Dusty

The past week has been rough. I said goodbye to a friend. If you asked him his name, he'd tell you Leonard Dustin James Atterbery. But he went by Dusty.

My friend Dusty had a phenomenal personality. You felt good being around Dusty, and he made the world better. He was a winning kid -- small but mighty.

The first time I saw Dusty he was throwing a fit. It was 10 years ago and I was working at a kids' camp. Don't remember what the fit was about. I guessed this boy with blondish red hair and freckles was about 8-years-old, but I could tell mentally he was about 4. Later I asked him how old he was.

"Fifteen," he said.

Somebody told me he had been a fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) baby. When child protective services found him at four months old, he was lying in a dresser with whisky and Coke mixed in his baby bottle. The dangerous early exposure to alcohol limited his intellectual and physical growth.

Dusty was adopted by Phil and Kay Atterbery. The couple adopted several kids with special needs such as autism, but Dusty had the most severe condition of their eight kids.

I got to know Dusty and his parents through my job. I would pick Dusty up from Levy Special Education School and we would go to places like the YMCA near West Central in Wichita or West Acres Bowling Alley. We put the bumpers up for Dusty when he bowled and he was always happy when he got a strike.

Dusty and I also went out on Saturday morning walks around places like Riverside Park, WSU and Friends University. We'd go to the Wichita Art Museum where he liked to draw in the childrens' section, the library where he liked to play games on the computers and Old Cowtown Museum where he liked to watch people dressed like 1870s characters.

When I picked up Dusty at his home, he was always showing me Nerf guns he had bought with his allowance and costumes he wore -- Superman, Batman, Darth Vader... Dusty loved to dress up. One time he showed me a toy sword he'd gotten. He wanted to take it with him on our outing, but his dad told him to leave it at home and he could play with it when he got back. Dusty threw a loud fit and it was tough to get him out the door.

Later, after we'd been playing at the Y for a while, I said, "How 'bout we call your dad and tell him you're sorry for throwing a fit earlier?" He was up for that so I called Phil, told him Dusty had something to tell him. Long since cooled down, Dusty apologized for throwing a fit earlier.

"I accept your apology," I could hear Phil say over the phone.

Dusty was feisty. One time he got into some kind of argument with a kid around the pool table at the Y and said, "Do you want a bloody nose?" I had him apologize. Another time a kid didn't believe Dusty when he told him he was 18. I later took the boy aside and said, "Actually, he really is 18." The boy told Dusty he was sorry.

"I accept your apology," Dusty answered.

He loved to push the buttons in my car and activate the seat warmers. He loved Elvis, just as he loved superheros, Star Wars, Star Trek, Walker Texas Ranger and playing cowboys and Indians. Once we were listening to the Elvis station in my car on Sirius radio. One of Elvis's more forgettable songs came on and I committed the disrespectful, sacrilegious act of changing the station.

"Hey turn it back," Dusty said. "I like that song."

Well okay.

Accident

The accident happened Friday afternoon May 7 at the intersection of side streets, Young and Newell. A van from Starkey, a non-profit based group that cares for people who are mentally challenged -- was transporting Dusty and two other residents from a day program. An Escalade SUV reportedly sped through a stop sign and crashed into the van.Dusty and another Starkey resident, Dirk MacMillian, were killed.

It has not been established whether the driver of the SUV, Bret Blevins, was drunk. Authorities are waiting for toxicology reports to come back. What is established is that Blevins was a repeat DUI offender, had been convicted of possession of meth and of stealing a bronze Eagle statue from the Boy Scout Quivera Council. His driver's license has been suspended numerous times.

"I hope he lives a long, long life in prison," Kay Atterbery told the KWCH news.

Yeah, prison. Where he can't hurt the community any more.

Four days after the wreck, a candle light vigil was held at the scene of the accident. I had to drive an hour and a half to get there, but I was going to make my stand for Dusty and the other victims.

I would implore you, if you're impaired, please don't drive. If someone around you plans to drive while drunk, give them a ride, call them a cab, take their keys away, call the cops if you have to, but do anything you can to stop them.

                         Dusty taking his niece, Jasmine, to prom.

Goodbye, my friend

My beautiful wife, Maria, and handsome son, Max, went with me to Dusty's funeral. He had a beautiful memorial service officiated by Pastor Cecil Brown of the West Side Church of the Nazarene. He talked about how Dusty was now in Heaven where there are no more problems, no more sadness. The mortuary was packed with family, friends and people who had been caregivers for Dusty.

