More Dark Side

I'm telling this way out of sequence, not sure why. In 1984, I was divorced, living in Venice, working at the Bonaventure Hotel down town and got a call at work from a sheriff in Paris Illinois where my father lived. To this day, I do not know if the call was real or my father put the guy up to it. Anyway, he said he was with the Paris Sheriff's office and they were investigating my father for the murder of his wife. I told the guy, I was sure he did it it and I proceeded to tell him about the beatings of my mother and the obsessive tracking of her after their divorce and how she got a restraining order against him. I called back and checked him out and he was legit, but that doesn't mean my father hadn't convinced him of something. My father was an insurance claim investigator on the side and had access to personal credit records and had friends in the police force.  I talked to him once more and didn't get any information from him about what was happening. I alerted all of my siblings and mother. If he had killed once, he could decide to do the rest of us in. I spent a month watching every time I walked out my door.
When OJ got arrested, I knew. I had grown up with the creep.

The Dark Side

The last time I saw my father alive was in San Francisco in 1978. We met at a restaurant. He had tricked my mother into giving him my phone number by having someone else call and pretend to be a potential employer that was trying to find me to make me a job offer. Then he calls and wants to visit. I didn't believe he had my address. My wife, at the time, did not want to meet him, she had heard all of the stories. Nor did I want him to know where I lived. (I ain't stupid- my mother and brother had their cars fooled with and my brother had walked out one morning and found the old man sitting in his car across the street with a gun in his hand which he pointed at my brother.)

So we agreed on a time and place and I was there early and parked my motorcycle two blocks away because I didn't want him to write down my license number or the make and model of the bike.

I walked in to find him with his new wife and her brother and his wife. I told the old man that I had come to talk to him and I wasn't interested in being social. We sat at the lunch counter while the others got a table.
He says: Hello. I love you. -then hands me a piece of paper to sign. It was a document signing away my rights to the trust that my Great Uncle had left. There were blank places for my brother's and sister's signatures.
I said: I'm not signing this and they won't either. My sister won't see you and my brother has already told you to take a hike.

By signing over the trust, he could sell the holdings and walk away with a lot of money which was intended to be left to his kids (us).

I don't remember much of the rest of the conversation- it was short and I left him there and wandered around to make sure he hadn't followed me before getting my cycle. And then for the next several days I cased the street each time I walked out and looked over my shoulder a lot. (I wasn't stupid)

A response to my craziness

This is from one of the other members of the GLAWS group. I think he's got it!




imagine a dog lapping water is the best description of a paragraph, huh?  you must be considered harmless to yourself and others.  it's great they allow you such privileges as joining a writer's group.   asylums are really becoming innovative these days. 

however, i'll ignore your status and take up your manifesto.  a dog laps water - (topic}.  the dog is a big skinny mongrel with a mud-encrusted mangey coat of red fur.  he lowers his snout toward the lit-tle tricklet of water in the gutter in the street.  he sniffs its contents and finds its an acceptable sour-ce of hydration, even though its not terribly hygienic.  but he can't be discriminatory about it - he's thirsty and he's searched for water for over an hour now.  he starts sticking his tongue out into the water. he cradles each gulp in his tongue's temporary folded bowl.  the lapping increases in rapid rhythms as he fills his stomach.  - (exposition).  suddenly the dog looks up from the tricklet of water and notices an immaculately groomed snow-white poodle with a jewel-encrusted collar being led on a leash by its owner, an overdressed, overjeweled fat dowager.  the woman pauses on the sidewalk to offer some evian water she has in her purse to her pet and pours it into a plastic cup and lowers it to the sidewalk in front of the animal's snout.  the poodle sniffs the cup and then refuses the refresh-ment.  the dog and woman leave the cup of water on the sidewalk. - (antithesis).  the mongrel, his eyes having recorded the scene, leaps up from the gutter onto the sidewalk and rushes to the cup of water.  he laps up the clean water to his heart's content. - (conclusion).

is this what you mean, dan?  is my paragraph a more perfect paragraph than joyce's?  anyway,
thanks for the privilege of entering your . . . uh . . . world.  it's a lot more rarefied than mine.  talk about a thirsty dog - my consumption of literary classics is like the mongrel's lapping the tricklet of water.  i too am parched.  i too want to quench my craving for literary sustenance.  i'm going to de-mand more time for myself for reading.  i've never touched rabelais.  that's gonna change.

     - lionel rivers malone           
  
        

Tales From Camp Dan

You haven't lived until you've taken a load of bears to the museum.  I stayed home five years and besides my three in the summer, I had four or five more. You used to be able to take sketchpads and pencils to LACMA and sit on the floor and draw pictures of the art. We also had little contests. I would make up lists of things to be found in the paintings and we would have a friendly competition to find them. I never got to win. Bears are like puppies, they attract women. We were followed one day by an aging valley girl type who was very invested in what the bears could do. A couple of them were getting a little nervous by her proximity. We would retire to the grass outside for lunch and snacks. Lots of tuna and peanut butter and chips and fruit juice boxes in those days. They will stay with you for the most part, unless you make a weird issue of it and then they rebel. I learned that from the beach outings. I was sure I would lose one to the waves, but they all self-edited themselves into safety.
We saw every museum, every building, every park, and swimming pool in Los Angeles.

If You Haven't Heard

I found this song, this CD in a thrift store in LA up near Canter's on Fairfax. Willie Nelson sang on it. The singer was this photographer from Rolling Stone, who wrote all the songs. Hell of an album

Footnote to the Author's Craziness

A dog lapping water has to breathe. The breath is the antithesis. There is no value without the antithesis.

Saturday, However

Shot of me Saturday afternoon at a music party. I sang and played in front of thirty people, all of whom were better musicians than me. I thought, wow, a shot of me singing, but closer examination shows I was not playing the banjo, so I was not singing here. The young good looking girl is one of the bears. She sang really well.