In LaPorte, I determined to get it right. I stayed assiduously off the sauce and associated with a group of people who were also recovering topers. One of them was an older lady named Zora, who much later confessed that she was sexually attracted to me. (News to me.) There was also a Lee, who was illiterate, and with whom another guy and I went fishing on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan one warm, humid night. Didn't catch anything myself but the others caught catfish and carp and other nasty aquatic organisms. There was also Don, an old fart with a flattop who liked to talk about sex at our gatherings. I might have enjoyed that but his predilections were foreign to me and I found them totally repulsive.
The other part of my social life involved fellow reporters: Fred, Paulette, Doug, and the editor, Don, who was one of those rare bosses I liked. He was a little man and I recall that he looked like Gary Hart. With two fingers he could type at least 60 words a minute -- without typos. His copy was crisp and terse: he practiced the rule of Will Strunk: "Omit needless words." I had the police beat and sundry other assignments. I also was (am) a two-fingered typist and always made my deadlines. I made lots of typos but I was (am) an impeccable proofreader. Don was also a shot-and -a-beer man after the deadline and he was one of those many guys who I've ruefully wished I could drink with.
Still another part of my social life was a girl, of course. I've tried my damnedest to remember her name and the best I can come up with is Carol but I just plain damn don't remember. I do remember that she had brown eyes and fair perfect skin and a sweet, sad face, and she was a sweet, sad girl. I also know for an absolute fact that she was a virgin and remained so while I dated her. She was a court steno and made literally twice as much money as I did. She drove a Pontiac GTO convertible, and she liked for me to drive it when we were dating. I recall an evening with her in my upstairs apartment on Jefferson Street and I wish I'd made the both of us happy that night. She was willing and I was afraid.
Carol took me to visit her family in Gary, where I met her pathologically racist father, who strongly turned me off. We went water-skiing on Lake Michigan and it was all I could do to keep quiet when backing his boat trailer into the water he said of an African-American man on the shore (out of earshot, thank God), "Out of the way, you big black boogie." I decided I didn't want a bigoted racist prick for a father-in-law and slipped-out-the back-Jack on Carol or whatever her name was. She was sad about it but I'm sure she found somebody. Or maybe not: which, as the 2 x 2 ANOVA on gender vs. marital status and happiness shows, is best for single women. So maybe she was lucky enough not to find somebody and decided being a spinster wasn't all that bad.
I'd become afraid of storms that year -- phobic about tornadoes -- and we had a storm that scared the beJesus out of me. I held the misconception that tornadoes were confined exclusively to plains, not hills of Indiana (4/3/1974 sure blew that nonsensical idea away, so to speak) and I started wanting to get the hell out of there. My Uncle Link died while I was there and when I got the news I drove down the street to see my friend Zora and some asshole smacked into me and I was thrown clear of my Volkswagen on to the street. Lucky -- I guess -- that I didn't get my brains dashed out on the pavement.
LaPorte was a bitch. I was always getting parking tickets there because of their bizarre changing rules from day to day about where you could park and where you couldn't. The people there were downright fucking unfriendly compared to the folks of Madison. Life was a bitch there. I decided I wanted to get the fuck out.
One Sunday evening I went downstairs to visit a neighbor, an agricultural engineer (Purdue) who worked at Allis-Chalmers. Nice guy. He was drinking Budweiser and I busted my abstinence and started drinking Bud with him. Somehow we ended up in the little town in Michigan (I had no car then -- wrecked and being repaired) -- just over the line -- and we continued to drink. They drank on Sunday in Michigan then, figuring that Jesus had no objection. Got pleasantly fucked up that night: Jesus, what a relief from the misery of white-knuckled abstinence I'd gone through for the past two months.
Next morning, once again, didn't go to work for a newspaper. Don, the editor, came to me and tried to get me to come back to work. I gave him a shot and a beer, which he gratefully took, and I drank one with him too, but I told him no, I was kaput. End of newpaper reporting for then.
1 comment:
Recalling the fishing trip from LaPorte to somewhere in southern Michigan, a curious rally between Lee and a Michigan state trooper took place.
I think we were on I-94 and the speed limit then was 70 mi/hr. Lee was cruising at 85 or so. He had some big gas guzzler in those days when gas was 30 cents a gallon, the pavement of the interstate was virgin concrete, no one outside of California had shit to say about the car as an agent of environmental pollution, and the Big Three comprised a sleeping giant unawares of the Japanese revolution soon to overthrow the automotive industry.
Anyhow, Lee had the needle at 85 -- did I forget to say we didn't have seatblets then? -- and a Michigan trooper watched us from an underpass as we zoomed by. Being a catastrophist then, I figured we'd soon be cooling our heels in the Three Rivers hoosegow.
But Lee was unperturbed, and he murmured some platitudes about the conventionality of the role of police in society, etc. And he never took his foot off the gas pedal.
Well, the cop -- who wore a visored cap like Barney Fife -- and damned if he didn't look like a sober Barney Fife! -- roared up to us and cruised along beside us for minutes.
But he didn't signal us to pull over: he kept his eyes straight ahead with an expression on his face that was grave as a heart attack. Lee didn't look his way either and -- again -- never wavered by a mile an hour.
I guess the trooper made his point, which was what? -- Watch your ass, Mac -- and dropped back and made a U-ie and headed the other direction.
As I said, curious.
Post a Comment