a small bag of groceries. No one had slept. I was hungry but Dick and Shannon said that if they ate they would get sick. The sun was coming up. I was sick myself. Fred got up and we went into Dayton for a bite to eat. When we came back we talked about different theories––time, Einstein, atomic energy. We must have still been drunk, or perhaps we were drunk on thought, for that can happen too.
We talked about other dimensions. We talked about the fact that we might be ,just an electron in an atom of some oxygen in a blade of grass in some other more dense, more vast cosmic existence and it seemed to make sense the way we thought of it. We played hearts all morning and all afternoon.
At four o’clock I called the bus station and decided to take the five-fifteen bus to Greenville. Shannon and I talked about books and authors and then Fred gave me a ride to the bus station. I had had no sleep and I was barely able to talk.
Shannon left her glasses in my car earlier, so I will have to get them back to her. In the
wee hours of the morning I asked her if this was all there was to it, if I only had her for a night and that was it. “Yes,” she said. “This is all there will be. You see, I’m playing a game.”
“I know you are. I can tell. You don’t like me at all, do you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I really do like you.”
I haven’t seen the other side of her personality. On the normal side she is an intelligent, pretty girl with a warped view of things that must be straightened out. On the other side? Suicide? I found myself staring once at her fresh wound, the stitches still sticking out like tatters of thread on an otherwise perfect piece of clothing, something entirely out of place. The wound was swollen and infected. “Don’t look at it,”she said. “It’s ugly.”
“It fascinates me. I’m sorry but I can’t help it. A pause and I said, “You really want to live. You only do this for attention, don’t you?
“Yes,” she said. “I never wanted to succeed.” And that is probably the last little escapade with her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she would succeed the next time. Or perhaps the baby will die of an overdose of drugs and she will be sent to prison or the zoo for treatment. Will anything good ever come into her life? I will try to help her but what can I do? I don’t even know her last name.
TOMMY’S GHOST
When Tommy Thompson took over The Lemon Tree, he said that it was his last chance for success. All his life, his business ventures had dropped into bankruptcy. He had given himself one more chance to make a success of himself. He took the Lemon Tree over one day after the previous owner had filed bankruptcy. He had to make it. Soon he was having an affair with a white woman, though he was married to a different white woman. The verdict on his death was ruled suicide but there was no investigation. He was shot in the head at close range . Now it’s rumored around the Lemon Tree that the jealous husband shot him.
A few months ago Clark Crites, the new owner of the Lemon Tree and manager of the Art Theater, and his wife Marita were alone in the lobby of the theater. They heard a noise from inside the Lemon Tree and Clark told Marita to stay outside while he went in to check for burglars.
Last week Sheri, Billy and I were playing at the Lemon Tree on Thursday night. Between songs, the door behind the stage began to rattle. Someone called out in a low voice, “I can’t get in.”
I made some sort of a feeble joke about the disturbance and Sheri and Billy looked around .
The door has been shut for years and it is locked. Phil had tried to open it several times with no success. The rattling continued and suddenly the door popped open and hit the stage. There
was no one there. The door hit the stage and immediately slammed shut again. Later on we tried to open it, but it would not open.
A few nights ago Sheri was sitting alone in the Lemon Tree just before the doors were opened to the public. She saw Tommy walk from the kitchen and go into the lobby. She turned white and followed to make certain it was him. When she got to the lobby, no one was there. She looked around, even as far as the men’s rest room. No one was in the place at all except Charlie, the doorman. He came by and asked what was wrong and she told him that it was nothing. The little story has no ending, but I don ‘t believe that the end has even been written yet. I believe we will hear more about Tommy ‘s ghost. I don’t really believe Sheri’s story. If Tommy ever wanted to come into the Lemon Tree, he wouldn’t come on the night that Sheri and I were entertaining. He gave us both a lot of encouragement and wanted to see us make it. And now that we are together, he would naturally want to hear us.
LINKS TO WORKS MENTIONED IN THIS CHAPTER:
Kenneth Harper Finton 