William Lobb's Blog, page 18
October 19, 2019
No Jane, Not Now, Not Ever
Jane Fonda has been in the news lately for her staged ‘civil disobedience,’ in Washington. She gets arrested, and released every Friday. Some environmental protest. I’m so far left, Karl Marx would think my ideas are little to radical, but Jane Fonda? I’m still pissed off about the Vietnam War. Still pissed about the guys […]
October 2, 2019
Florida Sunset…
“She’s had a rich life…” I heard that, again, today. “Your mom has had a full, rich life.” The richness, the wealth, has dwindled to loose change now, maybe a dime, and a few pennies. Every time a virus hits, even a cold, the fluid in and around her chest compresses her heart and lungs, […]
September 18, 2019
Jimmy B. On Salvation
“An unbroken string of days is all that brought us here. Eat some, sleep some, drink some, fuck some and fight some and here we are. An army of scoundrels, like me, like you, pulling’ and pushin’ and sellin’ each other to the highest bidder. Ain’t no allegiance. There ain’t no plan, never was. No […]
September 16, 2019
Harry McCabe
The summer always ended on his porch, the neighbor, Harry McCabe, down the dirt path dead-end by the water. Feet up on the surrounding stone and cement wall, leaning back in the kitchen chairs we’d drug out after eating the evening meal. Carefully surveying the woods for the skunks. They liked appear as the sun […]
September 14, 2019
In an Elevator, In a Nursing Home, somewhere…
I’m watching this guy struggle, mightily, with the vending machine. Peering deep inside at the collected offerings, kneeling down, then standing, then peering deep inside again. Hands on the glass, finally sliding in a couple of bucks into the slot and choosing a Baby Ruth. I made an idiotic comment about too many choices and […]
September 9, 2019
Aunt B
My aunt Betty sends me cards in the mail. She is the very last one. She doesn’t snap a pic of a photo she found and text it to me, she goes and finds a card, and sits down with a pen and writes to me in her own unique hand. She then inserts a […]
August 28, 2019
Slave
There is a burial ground about a mile from my home. I live in the north. The ancient cemetery was marked with a NY State historical marker proclaiming “Colored Cemetery,” or it was twenty-thirty years ago. In the ensuing couple of decades some progressive Yankee decided “Colored Cemetery” may be inappropriate and decided “Slave Cemetery” […]
August 19, 2019
The Berry Pickers–Chapter 1 – Chapter 3
The Berry Pickers – Chapter 1 “Then all these people started coming at me and asking me what happens when you die. Men, women, young and old.” “I reckon they figured because I was damn near kill’t in the war that I’d become some kind of expert in dyin’ and the hereafter. That ain’t […]
August 10, 2019
Hayin’
He looked me square in the eye, across a sweaty beer—turning piss warm on this hot July morning—Inhaling the filterless Camel I watched it burn down damn-near an inch on one drag. The conversation is lost for a moment as I watched, preoccupied, with the ash about to fall and land on his dirty dungarees. […]
August 6, 2019
Exhausted…
My Mustang is lowered three inches and for four summers I’ve been trying to get the exhaust right. If it hangs down even 3/8” of an inch it scrapes in driveways and speedbumps. If I get it up too tight it rattles. Saturday morning I took to fabricating. By Saturday afternoon I had a good […]
