Fred: If you read by blogs, you know my cat Fred turned out not to be a Fred at all. About the time she discovered the neighborhood tomcat I should have known, but I thought they were just friends. You know, two toms. But, no, she’s about as pregnant as a cat can get, almost as wide as long. And, I said that last week and she just keeps getting bigger. It’s sort of like the little flat popcorn bag in the Microwave. Pop … pop .. pop .pop pop Pop POP! And I can’t believe how big she is. So, I placed her on Maternity leave. I expect a litter of Puppies. Yes Puppies, she’s certainly big enough and I’m not a cat person anyway. Which brings me to pets…
I have this constant Cat / Dog thing. I think of Cats as Female and Dogs as Males. I thought that was common. A no brainer. But I mentioned it the other day and somebody looked at me like I was crazy. So, I guess not everybody looks at it the same… Or that guy was weird, and he may have been. But, pets…
Dogs and Begging… Cats and Begging…
Dogs beg and rarely will they turn down what they have begged for. The dog could care less. I have seen a dog eat potato chips, cheese curd, pudding, green beans, toast and I once owned a Dog, Sammy, and she ate mice. Yes. Whole.
Cats? Yes, on the mouse, but the cat will only eat parts of the mouse and you will have to clean up the rest, or, like my Fred, they will bring the dead or alive mouse to you. Fred likes to bring them to me alive. I guess that’s Fred’s way of making sure I get my exercise chasing the damn mouse/squirrel/bird through the house. But the rest? No. A cat will not eat any of the rest of it. But that does not mean the cat won’t beg for it anyway. Mine does. And every time I give her some, and every time she turns her nose up and walks away.
Dogs appreciate snacks, Cats feel you owe them. If a cat had a lawyer? You would never speak to the cat. If a dog had a lawyer, he’d be having a conversation like this with the lawyer… “I don’t know, Bob. They’re pretty good people and if I sued them, they might not give me anymore peanut butter sandwich bites and I like peanut butter sandwich bites and I… I… Excuse me Bob, I’ll be right back…” Zoom, the dog is off and into the office where I just happen to be eating a peanut butter sandwich. And that only makes sense. Dogs are all about sniffing scents out of the air. They sniff everything, all of the time. Chairs, Fire Hydrants, Butts, Crotches, Car tires, everything they do is about smell. If you’re eating a peanut butter sandwich in the attic, balanced on the window ledge with the heat of the house rushing past you and carrying the smell away they would know about it… It would go something like this…
There you are, hanging out the window, eating your peanut butter sandwich. No dog. And then suddenly, far away, the phone rings. You think nothing of it but a few moments later the attic door bumps open and up the stairs trots your dog (Feel free to substitute Skippy or Lassie or Rover here), Bear. He trots up and does that sideways twisting his head thing that is so, well, dog like. “Hey,” he says, (If dogs could talk) “That was Brownie from two blocks over, you know, Mrs. Johnson’s dog. I pooped on her lawn last week and you went ballistic?” He just looks goofy while you nod. “Yeah, well Brownie says you’re up here hanging out the window eating peanut butter sandwiches…. Huh, I said to Brownie… What do you know about that.”
“I saved you a bite,” you say and toss him half the sandwich. And he eats it whole. No swallowing… No choking. No chewing. Jaws open. Jaws close (Except sometimes with Peanut Butter when it sticks to the roof of their mouth.) and the half sandwich is gone. I’d like to see a cat do that.
Instead, Fred sits there and begs with dignity. She doesn’t want to appear to be needy. Bear (My last dog who has passed) could care less about dignity. If you go around sniffing butts all day as a form of greeting, then dignity is a pretty large gray area. If you look at Fred she looks away like, “I thought I saw a mouse…” or “I’m only here because I love you…” Nevertheless, she begs, and she expects a payoff and it better not be peanut butter. I often try to present my side of it, “All I have is peanut butter, Fred. You’re wasting your time.” She looks like, “Well there’s a kitchen full of Bologna and Sliced Ham.” (Her favorite foods). And of course, I’m not going out there just to get her a damned piece of Bologna No. So, I go out to get a damn glass of juice, she follows, and then, somehow, she hypnotizes me and I’m opening the Ham package to get her some…
Cats and dogs. They don’t mix, most of the time anyway, and people who are cat people are not usually dog people and vice versa. I am a dog person and really, someone should break the news to Fred because Fred thinks I’m a cat person.
Someday… In a perfect world… I will once again possess a dog… And the world will be perfect… And we’ll stand on the porch at dusk and watch the sun go down… Geez… It’ll be great… Just me and my dog…
Of course I’ll have to start with a puppy… And It’ll probably poop all over the house… And knowing my luck it’ll make friends with a cat… A pregnant cat… A pregnant cat that I thought was a boy cat… and then the whole vicious cycle will start all over again…
My newest book is now available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback or Hardcover editions.
My Own Apocalypse
Ethen and his wife pick up bits and pieces of newscasts, but it makes no sense. Something, or somethings are prowling the streets at night… #Zombie #Apocalypse #ZombieApocalypse #ZombieFiction #Readers #Thriller #Drama #Horror https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ8R3Q9S.
Do you want to build your own hard body electric guitar? Well, so did I and so. I did. I used wood from some… #WoodWorking #CustomGuitarBuild #BuiidAGuitar #Luthier #Kindle
Build a custom acoustic Guitar Kindle Edition
Do you want to build your own acoustic guitar?
