Author: Dick

I’ve been in my new apartment for a week and a half. I guess that begs the question: When does it stop being my new apartment and becomes just my apartment? I’ve only today been able to hang a couple of pictures and I’m not entirely sure they will stay in the same place for very long.

I figured I would put the above photo that was taken when I worked as a firefighter, somewhere. At least for now, and I’ve chosen a wall over the dining table in the kitchen. It’s kind of a reminder in my own bizarre way to be careful while cooking in the kitchen. That is because, if I am not mistaken, this house burned down because the old man who owned it left something unattended on the stove.

It has always been an interesting photo to me. It’s not just because I was in the picture. Rather, it is fascinating because it captures something I could not see even though I was much closer to the fire than the photographer.

All I could see that day was fire. Red, hot, searing, ass-burning, fire. I remember it was a hot day. Ron Eddings, who was keeping tabs on the pumper, had to spray Nathan and me down with another hose as we were fighting this fire. I guess it’s an odd choice of words, “fighting,” because we were extinguishing the fire. There really was nothing left to fight.

Hardy Meredith, with whom I later worked at the same newspaper, took this shot for the paper. I realized after the photo was published the next day that you could see the outline of the house in the fire. I guess that maybe it’s not a big deal but it is all a matter at how you view your objective. When this massive hunk of pine was burning in front of me, that is all that was before me. It wasn’t a house anymore, it was a big fire. But seeing the outline of the home gives more of a perspective as something that is on fire rather than just fire itself.

Does it make a difference? Not really. We probably could have safely let it just burn once we quickly determined that we were only going to save the slab. But strange job that firefighting is, we couldn’t do that. So Nathan, who was my lieutenant, had the bright idea that we should use a so-called “blitz” hose line on it. It was a hose 2 1/2 inches in diameter which carried considerably more power than the 1 1/2-inch hoses with which we normally fought house fires. I was all for using the blitz line. I guess it was a macho thing. But as you can probably tell in the photo, it wasn’t an easy task maneuvering that hose.

It was an interesting experience and as was the case with many fires it was one from which I learned something. The photo isn’t a bad reminder of just how easily something can go straight to hell. Whether it stays on my kitchen wall, well, we’ll see.

Okay, here is a weird dream I have for you.

Last night I dreamed I was drunk and called up my old girlfriend Vicki. You know the one. Vicki “It’s not you it’s me. On second thought it is you.” That Vicki. I couldn’t make sense of the call. That is the one aspect of the dream that does make sense, of course. I was drunk in the dream.

I do remember from being drunk and calling Vicki in my dream that she did not seemed too pleased by my call. Huh. Imagine that. I was chastised not only by Vicki but by Doc. Vicki is married to a doctor now, but it was not that doc. It was my friend Doc, who is a college professor. I wondered what he was doing there. But even though I don’t know for sure if Vicki and my friend Doc know each other it is an entirely plausible scenario. Not only is it plausible, I would even say it is likely Doc and Vicki know each other because we once ran in similar circles. Also,they both live in a pretty small town.

What is really strange is that when I woke up, I wondered if I had actually made that call. I kind of had to shake the cobwebs loose inside my brain to realize that I had not been drunk last night. And although I am not particularly predisposed to sleepwalking or such activity, I wasn’t sure if I had made a call in my sleep. I checked both phones later and fortunately neither indicated I had dialed a peculiar number in that area code.

Who knows the reasons for dreams such as they are. Maybe I’m cracking under pressure. Or maybe it was the power of suggestion. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at a party listening to several young women who were talking about their “reaching out” on the phone during times of drunkenness when they were in college. It had only been a few years ago for most of these particular women.

I won’t sit here and say that I’ve never called up an ex-girlfriend when I have had a drink or three. I’ve also had ex-girlfriends and friends, both male and female, call me up at ungodly hours after they’ve been drinking heavily. While certainly an annoying practice, you must admit it makes sense.

Getting shit-faced is at its best a social activity. When you are removed from people and are inebriated it can be lonely. It’s pretty simple actually.

I have had dreams about being drunk before. I’ve also had dreams about calling people on the telephone before. But never the two together. Jeez. I sure hope I don’t dream about having a hangover. Or even worse, I would hate to dream that I have a head-banging hangover and have a loud phone ringing at the same time. That would really suck.

Anurag Kashyap knew how to spell “appoggiatura” and lucky for him. Correctly spelling the musical term, describing an embellishing note usually written in smaller size, meant winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday.

It was no doubt a tense contest, at least until 14-year-old Katherine Seymour of Huntingtown, Md., was uncertain of the word “incunabula” and asked: “And how do you spell that?” Good one. She’ll probably be president someday. Incunabula, by the way, refers to books printed prior to 1501. The date is an arbitrary one and has nothing to do with development of printing processes, according to some quick reading I did just to find out what the word really meant.

The spelling bee is a big deal these days. I even saw it once on ESPN. Okay, if you can call poker a sport, I suppose you could make the stretch to spelling bees. I have to wonder though just how much fun these high-octane contests are for kids. Kids already have enough pressure and this is like the Super Bowl for young brainiacs.

