Almost Houses

This is an image that is a result of a goggle search for residential search for houses in Bloomington Indiana.  This is sick. Why wouldn't a search of this sort turn up pictures of houses? Anyway, there was a house, a block north of the main drag through Bloomington, Ind. near the south end of town that my girl friend and her two roommates shared in 1969. They had made home made wine in their basement. I was Unca Dan to the dogs that lived in the house. My best friend, Jim Hauser, was welcome. I never really slept in this house, but Marti and I smoked and talked and played chess and drank wine here until 1971. The other girls loved me, and encouraged me in my endeavors. They all hoped that Marti would love me as they wished they would love me. It wasn't meant to be. The only thing that bonded us, was that she wished that I was she and she was me, and I wished that I was her.  She also had a photographic memory which has also been mistaken for a sign of great intelligence. Never argue with someone who can repeat verbatim any argument you have ever had. The whole thing was a great mistake. But the thing about it was, we played great chess. And we smoked like chimneys. And we were married and divorced  eighteen months later. A sad tale of want-to-bes that never were. 

Houses

Well, it didn't look like this. It was on the north end of Bloomington, Indiana, near a good sized farm (at the bottom of the hill.) The farm was all pasture land and they had horses out there when I was little. The Fells owned it. I delivered newspapers to them later, after they were rich from selling their land. But they never seemed to pay me. (Thrifty Hoosiers go to heaven.) It was a little neighborhood store with living quarters in the back. The living room door was off the side of the front porch and a bit away from the store's front door. It was long and narrow and there was a kitchen directly behind it and two more bedrooms behind that. The grocery store seemed huge when I was little. There was everything, including a meat counter and a big walk in freezer and a giant trap door that led to a giant basement. It had a large wooden front porch and we kids got to set up a little counter of our own in the summer time and sell penny candy from the store. Later the heavy wooden support posts rotted out and they replaced with aluminum supports. The store was shut down when I was around 10, I think. My father put in a wall covering up the meat counter and took out all the shelves and counters and fixtures and remodeled the store into a living room. The old living room became a bedroom for my brother and I. My bed was against the now permanently locked old front door. (My brother used to tease me about the boogy man coming through the door while I was asleep.) We had a joint back yard with my grandparents who lived behind us, but their house faced the side street. There was an old outhouse in the back corner of the yard. We had a lot of grass. I can remember playing on the front porch during a large summer thunderstorm. Except for what sometimes went on in the house, It wasn't a terrible place to grow up. I loved my mother and grandmother. The grown men, my father and grandfather were mean or useless. My brother remembered recently that he was walking down the side yard and I took a running leap from the front porch and tackled him in the grass. He probably won the wrestling match.

Pictures

Just cause I like 'em

Mark Twain Dying

Just finished Volume 4 of Albert Paine's Mark Twain Biography. It covers the last 7-8 years of Twain's Life. Paine became Twain's Boswell. He spent an enormous amount of time with him, going through all of his papers, sitting in as Twain dictated memories for about four years and played endless games of billiards with him night after night. This is a real biography. You get to see small moments. Paine lived down the hill from him, was there when Jean died, went to get him in Bermuda when it wasn't clear he'd make it back alive. Was at his death bed.
Great read, not to mention the Gilder mentions throughout. I have the second volume on its way. It looks like I will be reading this out of sequence as I turn up loose copies. It's out there for your Kindle and there are paperbacks available it looks like. My copy was great because its very old and beat up and the binding is falling apart (published 1912) and has an unfortunate $1.25 written in crayon on the inside page. Who, in their right mind, would want to read this on a Kindle.

My Volume Two showed up today- not the volume two of this biography- pissed me off that they would mislabel the AbeBooks listing. What they sent is the 2nd Volume of the Autobiography.

$7.00 bucks- oh well. I'm mostly pissed because I was looking forward to some ore Paine,

Weddings

To be so young and in love. I got to perform the ceremony for these two. My sister's boy and his sweetie. Her family are great people. His Mom passed away a few years ago, so his ragtag family all flew in to help. We are lucky people, we've beaten all of the bad karma that we started with. Can't really think of much to say. Great fun!

I like blue myself

They go off and they change and they come back and they look the same. The tattoos can be interesting too.

I had glasses and longish hair, then a mustache and then real long hair, and then short hair and then finally the mustache went away, then the glasses and then the hair came back. I think I'd like blue. I've off and on threatened to come home red, but never have.

Also

Found a CD by Sara Watkins (formerly of NickleCreek) Great song of her channeling an old John Hartford tune