I decided to take some of the cast-off parts, put some work into them, manufacture a few parts myself and build a custom acoustic guitar… #WoodWorking #CustomGuitarBuild #BuildAGuitar #Luthier #Kindle
This is a medium to post book excerpts and my own thoughts.
You may download Open-Source software completely free of any license fees. Install it on as many PCs as you like. Use it for any purpose – private, educational, government and public administration, commercial…
Pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.
Anything I have listed here is software I use myself and have checked out for, in some cases, years. The links are to the official websites only. Once there follow the links to get what you need. There are no charges, no fees ever.
OpenOffice is a suite of tools that equals MS Office. I use it for writing, and I have written more than ten books with it.
· Writer a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.
· Calc a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyze, and present your data.
· Impress the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
· Draw lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
· Base lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and more.
· Math lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface.
Puppy Linux enables you to save money while doing more work, even allowing you to do magic by recovering data from destroyed PCs or by removing malware from Windows. Now that vista and XP are no longer supported this OS can replace them. It is supported fully, and all updates are free.
· CD Executable installs from within your old Vista or XP OS.
· Full OS
· No Charge for updates or more copies for other machines.
· Runs on older or newer systems. Even systems under 1 gig of ram.
· Includes a wide range of applications: wordprocessors, spreadsheets, internet browsers, games, image editors and many utilities. Extra software in the form of dotpets. There is a GUI Puppy Software Installer included.
Ubuntu is a popular Linux OS that can completely replace the Windows operating system on your machine. I use Ubuntu to do all of my computer related tasks. It is better, faster and more reliable than the Windows OS I once used.
· Bootable disk with installer. As easy as installing any other software. Just make your choices, answer the questions, that’s it. The installer does the rest.
· Software, Software and more software. Ubuntu comes with a built-in software installer, manager. Pick the software you want, and it will install it and set it up for you. OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity, Games, Browsers and much more.
· Updates are free. No charge for other machines. No licensing fees. Nothing at all. It is free and has long term support.
· Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and many other manufacturers now use Ubuntu.
Gimp. Gimp is my graphics program of choice. I have paid the big bucks for other top name image/graphics programs, but I have not been as happy with those products as I have been with Gimp. I use it for all of my graphic/image needs. Book covers, Illustrations, in fact all the graphics on this site were made with Gimp.
· Photo Enhancement. Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Many filters are included. Retouching, Resizing, all the top features you would expect to find are here.
· File Formats. Gimp can read and save to all the top image formats.
· Airbrush, Bucket, Pen, Brush, many other applicators included and easily used for your image work.
· Blur, Soften, Clear backgrounds, Dozens of filters, Layers and much more. The only Image Processing software I use.
A hardboiled #crime novel that follows Billy as he takes a walk to fight boredom and ends up in the middle of a crime. #Money #drugs #Violence #crime #Deadfolks and everything else you would want in a hardcore crime fiction novel… https://books2read.com/u/m2E061
Here are some suggested short story collections I and other writers have written, Dell
Alabama Island Short Story Collection
A collection of 12 short stories, including the featured story, Alabama Island.
I heard the soft murmur of its engine running: Some guy and some girl, I thought. #ShortStories #Thrillers #Readers #BookLovers #Drama https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/809312
Borderline: Collected Short Stories
He thought for a second longer, staring into the dimness, trying to see better. Checked the street; nobody, and then made his way down the alleyway. He bent and looked in passenger window… #Singles #ShortStories #Readers https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/487747
The Curse of Norwood Middle School: Teenage Adventures of Kelsey (Teenage Adventures of Kelsey Book Series 4)
Kelsey, class president, wants to have a Valentine’s Day dance at the middle school. She takes it up with the school principal after the student council votes that the school should have one – but there is only one problem. Nobody is allowed in the school after dark. The school is cursed. Bad things happen. #YoungAdult #Amazon #ALNorton #ReadersofInstagram https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Norwood-Middle-School-Adventures-ebook/dp/B07MZHW7SH
TRUE: True Stories from a small Town #1 Five True Stories…
The Last Ride. It was a busy Friday night driving cab… #Cab #Taxi #DellSweet #TrueStories #NonFiction https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/276759
The Christmas Goo (Book Series 3) Kindle
Derik mocks Kelsey for having to go sit on Santa’s lap with her baby sisters and gets caught. As punishment, he has to now join them. Derik is not happy at all. He begins to make fun of Santa in any way he can not knowing the mall Santa can hear him. Is the mall Santa real or not?#ALNorton #ChristmasGoo #YoungAdult #Readerrs #BooksForKids
Connected: Short Hauls
Harrows Grocery Early Morning The old Chevy idled roughly at the curb across from Harrows market… #Crime #Thriller #Drama #Readers #ShortStories
Not So Sweet Sarah: Teenage Adventures of Kelsey (Teenage Adventures of Kelsey Book Series 2)
Kelsey has a birthday coming up! She has recently been spending her allowance on starting a porcelain doll collection. All she wants for her birthday is that perfect porcelain doll to add to her collection. Her mom Jenna seems to have found one at an old antique store. When she leaves with the doll, the owner of the store regrets selling it to her. https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Sweet-Sarah-Adventures-ebook/dp/B07J4KC1Y9
#ParaNormal #YoungAdult #ALNorton #Readers
Billy Jingo Collected Short Stories
Billy Jingo contains 22 short stories, from crime to Horror and the title story, Billy Jingo. I started to get back into the truck when he wagged his head and put one finger to his lips. #ShortStories #Readers #Booklovers #Bookworms #Crime #Thriller https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/452624
I am hanging out watching a murder mystery series on YouTube with my wide (The small town with A BIG Missing Persons Problem….). It is pretty good and thought provoking. We get into these YouTube things sometimes or binging series on Netflix (Just killed Orange is the new Black which I had seen, and she had not seen).
