We sit at a rustic black wooden table at Maggie O'Malley's Irish bar in the Delano district just to the west of downtown Wichita. I drink from a tall, frosty-chilled glass of Guinness, hanging with my buddy and TV producer, Reese, and sipping the beer made me think of my friend Suzanne whom I've known since childhood as a world-beating kicker of ass. Nowadays, Suzanne is into California-style spirituality and tells me I should take up yoga to re-center my energy and tell myself positive mantras to shake off all the doubt, fear and hyperventilating panic attacks. She reads a lot of the same ribald authors I'm into -- Kesey, Sedaris, Burroughs -- and ostensibly Reese and I are there as part of a two-man book club, but neither of us read much of the damn book so we just retreat into our thick beers and barroom bullshit under the glare of Neon, electric panties and a huge screen TV tuned to ESPN.
"Lately, I've been watching Californication on Netflix. Catching up on all those seasons I missed," I say.
"A dysfunctional writer who's creatively blocked and still in love with his ex," Reese says. "Yeah, I can see why you'd be into that show."
"I may love the girl, I may not, but fuck her," I said harshly into my beer. "I ain't in love with her. That's the past."
I can tell by his body language Reese isn't buying it, but screw him. Just let it go. "And I don't have writer's block. I just posted on my blog a few days ago," I say, then go back to talking about the original glass teat.
"Anyhow," I say, "They show some girl's tits in every episode. It's not like Mad Men where there was sex all over the place, but the act was left to your imagination. I mean, it's an all right show, Californication, but it will never be up there with the modern classics -- The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad.
"Well I guess the idea of showing a sexaholic's life in graphic form has its function,"Reese responds, pensively. "You see the excess and emptiness."
"I think it's a technique directors sometimes use," I say. "It's like Oliver Stone's movie about the Doors. There was gratuity, but at the end when you were sick of it all, I think the film did its job."
"Like the pagan scene in the movie -- the witch wedding ceremony with the high coven priestess and Jim Morrison cutting themselves?"
"Oh fuck yeah," I say, assuredly. "You're supposed to flinch at that."
The earliest TV show I can remember? Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. That kind of thing. At 4 and 5 years of age, I acted out little dramas I imagined in my head. Stuff where the people in my family who didn't get along in real life were all friends and they were all cowboys or lived on a farm.
At 8-years-old, I'd figured out the shows I watched on TV had stories with problems that always got resolved in the end and people said clever things. Why couldn't life be like that? I'm still trying to arrange life into a plot, a narrative.
In those years before DVR, Netflix, Facebook and texting -- I was hooked on TV (the plug-in drug) the way other kids were Kool-aid addicts. And like any addict who plays the self-destructive game long enough, I got my ass in trouble.
It was around 7:30 a.m. A Friday morning in May, 1980. I was trying to get my shit together to make it to Hattie O'Mattfield Elementary School by 8. I was 11-years-old, in fifth grade. Had just found my shoes. That was always a battle. "Why don't you put your shoes by the door at night?" Mom would say. I was trying to gather my homework into my backpack where I should have placed everything the day before after completing the class work like a normal organized person would do.
"Sonofabitch," I exclaimed in a moment of early life stress. "I lost my goddamn spelling book."
"If you find my spelling book, can you bring it to school?" I asked Mom as she drove me and my siblings to school.
"I can't come in and save you every time," she said. "It's your responsibility to have your stuff ready. Besides, I have to go to work." She was wearing her Wal-Mart vest.
This particular day, completing the work in my spelling book was especially important -- a point of pride. Thursday, the day before at school, my teacher, Mrs. Sauers had seen the spelling book on my desk, picked it up and flipped through the pages of this week's unit and saw that I hadn't done anything in it all week.
"This is really interesting, Jeff," she said. "You haven't gotten any of this done."
I usually put off doing my homework until around bedtime, but that day I made damn sure I completed all the assigned sections in my spelling book as soon as I got home. (Of course I did it, while watching Batman.) The next day, I was going to present it to Mrs. Sauers as if to say, "Take that, bitch."
But it wouldn't happen. She'd never believe I finished my homework. I'd lost my goddamn spelling book.
I sat there, feeling small and stressed as Mrs. Sauers prepared to read the answers to students grading their spelling books. "I don't have it," I said, nervously.
Her face turned an angry, sweaty shade of color. "I should've known," she said. "Till he's 105, he'll never change."
The next thing I knew she had me standing uncomfortably before her at the classroom door as every one of my classmates watched uneasily. Thankful to God it wasn't them.
"What did you do when you got home from school?," she asked me, hotly. The beginning of what seemed an eternal grilling.
