12,270. RUDIMENTS, pt. 862

RUDIMENTS, pt. 862

(just add water)

It was all a bit sketchy to me,

the way the whole thing worked

out. Indiana, all that rooting for

basketball and the Hoosiers,

and Rah-Rah the rest. There

was this wedding I went to

once, in a large banquet hall,

out in the country there, and

surrounded by trees. It was

crazy  -  as narrow as a cop

wedding, the kind you see,

but these were basketball

guys, each at least 6 ft. tall.

-

Some drunk guy comes

wandering in the tall ball

hall. He's tipsy, but no one

cares. He goes over and takes

a seat by the stairs. He keeps

saying, looking about, 'Hoosier

Pride.' No one knew what he

meant. 'Who's the bride?' a

guy asks, 'What do you mean,

she's the one in white.' Hoosier

Pride, he repeated again. Then

he sees two guys hugging.

'Swish,' he says, and again,

'Hoosier Pride?' The other guy

says 'what?' once more. 'Who's

the bride?' A deer comes out

of the woods, and stands by the

window a bit. The drunk guy

says, 'A three-pointer? Hoosier

Pride, Hoosier Pride. Swoosh!'
Now, yeah, for sure you had to 
be there, but it all was pretty

funny. Those Midwest types

 have trouble with humor, I 
think, but these basketball
gags, were hitting on 
all cylinders.

-

I always liked goofy stuff of 

that nature. Why else do we 

just go dragging on through 

life moping and complaining 

about everything else? It

seems there should always be

reason enough too for the

non-sensical stuff; for artists

and writers oftentimes that

becomes the finest raw 

material from which to build 

some masterstroke of

development or fantasy.

In the years I was still living

at home, 1959, '60, '61, my

mother was always getting 

these monthly Reader's Digest

Condensed Books. Some poor

author like, say, Fletchher

Knebel, or whoever wrote

'Seven Days In May', things

like that (used only as an

example)  -  they finally hit 

it big after years of slobbering

and slaving over every word and

comma, and then Reader's Digest

Condensed Books buys the deal,

Knebel gets a few bucks, and they

have the rights to cutting the

crap out of the poor book so the

600 pages get cut down to like

250 as a Condensed Book, and

then monthly packeted with two 

or three others into a sort of

suburban presentable fake

library version of intellect,

and my Mother ends up never

reading it anyway. I don't

know what she ever read, 

ever, of these things, but 

they took up space on the few

little wall bookshelves we had.

Which then, each Christmas

Season, were cleared of all

the books anyway, lined with

with cotton and glitter, and 

some stupid-ass Manger

scene, with plaster animals 

and Jesus, Mary and Joseph

too, with some near-approaching

honly-tonk looking Wise-Men

(no one ever said Magi) and

it all sat there near-to five or 

six weeks anyway, replacing

all books and all thought, if

there had ever been any. The
thing about Christmas that
irked me, even as a kid, was
the sneaky way they snuck into 
everything  -  like even if you 
didn't like it or want to deal with 
it, as in my own case  -  you'd be 
sitting around watching Officer 
Joe Bolton and his dumb-ass 
Three Stooges, and it would be 
some damned Christmas themed
episode, day after day, at the
end. And you know those guys
were't even Christians. The 
whole rap was just so bogus.
The same too with everything,
except maybe westerns  -  they
didn't have that stuff really then,
but even there, the moguls who
made this crap tried sneaking it.
All that Christmas crap really 
bugged me.  You'd go to a 
supermarket parking lot, and
freaking cart-guy would be
wearing a freaking elf-hat.
Probably begging Christmas
tips too. You thought those
Memorial Day Poppie guys were 
stupid? This crap had that beat 
by a mile. I swear, there was a 
Twilight Zone  I saw once, in 1959, 
where the little  green men that 
landed in their bogus spacecraft 
came out all somehow wearing 
Christmas togs. It was all so bad
and so fake. Even the truth had
gotten condensed; and if there's
no truth to Truth, than what's
anything about anyhow?

-

Me? In any of those creche

scenes (you never heard that

word either, back then), I never

felt to be the donkey, or the

lamb, or Joseph or Mary or

any of the Wise Men either.

None of it ever appealed to

to me at all. Maybe I'd have

liked to be the light in the

sky that drove all this, that

would be cool. Now that I'm

old  -  well, older than I've ever

been before (did you ever think

of that, every minute it's that)  -

I figure, yeah, I'd love to see

80, but don't much expect it.

(If you're reading this after I'm

dead, please don't go reading it

back to me. I won't hear you,

OK.), but at every minute I

realize something's up. I'm

nearing the end, and what the

heck happens next? I figure

the body and spirit make it

easy on you, I hope, and just

roll your mind slowly into the

idea of death, without a lot of

chatter and debate towards

the end. You've got no choice

anyway, so whatever it can

be about, go gently into it so

it CAN be about. Whatever.

-

I used to tell my Mother :

'Condensed Books? Like that

horrible milk in the little can? 

Mom, I don't want condensed 

nothing; I want all of everything,

the full 100%.' She'd snort, and

start smirking at me. I never 

got any of it anyway, but at least

I told her what my thinking was.

I guess maybe that's part of what

a Mother's for? Now, everywhere

you turn they have reduced this

and reduced that, condensed water,

probably, and vitamin enriched.

Just add water? Swoosh on that.

I'm a'goin' to Indiana  -  where

men are men, and the sheep

are nervous.