And we have over seventy channels between the two of us that we follow. In the morning, I click to YouTube, and we watch what there is as we work. Today there was nothing, so we choose the crime special from among the possessions.
So, the storm is over? I hope? We’ll see but Ryan Hall Yall says more is on the way.
Cold here near the Canadian border, but it’s always cold here.
I thought I would leave a freer story that is so close to my real life that I published it as a true story with just a few names changed. I hope you enjoy reading it. I sometimes think back to growing up there and wax nostalgic, of course nothing is as it was. What it was was not even the way it really was. Yes, we had a lot of freedom, but that was because our mothers had to work, or fathers in some cases. Either was it left us being raised by one parent. In my case, and most of the kids I hung out with. That meant a drunken father beating our mothers, us, both, rarely ever there, and us needing to escape from that as much as we could.
So, yes, it sounds romantic, nostalgic, but that is how I chose to write it. I don’t want to dwell upon the times that weren’t that way…
It was summer, the trees full and green, the temperatures in the upper seventies. And you could smell the river from where it ran behind the paper mills and factories crowded around it, just beyond the public square, a dead smell, waste from the paper plants.
I think it was John who said something first. “Fuck it,” or something like that,” I’ll be okay.”
“Yeah,” Pete asked?
“Yeah… I think so,” John agreed. His eyes locked on Pete’s, but they didn’t stay. They slipped away and began to wander along the riverbed, the sharp rocks that littered the tops of the cliffs and the distance to the water. I didn’t like it.
Gary just nodded. Gary was the oldest, so we pretty much went along with the way he saw things.
“But it’s your dad,” I said at last. I felt stupid. Defensive. But it really felt to me like he really wasn’t seeing things clearly. I didn’t trust how calm he was, or how he kept looking at the riverbanks and then down to the water maybe eighty feet are so below.
“I should know,” John said. But his eyes didn’t meet mine at all.
“He should know,” Gary agreed and that was that.
“That’s cool. Let’s go down to the river,” Pete suggested, changing the subject.
“I’m not climbing down there,” I said. I looked down the sheer rock drop off to the water. John was still looking too, and his eyes were glistening, wet, his lips moved slightly as if he was talking to himself. If he was, I couldn’t hear. But then he spoke aloud.
“We could make it, I bet,” he said as though it was an afterthought to some other idea. I couldn’t quite see that idea, at least I told myself that later. But I felt some sort of way about it. As if it had feelings of its own attached to it.
“No, man,” Gary said. “Pete didn’t mean beginning here… Did you,” he asked?
“No… No, you know, out to Huntingtonville,” Pete said. He leaned forward on his bike, looked at john, followed his eyes down to the river and then back up. John looked at him.
“What!” John asked.
“Nothing, man,” Pete said. “We’ll ride out to Huntingtonville. To the dam. That’d be cool… Wouldn’t it?” You could see the flatness in John’s eyes. It made Pete nervous. He looked at Gary.
“Yeah,” Gary said. He looked at me.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’d be cool.” I spun one pedal on my stingray, scuffed the dirt with the toe of one Ked and then I looked at John again. His eyes were still too shiny, but he shifted on his banana seat, scuffed the ground with one of his own Keds and then said, “Yeah,” kind of under his breath. Again, like it was an afterthought to something else. He lifted his head from his close inspection of the ground, or the river, or the rocky banks, or something in some other world for all I knew, and it seemed more like the last to me, but he met all of our eyes with one sliding loop of his own eyes, and even managed to smile.
~
The bike ride out to Huntingtonville was about four miles. It was a beautiful day, and we lazed our way along, avoiding the streets, riding beside the railroad tracks that just happened to run out there. The railroad tracks bisected Watertown. They were like our own private road to anywhere we wanted to go. Summer, fall or winter. It didn’t matter. You could hear the trains coming from a long way off. More than enough time to get out of the way.
We had stripped our shirts off earlier in the morning when we had been crossing the only area of the tracks that we felt were dangerous, a long section of track that was suspended over the Black River on a rail trestle. My heart had beat fast as we had walked tie to tie trying not to look down at the rapids far below. Now we were four skinny, jeans clad boys with our shirts tied around our waists riding our bikes along the sides of those same railroad tracks where they ran through our neighborhood, occasionally bumping over the ties as we went. Gary managed to ride on one of the rails for about 100 feet. No one managed anything better.
Huntingtonville was a small river community just outside of Watertown. It was like the section of town that was so poor it could not simply be across the tracks or on the other side of the river, it had to be removed to the outskirts of the city itself. It was where the poorest of the poor lived, the least desirable races. The blacks. The Indians. Whatever else good, upstanding white Americans felt threatened or insulted by. It was where my father had come from, being both black and Indian.
I didn’t look like my father. I looked like my mother. My mother was Irish and English. About as white as white could be. I guess I was passing. But I was too poor, too much of a dumb kid to even know that back then in 1969.
John’s father was the reason we were all so worried. A few days before we had been playing baseball in the gravel lot of the lumber company across the street from where we lived. The railroad tracks ran behind that lumber company. John was just catching his breath after having hit a home run when his mother called him inside. We all heard later from our own mothers that John’s father had been hurt somehow. Something to do with his head. A stroke. I really didn’t know what a stroke was at that time or understand everything that it meant. I only knew it was bad. It was later in life that I understood how bad. All of us probably. But we did understand that John’s father had nearly died, and would never be his old self again, if he even managed to pull through.
