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Softball was last night. We played well, but I'm sore. I had a great dream and woke up (I think) due to Milo the Cat head-butting me. It's 5:30 AM, but I didn't want to forget the details. Sleepy, I rubbed the bruise on my left shin from last night's bounce that hit me while catching, climbed out of bed, and stumbled past the cats to my desktop in my comic book room.
I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.
The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.
While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.
At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.
"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.
Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.
We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.
Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.
I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.
The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.
Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.
Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.
At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.
For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.
The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.
While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.
At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.
"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.
Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.
We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.
Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.
I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.
The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.
Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.
Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.
At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.
For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
The teddy bear has a history. In late December 1973 or very early January 1974, the twin decided to get into the stuff under the sink and drank bleach (or Brasso, the story has been told both ways) and was taken to the hospital. The twin was in the hospital for several days, spending our first birthday there. This pic is Mom and the twin at the hospital. The little bear in the photo was a gift to him while he was there.
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