I told her I did my spelling. I didn't tell her I did it while watching Batman.
"Do you expect me to believe that?" she said. "You aren't prepared with your spelling book today."
"But I finished it yesterday," I said in desperate self-defense. "Only I lost my book."
i lost my goddamn spelling book
"I looked through your spelling book yesterday and you didn't have anything done."
Christ, I knew she'd bring that up. Sadistic bitch.
"But I finished it all at home yesterday, I swear."
"You're not supposed to be swearing. Ever!" She got calmly quiet. "So what did you do after you, uh, 'finished' your spelling? You didn't have your math assignment ready today either."
"I watched Bonanza."
"It never occurred to you to finish all your classroom work first."
"I was going to, but I couldn't stop watching Bonanza. There was this gunslinger in a saloon who challenged Little Joe to a duel and Ben and Hoss Cartwright were worried and I had to see if Little Joe would get killed."
"Did you actually think they were going to kill a main character?" she asked me as if she thought I were the stupidest sonofabitch in the world.
"No, but the thing was I didn't know."
I loved watching the plot thicken. I had to see how the story would resolve itself. Why didn't I say that?
Then, what did I watch? She probed further.
I told her everything in the evening around dinner time was a blur, but that at 7 p.m., I watched Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
"Then I watched Different Strokes."
"You just had to watch Different Strokes," she said, derisively.
"Yeah, I think it's funny when Arnold says, 'whatchoo talkin' bout?"
"And then what did you watch?"
I got really nervous. Scared. There I was, exposed before the entire shitting class.
Softly, looking at the floor, I confessed that I watched Johnny Carson. It wasn't like it was the late night version. This was a prime time special -- the 18th anniversary show.
"You had no business watching Johnny Carson," she lectured, then addressed the entire class. "You children should be in bed before any of his shows come on."
That's all I remember of being in Mrs. Sauers's star chamber. It seemed like a hell that would never end.
In no way, was I ever going to tell Sauers how my family had recently got cable TV -- HBO -- rated R movies -- and I'd sneaked up during the night when everyone was in bed, turned the TV on and volume down, hoping to catch boobs.
Pulled into Nazareth
You drive on North Broadway in Wichita past the hot colors in the windows of Mexican shops and restaurants. Make a left turn on 21st Street. Cop cars pass with authority in the summer heat index. A shitty-assed dollar store across the street and you pull into the parking lot of the local Public TV Station.
Reese is behind his cubicle wall, doing producer stuff. Arranging for media passes and the like. As a young man, following his graduation from the University of South Dakota and a couple of years as a reporter at a Rapid City TV station, he went to a theological seminary, the famous Union Theological Seminary in New York. The seminary is affiliated with Columbia University.
Then he left. Found out he didn't have the calling.
Saturday morning. Driving westbound on U.S. 54. Southward onto U.S. 183 as the great Western Kansas sky swallowed me and my car into the yearning dream it was having. The road growing barren. Clouds bigger, whiter over the empty spaces that are supposed to fill in for my life. I make it into my first town -- Little Feat, Kan. (pop. 800) I've been listening to the Stones' Exile on Main Street for the past 2 1/2 hours. We're in the country. Let's find an AM country station. Then. Country classics station. Hank Snow singing about a little orphan.
I'm nobody's child, nobody's child
I'm like a flower just growing wild
No mommy's kisses and no daddy's smiles
Nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child
Up around a green bend, I drive straight into Principle, Kan. (pop. 350) There's a cafe, a rinky dink post office and a white door with the paint peeling off that leads to the City Library. It's next door to City Hall/Cop Shop on the Main Drag in town. Wide. A single traffic light hanging by wires, blowing in the late spring breeze. I had a vanilla shake, burgers and fries at a place called Don's Cafe. This young lady named Casey served me. She was really nice.
 |
| Me and Casey |
Higley Farm (Big letters)
Big dogs greet me on the front porch. I like big dogs. I meet Mrs. Higley first. "Call me Alicia," she says. She and Mr. Higley met, while attending K-State. She was a school teacher in the early years of their marriage. Now she stays home and helps out the business as the face and voice of the farm. Safe within the harmony of the Higley Family for the past 130 years. Their two girls come out. Pet the dogs. And the pater familias. "Lyle Higley," he says and gives me a firm handshake.
Mr. Higley takes us down the road apiece. A ride safe within the family binding and scriptural underpinning of his pickup truck. I set up my iPhone on the tripod and record the cattle. They're grass fed from birth 'till death. Makes for healthy beef. So country tasty. A few restaurants about the way buy beef from Higley Farm.
