Merry Christmas...Cops and Doctors

More idiocy from me with the blogger. I just started writting when somehow I clicked the publish tab.

I'm just gonna write it out in the open...editing and all...piece by piece. You'll have to stay tuned.

I woke up this morning around 4am to giggling..almost belly laughs. I knew it wasn't Martha. She makes a different noise when she's sleeping. It had to be the big man.

"Boy what are you laughin' at?"

Silence.

"Hey man."

Nothing. He was asleep...joker was laughin' in his sleep.

Just I was falling back out when he starts moanin.

"Daddy...my ear hurts get a qtip Daddy."

It seemed like a better idea than wakin his Momma up so, I got some qtips and gently poked around his ear.

"It's not workin Daddy." How could waving a qtip and muttering over an infection not have worked to kill it.

"Imma go to the doctor. Imma tell Dr. Storey."

"You'll get your chance son but, right now the best thing you can do is go back to sleep."

So I laid with him til he got comfortable enough to fall out...and then got up to make some coffee. His Momma was already in the kitchen. I don't know what time it was...dark. Every since the Boy came along our day begins and ends two or three hours earlier than it used to. It's been three years and the fog still hasn't lifted. It's a struggle to get going in the morning and a struggle to stay awake at night.

"The Boy's got an ear ache."

"I heard...I'll call the doctor's office when he gets up."

Having done my part. It was Christmas Eve and time for me to start thinking about Christmas shopping.

I'm strugglin' y'all. I've practically had the office to myself all day and nothin' to do but, I can't get it together. After spending the last three days mocking and laughing at all the sick people in my house...seems it's my turn.

I feel like I have a pine cone wedged under my left eye and against the bridge of my nose...I think I've gone deaf in my left ear. My mouth and throat feel like I've been sucking on a sandpaper lozenge.

Feel sorry for me y'all.

I think I'm just sick of looking at this thing...here's the abbreviated version.

The Boy woke up...Martha called the Dr.

"Come on in."

The Boy was disappointed that Dr. Storey wouldn't be there...maybe he wanted to ask her why he toots so much again.

"She's with her family...it's Christmas Eve. Dr. McSomething will do a good job."

The Sister comes to pick up my Daddy to take him Christmas shopping.

Martha and the Boy leave.

I take a shower and leave. I've barely gotten out of the drive when I get a text from Martha...

"Just an ear infection."

That was good news. Even though he seemed fine there's always a part of me that worries when he goes to the Doctor. I'm the one that was with him when he was running laps in halls and sweet talking nurses for suckers...just before the Dr. diagnosed him with the pneumonia.

Anyway...so that was off my mind. Just as I get the car parked in front of my first stop...the phone rings. It was the security company...

"We have a signal coming from your front door. Do you want us to send the police?"

CRAAAAAAAAAp!

My Daddy had set off the alarm...it gave the warning when he came in but, he can't hear nothing higher pitched than an 808 kick drum.

It was all very funny and involved a lot of back and forth between me and Martha, me and the security company, cops that took so long to show up we were able to cancel the call (we just pay for the services where we live...we don't receive them).

The highlight of that day's shopping was a text from the Sister...

"Medium to Large...she's STACKED!"

Martha and the Boy were too sick for church...so, we rode around looking at Christmas lights.



the end

Waffle House - Ephemera and Detritus

High Street Waffle House.

After the closing of Tastee Donuts in Fondern, and before the need for wi-fi, I lived there. Waffle House is a Southern Institution...you wouldn't pass it up if you were in these parts.

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at a gas station in Poplarville to get a cup of coffee. As I leaned on the hood smoking a cigarette two cars pulled up and out poured 10 kids from Birmingham England. They were on their way from New Orleans to Memphis. Best I could tell they had been having the time of their life.

Two things they were most excited about at the moment...one, the Mug Shot papers. You'll find 'em in every gas station. It's just a little paper magazine that reprints the county mug shoots, booking photos, for that month.

"Ohhhh...somebody be'd going to jail over this back home."

And the food..."Waffle House...yeah Waffle House," it kinda echoed around the nodding group.

It wasn't uncommon for Brits to show up at High St. on their way to New Orleans. It was right off the interstate.

"How much farther?"

"Three hours maybe"

Slumped shoulders and a look of total defeat.

The food is scrumptious...when they're clean enough to eat in. Usually the first six months they're fine...then the retired hookers, drug dealers, etc. are moved in and it's a steady decent. Most of the clientele don't care...truckers, cops, working girls and students.

The place is open 24 hours...that's all you really need to know.

High St. was where I got through school and met half the people in my life...and this was my view.



I was sitting in that very spot the night that David Allan Coe asked if he and a very young, very Asian, very stoned woman could have the booth.



It's also the place where I met Allan...our Allan. I was there preparing to start at Millsaps. He was already a superstar there....preparing for a senior year that would end with three Oral and Written comprehensive exams. He left the place with a degree in History, Philosophy and Religious Studies. He would go on to receive a PhD in Philosophy and is now warping young minds in Mobile Alabama. He is most famous for holding the position of non-contributing Philosopher here at Flimsy Cups.



