9946. WANDERJAHR

WANDERJAHR

Tom Sawyer, wasn't it. Nor quite

Huck Finn. Holden Caulfield went

home. Wasn't it. Augie March, maybe,

but he had all that 'American, Chicago

born' stuff to deal with, and who cares.

The kind of person who refuses to shut 

off lights for fear the darkness is gaining

on him. That's too much, just altogether.

-

Those kind of people bet on the market;

looking for better horizons, they buy

futures, as if futures can be bought.

-

So, I hold myself to different standards, and

you may mind and I don't care. I claim not

'an American, Chicago born,' for myself.

In fact, I want nothing to do with it at all.

-

I can walk this wet meadow at six am. My

feet will be wet with the dew, and charmed

as well, the leather of my shoes will rot. Later.

That large house we know so well, just at the

near fence horizon  -  Strathmount, it is called.

It'll hold us, running. Years before, we used to

hide in those big shrubs ; I'm not sure that you'll

remember. You were only five or six.

-

Now, those days resound like gold in a fading 

mind. I'd wished to say mine, but it's mind for me.

You were my son then, and I do remember : we

watched all that baseball stuff, those games with

Reggie Jackson and his God-damned homers. On

Friday nights, at seven it was, I'd always watch

Wall Street Week In Review, with Louis Rukyeser.

Stupidest show in the world, but back then it was

all we had. I'd imagine the New York market weeks

closing up again, until Monday, and think of the

steaming city two-hundred fifty miles away. Stocks

and bonds, bonds and stocks. Then, right after that,

it was Washington Week in Review. Same dumb

stuff, but about politics, and not in New York.

-

And then, at eight, whatever flotsam Yankee game

was on, we'd end up watching that. A flim-flam,

all flim-flam, on a flimsy flim-flam oasis.