Back at the Higley house, we go into his shed from which meat is stored in the locker and business is conducted via Alicia's sweet voice over the phone. I wanted to film the interview here instead of out in the field. I tell them I wanted to spread the story around. Like seed. I reach into the pocket of my jean shorts for the TV microphone to attach from my phone to the collar of Mr. Higley's rough shirt. Microphone's not there. I thought for sure I had it with me back in the truck. I excuse myself to go get it out of my car.
I search frantically. Not in the glove box where I faithfully store it. Not under the seats. I search the back seat through paperback novels and clothes I've taken off. i lost my spelling book I don't want to look like a fuck-up to Reese, but these are desperate times in the country. So I text him, tell him my dilemma, ask him if he has another TV microphone I can borrow (i can't come to your rescue every time) and he's nice as can be about it. Texts me back. "Just come by my apartment tomorrow. I'll have one you can use." I go back to the Higleys and they say, sure, it's just fine if I come back tomorrow, that it would probably be better anyway.
Sunday morning. I'm getting a late start. I leave funky Liberty Apartments in a section called The Village at the low end of this freaky town I'm living in. Painters, musicians, many of them, druggies, pass along the steps outside my door. It will be close to noon before I get to Wichita. Head east, Man. I hope you find a microphone and peace in your life.
Nearly two hours of driving. I ring the bell at the apartment in the Riverside section of Wichita. Reese's girlfriend, Janie, answers the door. She's holding a black bag with the microphone in it. Tells me Reese is out playing golf. Reese and Janie have been living together for the past couple of years. Her 7-year-old son from a previous relationship lives there with them. And I think they have a dog.
Reese and Janie got together about a year after he got fired from the local CBS affiliate. The anchors had just signed off on the 10 p.m. news. "Let's get the fuck out of here," Reese said, unaware that his mic was still on. The video went viral. Reese's guffaw became nationally known. Jay Leno showed the clip with a bleep inserted on The Tonight Show. The job offer Reese had been offered in St. Louis was rescinded.
But recently the Wichita PBS affiliate gave Reese and his talents a new birth. And Reese is pretty damn talented. I saw his special story on the 10th anniversary of the Greensburg tornado and wished I could produce something that good. Janie also gave Reese a new handle on life and isn't that the kind of thing we all need?
The morning's coffee was working hard on me. I didn't know Janie well enough to ask to urinate in her house. I could've stopped in a gas station, but it was just past noon on Sunday and the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 21st and Rock Road had just opened. I rushed in the store doors and was soon standing at the urinal, pissing the Missouri River. It was a damn excuse to go inside the bookstore. Time was moving on, but I couldn't pass through without looking at a few books.
There was a graphic novel version of Kafka's The Trial that was killer. And Rhinehard Kleist's graphic novel about the life of Johnny Cash, I See a Darkness. It was a story about addiction, regret and spiritual struggle, named for Cash's winter of life recording of the same name, originally recorded by Will Oldham, who sang back-up vocals behind Johnny for the Man in Black's cover.Then I made my way to the theology and philosophy sections. I was looking at Sarte's Being and Nothingness when some kid about 20 came up to me. He had scarlet-colored hair. Wore a black shirt and lip ring. "Excuse me, Sir, do you know much about philosophy?" he asked me. "I'm just getting into it."
"I know a little bit," I answered. Then I pulled out T.Z. Lavine's book, From Socrates to Sarte. "This is a good beginner's book." Told him I had it for a textbook when I took philosophy at Grossmont Community College. I looked for Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, but didn't see it. I did find Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy.
"Oh this is a must," I said, taking Albert Camu's The Myth of Sisyphus from the shelf. "This gets into my favorite school of philosophy -- existentialism. Existentialism's a big tent. You got a theologian -- Kirkegaard, an atheist -- Nietzsche, a novelist, Dostoevsky. Rollo May was an existential psychologist. His book, The Courage to Create -- the title was inspired by Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be."
Tillich -- he fled Nazi Germany in the '30s. Settled in the states and taught at Union Theological Seminary where Reese briefly matriculated.
In another life.
"I'll take this one," the kid said, grabbing Kirkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
"Great choice," I said. "That's where existentialism started. As a companion, you gotta read the Genesis account of Abraham when he was gonna sacrifice Isaac."
"Thanks mister," he said, shaking my hand. Told me I'd been a big help. "Do you work here?"
"No, I guess I just get evangelical about the written word. It gets to where I have a bookgasm & I'm a whore about it all," I said.
Following that exchange, I knew it was best that I split. Make the big drive back to western Kansas and Higley's farm.
