weird thing about new hampshire
Here’s my host scraping the car windows. She asked me to help her skin a fox. So we did.
January 9, 2009
January 7, 2009
I left the house at 7:30 last nite and now I’m at Logan airport waiting for a bus to take me to New Hampshire. There is brown slush on the ground and overbearing Boston accents behind me. Twenty hours well spent.
dream machine
You just locked eyes with an all original 1935 Plymouth PJ and you two already love each other. You’ll drive out to a tall grass field overlooking a reed studded pond and park. The six volt powered radio will seranade AM emotions as you climb out and sit down on the running board and watch a pair of ducks lift out of the water and take wing in the blue air.
Not so fast loverboy. This here is Rusty Sunshine’s lady. He trailered her over the hill from Pescadero last week.
“Bring your camera next time you come through,” he said to me. “Got something for you to see.”
“You buy another tractor already?”
“Nope. You just come down and take a look,” he said.
I wish I’d dropped out of school and started working right away. Now I’m nearly forty and still paying off student loans instead of buying mechanical marvels of the last century. Oh well. Locke came by and we tried to get her turned over.
If you have an eye for it you’ll see the hay bale twine tying the hood up and the little gas can resting on the front end. Rusty bypassed the fuel lines and using gravity feed had gas going directly into the carb. Locke sprayed starter fluid in the open barrel and as Rusty turned the key Locke placed his palm over the mouth, choking off oxygen. It nearly caught but just wouldn’t quite.
“We had her going the other day, a little gas direct in the cylinder. Couldn’t believe how good it sounded.”
I grabbed Rusty by his plaid shirt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! I’m a Romantic, not a mechanic. Let’s get this running and buy suits and an old pistol and rob every gas station in our path till the coppers pin us down and we’re gonna die right inside this tin beauty.”
Top One of 2008
looking backward while moving forward is a good way to trip but as a journalist it becomes necessary to at least glance over my shoulder at 2008 this first week of January ’09 and offer a bit of a synopsis and perhaps point out some tripping hazards for those coming along behind.
Journalists like to use the form known as “The Top Ten List”, but as our culture transitions from print to online media condensation becomes mandatory, so I offer a “Top One” list.
My personal Top One: box trucks
Political Top One: Obama
Top One in Entertainment: kissing
Musical Act: this is the year someone awesome gave me The Felice Brothers disc.
Biggest Top One Dissapointment: World still not built to my specs.
Top One Improvement: Watching the difference in Sean’s daughter as she went from two to three years old.
Top Two of Being One: my parents, from what I understand, are still happily married.
Top One Time: One time in New Orleans I met a bartender and we threw a pirouge in her truck and paddled around a bayou. Alligators, park wardens, the little boat almost blowing off the truck on the freeway made for an epic adventure.
It seems like a good time to end with a prediction for 2009. Obama’s gonna disappoint us Progressives a bit and you Conservatives a lot, the economy will get a makeover show on MTV, digital media will stop using digits and with push from the rising Chinese influence will start using character based algorithms.
When I get out of the airport and around a computer I will add an email from a friend I made in 2008 – Dante, the expert yard sale sign maker.
UPDATE
Here’s Dante’s Italian advice for the new year. Probably too late for this year, but make sure to do this next year.
“In Italy we have an old superstition/tradition. In the morning of the new year the first person that will cross your treshhold has to be a male. That will bring you luck and that is what, as a child, I used to do in Milan, knocking from apartment to apartment, whishing them a happy New Year and of course, at the same time, getting a few Lire in my pocket. Remember, it has to be a male.
Ciao and don’t drink too much.”
It was also a grave oversight not to mention the gal I spent practically all of 2008 kissing. My girlfriend. Who goes unnamed, but was directly referenced in the Top One Entertainment. I hope that didn’t denigrate our relationship by placing it under entertainment. That’s just what I liked to do best when I had free time.
January 6, 2009
construction is easy
That’s what Glen always says. I wish I was gonna be there tomorrow to see if the deck we jacked up is still standing. I pulled the bottle jack out and now the weight rides on that toppled piling. It’s just that easy. As it is, I’m heading to New Hampshire for a week to celebrate Mom’s 60th birthday.
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January 5, 2009
photo posted from my iPhone
Came out at nine this morning and my old rusty sawzall case had found a taker.
Tis the season for a wicked cleanout in the garage. There’s a big old tax deductible donation out by the fire hydrant on 30th if you’re willing to stop and haul it to Goodwill. Two chairs, a red fruit bowl, a few 8 x 10 framed photos of 1960′s fraternal lodge councilmen, leather pillows, they’re gonna put quite a scenario together down at the trailer where you drop ‘em off. Guess I’ll take a photo in the morning. Bet none of it’s left. Totally forgot to take the picture of the pile at the start. Must be cuz of the dry old joint I found while cleaning up.
January 4, 2009
The deck of cards idea was good, but its gonna be hard. I spent about sixty bucks on Bombay Saphire martinis on this chick and she still wouldn’t take her shirt off.
January 3, 2009
italian model
Here’s part of a non traditional christmas gift I got this year. One of the many models from a deck of “models of all nations”. All were white women on the same shag carpet, holding some stereotypical cultural artifact from another land.
January 2, 2009
keeping time
This is for Luke, who worked New Years Eve at the front desk of The Phoenix. He wanted a nice long story for the new year. That didn’t happen. I’m not sure why I think this 1868 advertisement from Harpers will make up for it.