Most of them had Dusty stories. Along with the sadness, there was a celebration of Dusty's life.

His aunt Nancy sang, "Amazing Grace." Elvis's beautiful gospel recording of "In the Garden was played. Dusty's niece, Jasmine, and Anna, a neighbor to the Atterberys sang "Jesus Loves Me" and "Jesus Loves the Little Children." The songs were appropriate -- children's songs you learn in Sunday school and those lyrics -- when the girls, one black, one white sang "red and yellow, black and white, they're all precious in his sight," I thought about how those words really meant something.

Phil and Kay Atterbery are white but several of Dusty's adopted siblings are African American. Dusty never knew racial divisions.

Kay stroked Dusty's hair one last time and sang to him as she had so many times.

Hair of gold, eyes of blue
skin so fair, freckles too...
How I love my little boy,
how I love my pride and joy.
Close your eyes, 
now go to sleep...
my precious child.

I worry about how Kay is going to do without her boy. I wish the man who caused this accident could see all the damage -- all the sadness he's created.

Nobody knows what happens after we die, but I'd like to think we go on somehow, that there's more than just this life.

I remember one day. Dusty and I were at the Donut Whole in east Wichita. There was a picture in the window of a man with a guitar.

"That's God," Dusty said.

"No Dusty, that's a picture of a man who's going to be performing here," I said.

"No, it's God."

I get a good feeling knowing Dusty, my friend, may have looked into the the face of God. No more pain or sorrow. Just joy and love forevermore. I hope he met Elvis too.

My beautiful wife, Maria, has been a blessing to me through all my sadness and bereavement. She knew Dusty was special.

"You'll see him again," she told me.

The family has set a gofundme page to help pay for Dusty's funeral.

Eyes shut

The hallway was steel and glass, narrow with turns like a maze. I could almost feel the sex acts before they cleaned up and sanitized the floors with Lysol. My head was wanting more drugs and the radio wires in my brain were on the brink. But it's okay okay okay. I used to have bad dreams about inquisitions, star chambers where judges in powdery wigs fixed steely-knived eyes on me. I never knew what my crime was, but there had to be one. You see, they could penetrate thevetromedial prefrontal cortex of my brain in order to maximize the guilt they were pulling out of me like large & small intestines. Nasty, harsh guilt let down god, family, country Penetratin' mean like a penis.

As I turned the door knob with my hand, I shut my eyes tight and quickly prayed that Mookas wouldn't be there. I pushed the knob inward and the first face I saw was that of Mookas, her dark caramel skin and arms folded in godfather style.

"He's very well read," Mookas said of me as if I weren't there.

"Dr. Mookas, I'm an idiot savant," I said.

A week earlier I'd received a nasty email from Mookas. "You used to be so good. Now you're bothering everyone in the organization. You're a drain. Your insecure act has gotten old....."

And all it looked like to me was, "You cocksuckin' piece of fuck...Go rot in hell, you phony bastard."

As I paced frantically, the young dancing woman who had once met Stephen Sondheim told me, "You're raising your blood pressure."

It was institutional here. "Sometimes I think Franz Kafka designed this organization," Ervin said to me. Ervin was a playwright, read Aristotle's Poetics to get the feeling and wanted to teach Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Schopenhauer, Sarte. I don't know that he was a phony. Just a bastard. He had a smell, an odor that like everything else about him just said "bastard" but it's all good.

Back in the room with Mookas, Longhoeffer, Briggs, McChokumchild and the rest. They all wanted to meet with me as one unit to show me they were all "on the same page." I hate that cliche'd phrase. I had to make quick decisions about what my future with the institution would be. Would I meet the requirements or have to be dismissed. It was all women in the room but I knew they'd get a big man if they ever needed muscle.

"This is like the mafia," I said. "Everyone in a room confronting a guy."

Then I became pensive. "It's just that I've never been one to give up," I said. "When I was a kid I'd willingly endure all kinds of sadism and punishment before I'd give in. My kids -- they were born in a different world. They've known comfort. They give in easier"

"What are their grades like?" McChokumchild asked. Then Briggs. "How do they respond to authority?" "Do they have any learning disabilities?" "What do their teachers say about them?" Then Mookas: "How do they get along with their peers?"

"What'd'ya wanna know Mookas? Are they fucked up like me?"

"Watch your mouth."