I remember having spelling contests in Mrs. Willie Mae Humphrey’s second grade class at Newton (Texas)Elementary. I usually would win or would be a finalist. I thought it was great fun. Probably I thought so because I was good at it. At least I was then. But I no longer kin spellll. I don’t know why that’s so. It would seem you would increase your spelling ability after having to spell for almost 50 years, not to mention that I have spent almost the past two decades writing for a living. But it seems like my sense of spell has waxed and waned. Along with my memory. Along with my memory. Along …

What I do remember about Mrs. Humphrey’s class was that rainy afternoon on Nov. 22, 1963, when Mr. Jones, the principal, announced over the intercom that President Kennedy had been killed and that they were letting school out early. I didn’t live very far from school like other kids and I began to walk home in the rain. But my dad showed up just after I had crossed the street from the school. I guess he figured they would let the kids out early for such an event. Or maybe he heard Mr. Jones ring the bell.

We had this huge old bell, kind of like the Liberty Bell except not cracked, that was located in a grassy strip between the two elementary school wings. Mr. Jones would come out at 3 o’clock each day and bang the heck out of that bell three times with a hammer. I remember that you could hear it from where I lived, when I wasn’t in school. That’s kind of quaint when you think about it.

I guess you could say it was like an incunabulum, just not as rare.

Forgive me for being an old wistful fart here, but so-called “free” radio is just another relic of the past like 30-cent-per-gallon gasoline and riding your bicycle on endless summer days.

It’s gone beyond the days when, as described by John Prine, the “radio knows all my favorite tunes.” The radio has learned a boatload of favorite tunes. Few of those could I consider as my favorites.

I got fixated last night on the song generically known as “Fight the Power” by the Isley Brothers. I say generically because the Isley Bros. were in that strange tradition like soul brother James Brown that if something was good, it needed more than one part. Such as: “Fight the Power (Part I).”

“Fight the Power” belonged to that whole where music was music was music. It may have been R & B but it wasn’t classified as R & B. It wasn’t hip-hop because that wasn’t in the mainstream back in the 70s when that particular song came out. It might be more soul than rock. But it was rock music — where all comers ended up on Mr. Radidio back then. It’s an edgy song and even the remakes of it aren’t heard on probably 85 percent of radio stations today. That’s even with bleeping out the “shit” in the lyrics “with all this bullshit going down.”

It’s kind of sad you can’t turn to a classic rock station these days and hear classic rock, or whatever it was, but it was music we were tuned into it. I think about Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” album, which I probably played until it was worn out. I even used to make a joking reference to a song on that album when I lived in Waco that probably only a few would catch.

I’d say: “Waco, Texas, just like I pictured it. Skyscraper. Everything.” The line was paraphrasing an intro to the fantastically-edgy “Living for the City.” It is where the boy who’s born in Hardtime, Mississippi, comes to New York City and upon departing the bus says: “New York City, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers. And everything.” You see, Waco only had one skyscraper and oh well, you had to be there.

I have visited my current home city enough after being gone seven years to realize the radio scene here has long been drab. It’s even worse than before. How much Creed can one person take? We also get radio signals from 90 miles away in Houston and they are more dreadful than before. Thank God that the evil talk radio station here still has a Cajun music program on Sunday mornings.

I guess the Internet and satellite is where one now has to go to find good music. That means, if you play you pay. The same happened to TV. That means the free ride is over. It’s too bad.

I can’t play my music
They say my music’s too loud
I kept talkin’ about it
I got the big run around
When I rolled with the punches
I got knocked on the ground
With all this bullshit going down

“The things you find rummaging around in people’s darkrooms.”

I was way off on who Deep Throat really was but so were a lot of the Washington “know-it-all” crowd.

The admission by The Washington Post today confirming the identity of the confidential source who helped bring down the Nixon administration was kind of anticlimactic in a way.

Speculation was rampant for years about just who was the person who fed Woodward and Bernstein the lowdown on Tricky Dick Nixon. Some bigshot Washington pundits thought Deep Throat was a well-known name such as Al “I’m in charge here” Haig, or even Henry Kissinger. To find out in the wake of a Vanity Fair story that it was a guy I had never heard of — a former top FBI official named Mark Felt — was a bit of a letdown.

I always secretly hoped it was Elvis Presley who was Deep Throat. To find that out would have set off one hell of a conspiracy theory that would just conjoin with existing conspiracy theories that The King really wasn’t dead in the first place and would result in a conspiracy theory deluxe on toast. How could Elvis possibly know all these secrets? Hey, just look at the picture man! How could Elvis possibly NOT know everything that went on under the leadership of Richard Milhous Nixon? You can see the bond between them. The photo above leaves one with the impression that aliens swooped in and took over Nixon’s brain, and all that he was able to say afterwards was: “Thankaverymuch.” Oh wait, that may have really happened.

Of course in this puritanical age in which we find ourselves today, it would have been a scream to find out that the real Deep Throat was Linda Lovelace, who of course was the original “Deep Throat.” And how would she know all Nixon’s secrets? I speculate, you decide.

So another enigma wrapped up in a mystery spoiled like a four-day old burrito! Thanks for nothing Vanity Fair!