I also met Matt M. there...and for the next four years we spent hours there almost every day. Talking (mostly music and his lady troubles), smoking and drinking as much coffee as they could make. About $1.09 for a bottomless cup back then.



Matt's at Princeton now studying music.

There was Brannon...a kind of brooding figure that delivered papers in the morning and pizzas at night during his last year of high school. He had calculated every dime it would take to pay rent and buy groceries for four years of college. He'd have a hasbrown...but, no smother or cover. That 75 cents might be the difference between having a tube of toothpaste in March or brushing with baking soda.

He was also brilliant and, last I heard, a PhD candidate at Harvard...probably done by now.




The help were ambiguous about our presence. They'd clown with us sometimes...ask for rides home, try to sell us dope...growl about having to make another pot of coffee.

They had their own problems...bail bondsmen, the poleese, ex girlfriends.



What really makes a Waffle House besides never closing and the ash trays...is the sound. Stainless steel constantly banging and scraping on cast iron, the ring of plates spinning on linoleum, shouted orders, metal spoons pinging against ceramic coffee cups.

For someone who can't concentrate when it's quiet it was the best possible place to study...and I worked my way through school in that place. That and I doodled.



Sometimes both.

I have stacks of these little tablets...occasionally there are notes but, mostly just doodles and misc. thoughts.

Somehow it all worked out.

We aren't done with the Waffle House.

Canal Buuuuullll-uhhhhh-vaaaard - A Devious Turn

I'm claiming victory over the po-leese.

It's costing me 110 bucks. It's worth every penny. Obviously they've decided that no man among them, even if they could find one, can catch me.

They've had to resort to unmanned predator drones to follow my every move.

Thursday night, I got a letter from the City of New...processed in ohio by the way...they got yankees doing their dirty work. "Evidently" I was speeding. There's a picture of the truck, on Canal Boulevard, passing a speed limit sign that reads 20....absolutely no indication of the speed at which I was driving when the picture was took.

They tried this crap in Mississippi and it went over about as well as you would expect in these parts. Inanimate objects cannot issue tickets in this state. An actual human being has to catch you doing something.

Punks, should have just sent a white handkerchief in the mail.

Post #21

This...again.



For those keeping score that's two speeding tickets in three weeks. I got one back in June, but I didn't have a blog back then so that one doesn't count. Before anybody starts...and you know who you are...in the last three weeks I have driven over 2600 miles.

How many trips to the club or drop offs at the Day School is that?

So really it's not quite as outrageous as it sounds...besides there's no way I was doin' 70 miles an hour. The Trooper made that up. I know I wasn't drivin that fast because I kept havin' to slow down and dodge cars that were passing on double lines (where was dudley doright then)...it's real hilly where I was (between Calhoun City and Grenada...that's Gre-Nay-duh in Mississippi). People get impatient. You can see 'em up ahead passing and then they disappear behind the hill you're getting ready to top...and there's no shoulders on these roads.

Anyway...me and him'll be talkin' about it in court.

Of course, that means I'll have to go to court twice...because when your accuser is the po-leese they don't have to be there for the actual court date...they get a mulligan.

Flippin' cops.

Post # 18

One of the highlights during my visit up north occurred yesterday on the way home. I got a speeding ticket in illinios.

"Is thrrrr-uh sammm-uh particulaaaar-uh reason-uh yah werrrr-uh drr-eye-ving-uh at-ah such ex-cess-ivuh speeed-uh?"

Have a look around bud...you should be pulling people over who aren't speeding. If they're takin' their time leavin' this miserable place they probably aren't sound enough mentally to be driving.

Is there some reason why you're talkin' to me through your nostrils?

I'll tell you...if you tell me how it became your childhood dream to hassel people along a miserable stretch of highway in this *** forsaken part of the country.

But, he hadn't written the ticket yet...and after a long tempting pause...

"Just tryin' to get back to Mississippi." I explained while handin' him my proof of insurance and driver's license.

"Doooow ya-ah knoooooooow-uh haaaw-uh fhhast ya-ah wrrrr-uh dr-eye-ving?"

"No sir...not really."

"Well-uh, Eye'm-uh gunnuh haaavuh ta wr-eye-t ya-ah a c-eye-taaa-sseeuhn..EARRR-ICK."

ERIK? Seriously? Erik?

Who in the h*** was this clown to be callin' me Erik?

For real..Erik?

We'd never laid eyes on one another before...and even though he's a cop he can't be so stupid as to believe I ever want to see him again.

Erik?

I guess in the land of lincoln it's quite alright to talk to someone you don't know by their first name...even when conducting official business.

Anyway he wrote the ticket and told us to "haavuh a guuuduh daaayuh."

"Yeah ha ha...you too fella."

Just in case I'd heard wrong...I turned to Martha and asked.

"Did that yankee call me by my first name?"

She had a look on her face that I haven't seen since we used to have a cat box in the house..."Uh yeah...he did."

Anyway...it's a 140 bucks. Which would have been money well spent if we had been able to speed through the lenght of the state. Sadly we were still 100 miles from the Mississippi River...we had to crawl the rest of the way...people zoomin' by us the whole time with those hideous license plates.

I hope they spend the money wisely 'cause it's the last flippin dime they're gonna get from me in illinios for a very long time.