It was a few days after that now. The first time the four of us had gotten back together. We all felt at loose ends. It simply had made no sense for the three of us to try to do much of anything without John. We had tried but all we could think about or talk about was John’s father. Would he be okay? Would they move? That worried me the most. His sister was about the most beautiful girl in the entire world to me. So not only would John move, so would she.
He came back to us today not saying a word about it. And we were worried.
When we reached the dam, the water was high. That could mean that either the dam had been running off the excess water or was about to be. You just had to look at the river and decide.
“We could go to the other side and back,” John suggested.
The dam was about 20 or 30 feet high. Looming over a rock-strewn riverbed that had very little water. It was deeper out towards the middle, probably, it looked like it was, but it was all dry river rock along the grassy banks. The top of the Dam stretched about 700 feet across the river.
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “The dam might be about to run. We could get stuck on the other side for a while.”
No one was concerned about a little wet feet if the dam did suddenly start running as we were crossing it. It didn’t run that fast. And it had caught us before. It was no big deal. Pete’s concern was getting stuck on the little island where the damn ended for an hour or so. Once, john, and I had been on that island and some kids, older kids, had decided to shoot at us with 22 caliber rifles. Scared us half to death. But that’s not the story I’m trying to tell you today. Maybe I’ll tell you that one some other time. Today I’m trying to tell you about John’s father. And how calm John seemed to be taking it.
John didn’t wait for anyone else to comment. He dumped his bike and started to climb up the side of the concrete abutment to reach the top of the dam and walk across to the island. There was nothing for us to do except fall in behind him. One by one we did.
It all went smoothly. The water began to top the dam, soaking our Keds with its yellow paper mill stink and scummy white foam, just about halfway across. But we all made it to the other side and the island with no trouble. Pete and I climbed down and walked away. To this day I have no idea what words passed between Gary and john, but the next thing I knew they were both climbing back up onto the top of the dam, where the water was flowing faster now. Faster than it had ever flowed when we had attempted to cross the dam. Pete nearly at the top of the concrete wall, Gary several feet behind him.
John didn’t hesitate. He hit the top, stepped into the yellow brown torrent of river water pouring over the falls and began to walk back out to the middle of the river. Gary yelled to him as Pete, and I climbed back up to the top of the dam.
I don’t think I was trying to be a hero, but the other thought, the thought he had pulled back from earlier, had just clicked in my head. John was thinking about dying. About killing himself. I could see it on the picture of his face that I held in my head from earlier. I didn’t yell to him, I just stepped into the yellow foam and water, found the top of the dam and began walking.
Behind me and Pete and Gary went ballistic. “Joe, what the fuck are you doing!”
I heard it, but I didn’t hear it. I kept moving. I was scared. Petrified. Water tugged at my feet. There was maybe 6 inches now pouring over the dam and more coming, it seemed a long way down to the river. Sharp, up-tilted slabs of rock seemed to be reaching out for me. Secretly hoping that I would fall and shatter my life upon them.
John stopped in the middle of the dam and turned, looking off toward the rock and the river below. I could see the water swirling fast around his ankles. Rising higher as it went. John looked over at me, but he said nothing.
“John,” I said when I got close enough. He finally spoke.
“No,” was all he said. But tears began to spill from his eyes. Leaking from his cheeks and falling into the foam scummed yellow-brown water that flowed ever faster over his feet.
“Don’t,” I screamed. I knew he meant to do it, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Don’t move,” Gary said from behind me. I nearly went over the falls. I hadn’t known he was that close. I looked up and he was right next to me, working his way around me on the slippery surface of the dam. I looked back and Pete was still on the opposite side of the dam. He had climbed up and now he stood on the flat top. Transfixed. Watching us through his thick glasses. Gary had followed John and me across.
I stood still and Gary stepped around me. I have no idea how he did. I’ve thought about it, believe me. There shouldn’t have been enough room, but that was what he did. He stepped right around me and then walked the remaining 20 feet or so to John and grabbed his arm.
“If you jump you kill me too,” Gary said. I heard him perfectly clear above the roar of the dam. He said it like it was nothing. Like it is everything. But mostly he said it like he meant it.
It seemed like they argued and struggled forever, but it was probably less than a minute, maybe two. The waters were rising fast and the whole thing would soon be decided for us. If we didn’t get off the dam quickly, we would be swept over by the force of the water.
They almost did go over. So did I. But the three of us got moving and headed back across to the land side where we had dropped our bikes. We climbed down from a dam and watched the water fill the river up. No one spoke.
Eventually john stopped crying. And the afterthought looks, as though there some words or thoughts he couldn’t say passed. The dying time had passed.
We waited almost two hours for the river to stop running and then Pete came across…
We only talked about it one other time that summer, and then we never talked about it again. That day was also a beautiful summer day. Sun high in the sky. We were sitting on our bikes watching the dam run.
“I can’t believe you were going to do it,” Pete said.
“I wasn’t,” John told him. “I only got scared when the water started flowing and froze on the dam… That’s all it was.”
Nobody spoke for a moment and then Gary said, “That’s how it was.”
Well fancy meeting you here. Are you stuck in the Blizzard of 2022 like I am.
I think I was being a bit of a smart-ass last Monday when they announced this coming snowstorm. They always exaggerate the possibilities; it seems but this time they nailed it. It swept in Wednesday, right on cue for the Northeastern seaboard and began piling up. It is now Friday and still snowing like crazy.
