EVERYBODY COMES FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE? GET OVER IT

Q: Where are you from?

A: All over the place.

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: It’s a long list.

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, and the astute among us, the well informed, usually think, “Army brat.”

And that’s usually the case when they roll out the ‘I’ve been everywhere’ from the start.

I been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow,
Sarasota,
Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma,
Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla, and
Padilla, I’m a killer.

I been to Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana, Washington, Houston, Kingston,
Texarkana,
Monterey, Ferraday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little
Rock, Oskaloosa,
Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devil Lake,
Crater Lake, for Pete’s sake

 

They actually have been everywhere and they’re just letting you know it’s none of your business.

At the moment.

Even if you grew up in the same town you live in, it’s not the same town you grew up in anymore.

Things change.

Things happen.

Things happen to you.

It all changes your perspective, but you can go from ‘micro’ to ‘macro’ as good as anyone.

 

Micro To Macro

A family man, Marlon Brando, is talking about in his role as Vito Corleone, the Don.

He had a family with three sons on one hand, and he was the head of a crime family on the other.

He was always with his family, unlike you and I, unless you are also an underworld boss.

A real man knows the difference between the two.

Like Tessio saying before he died, “Tell Mike it was only business. I always liked him,” the family gave him a two gun sendoff.

If you belong to a family in the murder business, good luck. In that group your clock is always ticking.

It was only business when Paulie called in sick the day The Don was ambushed, and only business when he drove Clemenza one last time to pick up some cannoli.

 

In micro terms, I once lived on a block with a crime family.

If they weren’t a crime family, the man of the house was definitely a king-pin.

He’d been to prison, twice, and took the early out the last time after doing time at Shutter Creek Correctional Institution, which had formerly been North Bend Air Force Station, and now the headquarters for Elliott State Forest Research.

He ran his own construction company and helped convicts get their early release by giving them a job and a place to live.

I believe it was the safest neighborhood in the entire Northwest after meeting the guys at house parties next door.

Their well-being depended on good relations, which for rehabilitating criminals meant no trouble with the police.

 

Where Did They Come From

My micro example of a crime family comes from a former neighbor; my macro comes from a different neighborhood.

Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY.

Sunday afternoons I packed my laundry into my old Army duffle back with shoulder straps and lugged it a few blocks to the laundromat.

You learn things doing laundry you won’t learn anywhere else.

The man in the Sunset Park laundry had been a medic at Woodstock.

I asked about the brown acid.

He said don’t take it.

 

After I washed, dried, and folded everything back into my bag, I shouldered it up and headed back the way I came.

Like any normal person from somewhere else, I recognized where I was.

Ordinarily I was the only white guy out and about, but I saw another one across the street looking at me.

He followed me up 4th and into the corner candy store I ducked into.

A big guy about my age, mid-20’s, he asked me, “What’s in the bag.”

I told him I was running away from home.

He asked if I thought I was funny.

I said, “Only to guys following me up the street. That’s funny.”

Guy: This is my street and I want to a know who is on it.

Me: I live here, that’s why I’m on it. How did it become your street?

Guy: I’m working my way up.

 

Turned out he was the screw-up son of a local mafia captain and he was proving he could be trusted by running one street.

 

Guy: If you want drugs, or hubcaps, you find me. If I hear you bought anything from anyone else I’ll come looking for you.

Me: What kind of drugs?

Guy: Everything. Heroin, cocaine, crystal.

Me: What kind of hubcaps?

Guy: Cadillac, Olds, Buick. The good stuff.

Me: I’ll look for you first.

Guy: You’ll look for me until you find me and I’ll know if you don’t.

 

Self Identity

I identify was a writer, a historian, an observer, a cataloguer of human achievement and ambition.

Maybe you do too?

My identity is based on regular blog posts since 2013 on boomerpdx, longer on my previous blog, DG’s B&B.

I came here from there. My feeling toward writing haven’t changed. 

Write something worth the time to read; do something worth writing about.

If that sounds like something you could do, get on it.

Why not write a sonnet?

Feeling silly? Write a soliloquy.

What if you feel like a failure and a fraud for only writing a blog and not submitting work to paying markets, to literary journals?

That’s normal. So it getting over it.

Keep writing, keep putting in the time, and if you get the bug to do more?

Then do more.

 

PS: Get paid for personal essays.

 

PSS: Will I take my own advice? You’ll be the first to know.