The route out of Wichita led me down different roads than I'd been on the day before. Passed county lines on the southern back roads. Little Kansas towns like Pretty Village, Banjo Crossing, Delbert...
It was Sunday afternoon. I turned to the AM country station again and listened to a Pentecostal preacher. "What I wanna ask is, 'Have you found Jesus?'" he said in a sweet Mississippi drawl. Then he played a gospel record -- "Precious Memories" as sung by the Stanley Brothers.
In the stillness of the midnight, precious, sacred scenes unfold
This was the version I heard on the fourth season premiere of The Walking Dead.
Along the last lap, the GPS on my iPhone failed me. Had to text the Higleys for directions. In the end, I found my way and ultimately, I was squatting on the family porch, video recording with my phone atop the tripod and interviewing Lyle and Alicia about the soil health and prairie grass as they sat in the porch swing.
"There is a big growth with people who want to know where their food comes from," the family patriarch said.
"Thank you very much," I said after clicking off the record button.
"That's it?" Lyle said.
"That should suffice. We'll edit it, use the best soundbites. We might only end up using 10 seconds."
Driving all over hell's half acre for 10 seconds. Ah hell, it was worth it.
It would be a high caliber story. I'd also filmed vendors at a farmer's market in Wichita's Old Town on a brisk Saturday morning. Talked to an area organic farmer about the connection between her Christian faith and working the land.
And I'd recorded my new friend, Jessie, who was instrumental in reviving the local food market in her little town of Blushing, Kan. (pop. 5,000) She walked down the verdant path in her backyard, wearing a white straw gardener's hat, gloves, holding a spading fork in her right hand, the left hand pulling the handle of the red wooden wagon her three small children sat in. They would help her dig in the garden. Bountiful, high yielding rows of radishes, tomatoes, squash...stood high and healthy.
Back at the TV station, I worked with Reese on writing a script and gathering still shots for the piece. Reese added snippets of the Green Acres theme song. The story would lead the next week's episode of Kansas Personalities.
The Weight
"I don't know, part of it is that I want to keep topping myself. Part of it was -- well, there's something spiritual about mother earth and sustenance, the whole regeneration process."
Talking about the earth makes me think of my childhood friend so I say, "The next time we go out like this, I'd like to invite Suzanne to tag along."
"That's the fifth time you've mentioned her."
"Really? I thought it was only the second."
"You got a hard-on for her or something?"
"Nah. She and her husband split up three or four years ago, but I'm only attracted to her intellect. Maybe her glasses. Possibly her tattoo."
"I guess we could bring her on board, teach her some new tricks, Reese says, the mischief in his face lifting his mustache.
There's stubble on Reese's face that has yet to form into a full beard, and above his lip, he has this dark jumbo mustache. No lie, the thing is a submarine. He and Janie plan on getting married soon. The mustache could walk her down the aisle.
"Oh yeah, almost forgot," I say as I take Reese's microphone out of my pocket and hand it to him. "The Higleys texted me a couple days after I'd been there. Said they found my microphone on the floor of their truck. I gave them my address and they mailed it back to me."
"See, you worried for nothing," Reese says.
We talk about that documentary our friend Adam is making about the old Wichita Wings. About Postman and McLuhan. About loathsome 45 tweets (how I mistakenly call them twats) taking us down a dystopian "shitterverse." How I often watch TV on my iPhone, while in bed at night.
"Been watching Shameless," I say, adding that Suzanne turned me on to the show -- the American version. "It's something, the mother is bi-polar, attempted suicide and abandoned her kids. Father's a no-count drunk, cheating the government. Fiona had a downfall, went to jail after her little brother ingested the cocaine. It's like a train wreck and you don't want to watch it, but you can't help yourself."
Reese weighs in on Shameless. "Whenever she (Fiona) gets close to pulling it all together, something inside her wants to fuck it up because a normal or routine life to her is foreign so she goes out and fucks things up because that's all she knows...things being fucked up."
After a while, he stands up. "Well, I'm gonna go out and have a smoke."
He starts to go outside, then turns around, still tapping a Marlboro Light on the lid of its flip top box and asks what we should read for our next book club meeting.
I suggest we take on a graphic novel or a comic book. I mean, hell, who says we can't? Is it our club, our solo and duo identities bearing down or what? I mention how that show, Preacher, on AMC is based on a comic book from the '90s. Reese says he hasn't seen it.
"He's a two-fisted Texas preacher," I say. "Teams up with his ass kicking ex-girlfriend and an Irish agnostic vampire. They battle evil supernatural forces in their quest to find God.
"It's pretty existential."
Television -- "I'm Gonna Find you"