The porch door.
The front door.
The side porch, drifted in.
The van, buried.
The side yard, also buried…
The woods behind the house and the shed buried. There is about 5 feet of snow on the level, except the mouth of the driveway which is at least seven feet high and growing now that the plows are running again. But I got up early to shovel (Until I realized the snow was not yet done) and I made coffee, so we will be fine, or at the very least caffeinated 🙂
I hope all of you are safe, warm and have a coffee/cocoa maker, tea, something that dispenses warmth and alertness.
I will be waiting out this storm so I can shovel out the driveway, find the mailbox or buy another one and get things straight before the next storm smacks us up.
I will leave you with a free, true short story I wrote about my days driving cab in the city. Love you guys and appreciate you as well and I’ll be back tomorrow, Dell…
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover and Interior Artwork Copyright 2013 Dell Sweet
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the authors permission. Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.
THE LAST RIDE
It was early in my shift. I owned my own taxi so I could pretty much pick which 12 hour shift I wanted to drive. I drove nights so that I could be home with my son during the day while my wife worked. I’d told myself for most of the last year that I should stop driving taxi, settle down to a real job and be more responsible. But then a Conrail contract came along and then the opportunity to work with another driver who handled the Airport contract, and suddenly I was making more money than I could have reasonably expected from what I would have considered a straight job.
The hours were long, but there was something that attracted me to the night work. I always had been attracted to night work. Like my internal clock was Set to PM. It just seemed to work and after a few failed attempts to workday shift work, I gave it up and went to work full time nights.
I was never bored. The nights kept me awake and interested. They supplied their own entertainment.
Conrail crews, regulars that called only for me, the assorted funny drunks late at night when the bars were closing. Soldiers on their way back to the nearby base, and a dancer at a small club just off downtown that had been calling for me personally for the last few weeks. Using my cab as a dressing room on the way back to her hotel. It was always something different.
Days, the few times I’d driven days, couldn’t compare. Sure, there was violence too but it rarely came my way and never turned into a big deal when it did. At six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds most trouble looked elsewhere when it came to me.
It was Friday night, one of my big money nights, about 7:00 P.M. and my Favorite dispatcher Smitty had just come on. He sent me on a call out State Street that would terminate downtown. Once I was downtown, I could easily pick up a GI heading back to the base for a nice fat fare and usually a pretty good tip. My mind was on that.
My mind was also on that dancer who would be calling sometime after two AM and who had made it clear that I was more than welcome to come up to her room. It was tempting, I’ll admit it, and each time she called she tempted me more. I figured it was just a matter of time before I went with her.
I really didn’t see the lady when she got into my car, but when it took her three times to get out the name of the bar downtown that she wanted to go to I paid attention. Drunk. It was early too. Sometimes drunks were OK, but most times they weren’t. This one kept slumping over, slurring her words, nearly dropping her cigarette. I owed the bank a pile of money on the car and didn’t need burn holes in my back seat.
I dropped the flag on the meter, pulled away from the curbing and eased into traffic. Traffic was heavy at that time and I pissed off more than a few other drivers as I forced my way into the traffic flow.
I had just settled into the traffic flow when a glance into the rear-view mirror told me my passenger had fallen over. I couldn’t see the cigarette, but I could still smell it. I made the same drivers even angrier as I swept out of the traffic flow and angled up onto the sidewalk at the edge of the street. I got as far out of the traffic flow as I could get so I could get out to see what was up with the woman in the back seat.
I was thinking drunk at the time, but the thought that it could be something more serious crept into my head as I made the curb, bumped over it, set my four-way flashers and climbed out and went around to the back door.
She was slumped over into the wheel well, the cigarette smoldering next to her pooled, black hair. In her hair, I realized as the smell of burning hair came to me. I snatched the cigarette and threw it out the open door, then shook her shoulder to try and bring her around. But it was obvious to me, just that fast, that the whole situation had changed. She wasn’t breathing.
I reached in, caught her under the arms, and then suddenly someone else was there with me.
He was a short, thin man wearing a worried look up on his face. Dark eyes set deeply in their sockets. His hair hung limply across his forehead. He squeezed past me and looked down at the woman. He pushed her eyelids up quickly, one by one, and then held his fingers to her lips. He frowned deeply and flipped the hair away from his forehead.
“Paramedic”, he told me as he took her other arm and helped me pull her from the back seat.
We laid her out on the sloping front lawn of the insurance company I had stopped in front of and he put his head to her chest.
He lifted his head, shaking it as he did. “Call an ambulance,” he said tersely.
I could feel the shift in his demeanor He wasn’t letting me know he could handle the situation, like when he had told me he was a paramedic, he was handling it. I got on the radio and made the call.
The ambulance got there pretty fast. I stood back out of the way and let them work on her, raising my eyes to the backed-up traffic on occasion. The paramedic had torn open her shirt. Her nudity seemed so out of place on the city sidewalk. Watching the traffic took the unreal quality of it away from me. I watched the ambulance pull away, eased my car down off the curb and back into the sluggish traffic and went back to work.
I got the story on her about midnight once things slowed down and I stopped into the cab stand to talk to the dispatcher for a short while. His daughter knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone at the hospital. The woman had taken an overdose. Some kind of pills. It was going to be touch and go. He also had a friend in the police department too. She did it because of a boyfriend who had cheated on her. It seemed so out of proportion to me. I went back to work, but I asked him to let me know when he heard more.
