Come Monday

Who Knows? Soylent Green Might Be the Answer

Here we go now. Once again, a couple weeks ago I quit my job and dragged my ass back home. Even though I live in the crappiest trailer park in Florida, it is MY trailer park and the squirrels really missed me. Not due to my charming personality, but because of the raw peanuts in the shell that I get from the Winn Dixie. Even as I type here at a sublime sundown, they gather outside the door screaming out their demand for more peanuts, but I ran out of peanuts at the noon feeding and I really don't feel good about this. I'm too drunk to drive and that means I am WAY too drunk to ride my bicycle. But these are some scary squirrels. M. Night Shyamalan (an obviously made up name) could really do something with this scene.

Saurians

But on a groovier, more better Audubon note, there are two birds who have joined the fray. I think they are Steller's Jays but one looks like what we would call a red cardinal and the other one is the same thing but blue. Just beautiful birds but also pretty pissed about the lack of sundown peanuts. Birds are, after all, the last living relatives of the dinosaurs. I honestly don't know how I get into these jams.

Gathering of the Gloom

Listen: I spend a whole lot of time on the road, chewing on rolaids and and battling motel maids, as some poet once said. Plus there are prostitutes (the friendliest appellation I can apply to what they really are) and I have a disturbing habit of, when in my cups, as we say, engaging them and getting into grandfatherly conversations. Thirty years ago I wasn't a Grandpa but now I am and so I often find myself giving them money just to go away. I got a better deal thirty years ago.

And Yet...

All of my bicycles are done. Built and ready. And the money I give those lost girls ain't peanuts, but, having known the freedom and pain of having nothing, I like to hand out a little surprise once in awhile. The other day, just before I realized I was losing my mind and it was time to head out fast for the home fires, I went to the ATM and got out five twenty dollar bills. I roamed the neighborhood of the motel I was at in Sarasota, handing them out. You would think I had cured cancer, or brought back a dead relative when you saw the expressions that rewarded my gift of a lousy twenty dollar bill. I can't recommend it enough. I know my readers and I know that every one of you can afford to take out a hundred dollars every other month and hand out five random twenty dollar bills.

I don't make a ceremony of it. I just hand them the twenty and get away as fast as possible. But I almost always hear “God Bless You Sir!” as I pedal or stride or drive away. I hope that Fucker is listening. He better be, if he wants to get a twenty when we finally bump into each other.

It Helps If You Are Crazy

Feel the darkness dwelling in my soul? I am sorry for that. I have been home almost three weeks and the treasury is seriously depleted. I gotta go back out there. All three bicycles are built and I have not, in three weeks, pedaled a dozen miles. OK, maybe fifty. This bodes not well for the Trailer Park Cyclist.

But what of that? All three bicycles are built and ready. Little Miss Dangerous is ready to go. So whatever else happens, I at least have my righteous steed, hand built by me my ownself and with that knowledge I know it will all work out.

Plus, there is still enough daylight to pedal to the Winn Dixie for another pound of peanuts, and maybe a little rum. Hell Yeah.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Animal House

Mid May 2017