William Lobb's Blog, page 8
August 27, 2022
Scene from a Bodega. Lost in the 1970s
Sitting in a tiny bodega by the screen door. The rains come in raves and torrents down the deserted street. Giant blobs of wet, white snow flakes spatter themselves against the dirty glass window, heated by neon signs selling Tecate Beer. Three other ugly men join me at my table, we’ve never met. They don’t […]
August 26, 2022
Bread
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lives-Ri... Bread—a Christmas story Christmas 1965 will always stand out in my mind as the best and saddest yet somehow closest to perfect Christmas of my life. My father died in April that year and I started to hate everyone and everything, in no particular order.Ma and I were never close, and we both decided […]
August 25, 2022
From The Three Lives of Richie O’Malley
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lives-Ri... Over in the corner of the barn we stored some old farm tools. Hay rakes and bailers and mowers, an eclectic collection of old parts and once red and yellow and blue painted, now rusted iron. Unk walked over to this equipment placed his hand on the rusty metal then to the the wheels […]
August 23, 2022
School Lunch
When I listen to some people talk, I don’t care white or black, but they make statements like, “I don’t understand the whole school lunch thing, I make my kids a sandwich every day,” I’m stunned at the blind privilege; gut punched stunned. You need be humbly glad you don’t understand, on your knees humbled. […]
August 13, 2022
A Boy and A Farm From Long Ago
A Farm: A few months ago a woman mailed me a very old photo; a cow in a field of short grass. In the background was a man and a boy on a tractor, they were in straw hats. Even from fifty years away I could still feel the heat of the sun that day. […]
August 12, 2022
Moon Shine
Sometimes I forget how much I need to be by the sea. I live away from it, possibly intentionally. That fact makes the moments of encounter extraordinary and meaningful. I look at the moon shimmering on the surface and I swim in a deep almost primal calm. Maybe the only time and place I feel […]
August 9, 2022
It Doesn’t Make Any Sense
I’ve been looking at this photo all morning. I’m trying to imagine the guy working in the factory, the guy driving the 20 year old pick-up truck, the guy whose kids eat hot-dogs and boxed Mac and cheese three days a week, and the guy has health insurance but he’s got a $5000 deductible, so […]
August 8, 2022
Fridays Adventure in IT
My reputation for grumpiness is something I want written into my elegy. I’m sure I can count on my daughter for that. Friday was a perfect example of (literally) 100 emails that could have been one text message. The woman from the vendor, who was very nice and I’m sure very good at her job, […]
August 7, 2022
Justice in America
Brittney Griner has been taking me back to the Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York in the 70s. Of course I think she should be free, and this whole scene is a disgrace and a sham, and a political game, but that’s exactly my point. She’s not the first or the last to get burned […]
August 3, 2022
Just A Small Town Girl
She was a small-town girl from a dirty industrial city in the north. Her dad worked in the factories and drank too much. He’d get drunk and mad and tell her she’d better get the hell out of there first chance she got and make a life for herself and not to expect much from […]