2:30 AM:
The night had passed me by. The business of the evening hours catching me up for a time and taking me away from the earlier events. I was sitting downtown in my cab watching the traffic roll by me. It was a beautifully warm early morning for Northern New York. I had my window down letting the smell of the city soak into me, when I got the call to pick up my dancer with the club gig.
“And, Joe,” Smitty told me over the static filled radio, ” your lady friend didn’t make it.”
It was just a few blocks to the club. I left the window down enjoying the feeling of the air flowing past my face.
The radio played Steely Dan’s Do It Again and I kind of half heard it as I checked out the back seat to see if the ghost from the woman earlier might suddenly pop up there.
The dancer got in and smiled at me. I smiled back but I was thinking about the other woman, the woman who was now dead, sitting in that same place a few hours before. The dancer began to change clothes as I drove to her hotel.
“You know,” she said, catching my eyes in the mirror. “I should charge you a cover. You’re seeing more than those GI’S in the club.” She shifted slightly, her breasts rising and falling in the rear-view mirror. We both laughed. It was a game that was not a game. She said it to me every time. But my laugh was hollow. Despite her beauty I was still hung up on someone being alive in my back seat just a few hours before and dead now. Probably being wheeled down to the morgue were my friend Pete worked. I made myself look away and concentrate on the driving. She finished dressing as I stopped at her hotel’s front entrance.
“You could come up… If you wanted to,” she said. She said it lightly, but her eyes held serious promise.
“I’d like to… But I better not,” I said.
She smiled but I could tell I had hurt her feelings. It was a real offer, but I couldn’t really explain how I felt. Why I couldn’t. Not just because I was married, that was already troubled, but because of something that happened earlier.
I drove slowly away after she got out of the cab and wound up back downtown for the next few hours sitting in the parking lot of an abandoned building thinking… ‘I was only concerned about her cigarette burning the seats.’
I smoked while I sat, dropping my own cigarettes out the window and onto the pavement. A short while later Smitty called me with a Conrail trip.
I started the cab and drove out to Massey yard to pick up my crew. The dancer never called me again…
I have my own YouTube channel, but aside from some modeling builds, book videos and some of my own music there isn’t much there.
It seems to me a few years ago I looked at YouTube, and although it was great for a few minutes of distraction it didn’t really appeal to me that much. Then my writer friend recommended it as a place to find all kinds of content, do-it-yourself videos, off-grid, boat sailing, and marble collectors: Really anything you want. Do you like bald-headed three-legged dogs? I haven’t searched but I am sure they are there.
Still, I went, used nearly no imagination because I truly didn’t believe I would find much and so I didn’t.
Then I purchased an MXQ Pro Quad Android Box. 8 gig Android 7.1. I still have that. I purchased it to replace my old Roku.
Totally different than Roku, but the YouTube app fascinated me; it came preloaded with some channels and within just a few days I was a YouTube junky.
I had a few subscriptions prior to that for car shows, alternative building shows, etc., but after watching a few shows on off-grid living, alternative living, shipping container home building, evolution, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal history: Yes, I was red eyed and binge watching and wondering how the hell I was going to fit sleep in there. Hooked, yes, I was hooked.
The MXQ Android box was okay, but it wasn’t Roku, so I bought another Roku, installed it, went to YouTube and searched for all the stuff I like and began subscribing. I think I have about 39 subscriptions now.
I have Spectrum Cable that I never watch, I think that is 200 channels. It actually costs more to get just the Hi-Speed Wi-Fi (10 x 10) than it does to get the Hi-Speed Wi-Fi with the basic 200 channels and mobile phone plan all bundled together. So, the channels are there, and in the evening, I go over to my mother’s side of the house and watch a few hours of cable with her.
I work on my side and normally binge watch/listen to Netflix or my Plex server content. Music, TV shows, Documentaries. I can hear it, work on editing or modeling or scripting and the days pass and I couldn’t care less about cable. Then I got the Roku YouTube app and added 39 subscriptions and I couldn’t care less about anything except my YouTube Subscriptions. Still, as I said the Wi-Fi, and the Mobile phone plan, and my mother’s peace of mind are worth having Spectrum.
So, I noticed on the second day I wasn’t getting much of anything done because I was too worried about Nike (Nicky or even Niko to some) and whether she would get Carl (Her sail boat) working. You can find Nike’s adventures with Carl, Joanna and Maria at White Spot Pirates: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkYfFeySHGN4DPrOc9So7PA
There is a six-year diary of sorts there and she updates regularly. Awesome woman, great sense of humor and since I love the idea of sailing, doubly awesome, and I learned enough watching up to date that I’m pretty sure that if society comes to an end like my books, I can locate a sailboat, live on the ocean and be good. Ha ha, maybe, after watching what Nike went through, I’m not so sure. It isn’t easy but I would have the knowledge.
The next channel that got me was My Little Homestead. Parents, children, moved the kids from the city to the desert and began living closer to the land. They build-out the whole home-place and the construction method they choose is Earth-bag. But to say that is all it is about would be an understatement. They build their own little homes, show how to do it, run successful channels besides the main one, make interesting art, materials, even a sustainable water filtration system and fish farm… In the desert. Unfortunately the patriarch passed away a short time ago, but the kids and his wife are keeping the work going. My Little Homestead: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr9ib9quyHJkEchOck4PG2w
There are videos going back ten years, and compilation videos showing construction start to finish. They update regularly too.
Another I have enjoyed watching is Life Uncontained. Life Uncontained chronicles a couple and their dog Bear as they build a home out of shipping containers in the Texas outback somewhere. With cows, bulls, donkeys and Lady bugs. I watched a few others in a similar vein that seemed to be really just playing for hits, these two may want the followers but they provide reality for it not manufactured life. And a few years later they are still going only now they have two children and another on the way! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-l69It3hxAY3tkBH_utLNQ
There are a years’ worth of videos and they are in depth, great learning tools and they are both likable people. Looks ideal and I love it.
The next thing I got hung up on was This Farm Wife – Meredith Bernard. As a kid I helped the next-door neighbor, who worked on a farm, all summer long a few summers in a row. I was nine, ten, and it was awesome work, and it gave my family free eggs, milk etc. It gave me an appreciation of hard work and this channel shows that same thing. Think it’s easy to run a farm, kids, family, crawl under the farm equipment and help the husband fix it when it breaks down? It isn’t of course, but this is as close as most of us are ever going to come to it. Cows, dogs, kids, husband and her life on the farm trying to keep it all balanced. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyOeBMHez5KXvFlTewIDAg
About a year of videos and she updates regularly.
My latest one is Wonder Hussy Adventures Sarah Jane. Yes, I only watch her for the desert destinations and history… Okay, she is also sassy, funny as hell and I watched one video where a guy called her low-brow entertainment, or entertainment for low-brow people. Something like that, and that decided me. If someone is so threatened by you they have become a hater then you are definitely good enough for me.
She investigates Ghost Towns, Lost Mines and other places in the desert with her friend Larry, most of the time, but sometimes her sister and or her girlfriend. Awesome. I love it.
8 years of videos and she updates often and you truly never know where she’ll be next.
Music. Music used to be the only reason I went to YouTube. I know there are people who still think MTV is great, but I’m not one of them. It used to be great when It didn’t have an agenda, but that is neither here nor there because we all see life differently, but if you like the way it used to be, never fear it is still that way on YouTube.
Mazzy Star is a band I had never heard of. I write my own music and songs, play guitar, build my own guitars in fact, and for the longest time I was stuck in a rut only listening to certain bands and music, and only playing music derivatives and or covers of those bands.
When I got into YouTube I discovered that YouTube kept track of all the music I listened to, and it provided a Playlist of My Music. Ha, I thought, but to give whatever algorithms they use credit, they did a great job of playing what I liked and then introducing me to music they thought I would like, like Mazzy Star.
So there is my free YouTube plug, like YouTube needs my help. Yet, it is awesome and maybe, like me, you missed it when it got great. I am listening to Collective Soul as I write this. Full of Thanksgiving Day turkey, and, oh yeah, my subscriptions are up to 42. Dell…
Mentioned here:
Roku Express 3900 R: About $35.00 on eBay or Amazon, Walmart.
PRO Quad Core Android 7.1 Smart TV Box 1+8GB HDMI WIFI 4K Media Streamer: About $25.00 eBay
Plex Server: Download free and make your own media server. Add a TV card and record live video too. I opted for the $5.00 a month charge to allow live video and allow me to share my server with whomever, relatives, and friends pretty much anywhere.
This review is my own. No one paid for or offered products for it. I purchase my own products, test them and review them.
It’s the end of the world… Safety? Gone. Police? Gone. Military? Gone. Governments? Gone. What is left is strong men forcibly controlling whatever they please, and the dead are rising… #Apocalyptic #Zombie #Horror #Fiction #Readers #Books #eBooks
Written by Swiss writer, Johann David Wyss, edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss, and illustrated by another son, Johann Emmanuel Wyss, the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world and self-reliance.
I read this book in grade school, yes, that was a long time ago, just after it was written by a Swiss Pastor, Johann David Wyss (1743-1818). He was born in Berne, became an army chaplain, and is said to have told the story episode by episode to his four sons; wrote it. Okay, I’m not that old: Actually, I was in grade school, 4rth or 5th grade and the whole class went to visit the library. We were all given Library Cards and encouraged to pick a book. I chose Swiss Family Robinson because it sounded like a great adventure to me.
It was. I read that book faster than I had ever read anything. In a few days it was finished, and I slipped into depression, well depression as a child feels it. Man, I wanted that island back. I wanted to know what happened next, I wanted… I don’t know, more!
I didn’t get more; after all there was only one book, right?
So, last month I thought about Swiss Family Robinson and decided it would be great to re-read it, so I did a Google Search, found it, found it was public domain too, so I downloaded an ePub version and that night when I went to do my nightly reading, that is what I read. Or did I?
The book I was reading seemed different: Only subtly at first, but then veering off course. I couldn’t believe it, someone had taken my favorite book, re-wrote it, published it in the original authors name and left out all the really good parts I remembered as a kid. Also, when I got halfway through the book, it ended. There was a brief note that this is all that the original author was able to write, that he left the manuscript incomplete and disorganized ,and so it was prepared for publication at Zurich in 1812-13 as Der schweizerische Robinson;” its editor was his son, Johann Rudolf Wyss (1781 – 1830) who was a professor of philosophy at Berne.
Isabelle de Montolieu produced the first French adaptation/translation in 1814 which included material she had added herself; “the first English translation was by probably the work of William Godwin and was published by his wife, M. J. Godwin in 1814 [but see below] as The Family Robinson Crusoe and described as a translation ‘from the German of M. Wiss,’ though it incorporated some of Montolieu’s additions. The Godwin version was re-issued in a longer version in 1816, and the book’s familiar title first used in 1818. In 1824 Montolieu produced a yet larger version in French; she added the adventures of Fritz, Franz, Ernest and Jack” (Oxford Companion, p. 510). Still other writers added yet further (improbable) adventures; interestingly these as well as the adventures added by Montolieu are among the best known.
Over the years there have been many versions of the story with episodes added, changed, or deleted. Yet the best-known English version is by William H. G. Kingston, first published in 1879.[1] It is based on Isabelle de Montolieu‘s 1813 French adaptation and 1824 continuation (from chapter 37) Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d’un père de famille, naufragé avec ses enfants in which were added further adventures of Fritz, Franz, Ernest, and Jack. And, my friends, that is the book I first read, or I should say the adaption of her additions called the revised edition in English. That became the library standard in America.
That version is the one I had expected to read. So, when I reached the middle of the book and was informed that the original writer never finished the book, and that Isabelle de Montolieu had finished the book, I was shocked. It stated that she was a popular writer of her time and that she had been asked to finish the book by the son Johann Rudolf Wyss. I couldn’t find any substantiation for that, yet I did find that she did add a section in 1813 and expanded that in 1824. So, I read on and was surprised to find that although I was reading the things I expected, they didn’t turn out the same. For instance: Although a huge Python did show up, it didn’t kill and eat the Ass as it had in the book I had read. And, although they had problems with the monkeys and apes, they did not end up killing several of them. And I had never read a version where Franz and the mother were captured by savages and ultimately rescued by the father, Fritz, Ernest and Jack was wounded during the rescue but ultimately rescued too. And a young English woman and her children, some savages who wanted to live in New Switzerland as well as a shipwrecked pastor. Wow, then a ship showed up for rescue.
To say the least it was a surprise. So back to Google I went and began a search to find out why I had received this book when it clearly wasn’t the one I remembered from childhood.
I found out that there have been dozens and dozens of translations, many with their own additions, based on Isabelle de Motolieu’s addition, yet changed subtly or even wildly. So I searched and found her version, which indeed was the one I downloaded. On the page it also showed the popular English version of my youth, the Swiss Family Robinson Revised edition. The one I remembered, so I searched for a copy, found it was also public domain, downloaded it and read it. Yes, the apes were killed, the Ass was killed by the Python who in turn was killed by the father and the boys, and Fritz went on a canoe trip towards the end to find the young woman who had placed a note on a rag wrapped around an Albatrosses’ leg he had nearly killed. He found Jenny Montrose and bought her home, then a ship came and Fritz left for England to marry Jenny if he could obtain her father’s permission, and Franz surprised the heck out of me by leaving his mother and going to England permanently. The End… No…
No because Jules Verne also became obsessed with the Swiss Family Robinson. He himself has admitted that it had greatly influenced hi writings. I love older books, and I often search for public domain books that can be downloaded. As with Swiss Family Robinson I went looking for some of Jules Vern’s’ books I had read as a young child. I found many, and some I had never heard of, including two, Their Island Home and The Castaways of the Flag. Both of these books sound very like Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson influenced. They weren’t simply influenced by books, they were both continuations of the original story, and they were also both public domain.
The first is Their Island Home, and it picks up exactly where the original ended. The ship, Fritz and Franz leaving. The second, The castaways of the Flag picks up after that one. I found both and downloaded them and am beginning the first so as to read them in order. Jules Vern’s’ writing style is much different. He tells the tale in an author’s voice, not first person. He also gives the family a last name Zermatt. And while finding these to read, I also found Willis the Pilot by Johann Wyss, the Pastor? No clue, it could be the pastor, his son, and some ascribe it to the original author’s grandson, so I downloaded that as well and will read it at the end. So, the answer to the question at the beginning of this: Was there more than just one book? Yes, there was. There were several books.
The Swiss family Robinson Johann David Wysse
The principal characters of the book (including Isabelle de Montolieu‘s adaptations and continuation) are:
· Pastor – The patriarch of the family. He is the narrator of the story and leads the family. He knows an enormous amount of information on almost everything the family comes across, demonstrating bravery and self-reliance.
· Elizabeth – The loving mother of the family. She is intelligent and resourceful, arming herself even before leaving the ship with a “magic bag” filled with supplies, including sewing materials and seeds for food crops. She is also a remarkably versatile cook, taking on anything from porcupine soup to roast penguin.
· Fritz – The oldest of the four boys, he is 15. Fritz is intelligent but impetuous. He is the strongest and accompanies his father on many quests.
· Ernest – The second oldest of the boys, he is 13. Ernest is the most intelligent, but a less physically active boy, often described by his father as “indolent”. Like Fritz however, he comes to be an excellent shot.
· Jack – The third oldest of the boys, 11 years old. He is thoughtless, bold, vivacious, and the quickest of the group.
· Franz (sometimes translated as Francis) – The youngest of the boys, he is 8 years old when the story opens. He usually stays home with his mother.
· Turk – The family’s English dog.
· Juno – The family’s Danish dog.
· Nip (also called Knips or Nips in some editions) – An orphan monkey adopted by the family after their dogs Turk and Juno have killed his mother. The family uses him to test for poisonous fruits.
There you are, enjoy. These books are Public Domain in the U.S. Although you may find copies that ask payment, these links do not require a payment, yet they do accept donations. See you again, soon, Dell.
Dark blood covered a large area of the outside pant leg just below his hip and the blue denim fabric was shredded and burned. #Dystopian #ZombieFiction #ApocalypticFiction Zombie #Apocalyptic #Readers #Kindle #Books
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