I have no ill will. I can forgive everything they ever did at my expense. The byzantine rules. The wires. The mindfucks. But fuckin' with my kids -- that's the one thing I don't forgive.

"Fuck y'all" I said and walked out, never to see them again.

I took the elevator down. Below there was a car, a girl and sex waiting for me. No something deeper because it wasn't all about the sex and any expert will tell you a true, healthy relationship is grounded on more.

I met her in the parking lot in the Ford Explorer she'd rented from Avis. We'd drive to California in that car. Driving along 21st Street looking at where there used to be a Safeway store and a Kwiki Mart. There was blue sky all around us and an endless sea of white clouds. I looked up at them. then eyes pressed shut i thought of that day long ago.

I was twentysomething, reporting on a story about the newest cars on the market for a newspaper in a dusty Oklahoma town. A Dodge Viper. Girl driving. I was a passenger then too, had bad dreams about the star chamber but it was okay. She wore this short, tight skirt. "I can rock your world with this stereo," she said. i'll be her plastic toy

And the legs and blond hair of yesterday drifted like a reverie as I looked deep into Maria's dark hair with the sunlit highlights.

"I'm really proud of you, Jeff," she said. "A year ago something like this would've made you suicidal and unable to get out of bed."

"What's the use in that?" I said.

"And you just went in ripped jeans and an AC/DC concert shirt. You didn't bother dressing up."

"Not much point in it, baby."

I was for bringing back sex, drugs and rock n' roll. Had a connection with a roots band that had jammed with Bobby Blue Bland.

And I was ready to taste it like honey, to face the future

___ with Maria
___ with Maria
___ with Maria

               "Nothin's Gonna Hurt You Baby" -- Cigarettes After Sex

Tell you in confidence

I came out on Facebook a while back about the depression being back. I didn't explain why.

"If you ever need a friend, give me a call," a friend private messaged me. He left his phone number. We've known each since childhood. One night I called him.

"If I tell you what the problem is, will you just keep it between us?" I said.

"Absolutely," he answered.

I believed him. We played together as youngsters. I don't think I would've trusted him with a secret when we were kids. But we're grown men now, we're different people. And I know he kept his word. I would've felt the blow back if he didn't. It was good and unselfish of him to reach out with friendship.

Then there's others.

You know what I really hate? Gossipers. People who get a little dirt on you and can't wait to run & tell your family, friends, co-workers. Haven't they ever heard of  "off the record"? You think you know someone and you don't even ask them to keep it private because you figure that's a given.

I've been wrecked, okay? The devil has gotten into me at times. I think he was laughing when I was suicidal from the sect. Satan has hooked into my unknowing mind and heart. Once like never before or since. I lost myself & when I found who I was again, it was always among the familiar homes and trees, the sidewalk path that led to the door of the house where my wife and children were. Their faces. those faces Voices. God. The key.

But those who would threaten my happiness, whom I trusted with private revelations about my guilt, moral failings and private hell, only to be betrayed -- they're worse than slime. And maybe you think you're still in the J. Guy circle. Keep on thinking it. Believe it.

And I know who you are.

Saturday morning videos 4

We crusin' southland lookin' for our long lost juke shack or maybe California and the heat of L.A. women, smell of the mountains, Got a six-pack of...Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz or Rheingold. A few joints. Goin' to a beat up ROADHOUSE. We is holy, man. This is the land where the hoodoo man died, where Hooker reigns sublimely from the pitch black, Mississippi and Chicago chillen' deep from the pores of the Parchman black body of the blues and Morrison speaks of empresses, pharaohs, Ghost Dance and the lost American midnight. Yells with ferocity. Midnight. Goin' to the road house! Yeah.

Carol Burnett always had Jim Nabors on to launch each new season of her show. Here he is around in around 1976, 77. He's brilliant, holding stage command over the Lawrence Welk-like dancers. He enjoys it and how could anyone not know he's gay? I remember as a kid hearing him sing on one of those Thanksgiving or Christmas parade shows. "He sure can sing," my mom said. "You know he's a fairy?" I'm glad he made it legal with his long-time love, Stan. Good for them.

Can this song really be 25 years old? Whatever happened to youth? So elusive. Somewhere around 1991 I was at my friend Steve's house in Rushing Waters, Kan. He played me two cassette tapes he'd recently bought -- Smashing Pumpkins and Screaming Trees. They both rocked.

                                                       
Iris Dement. You may have heard her version of "Everlasting Arms" in the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit. But she's been around since the early '90s. I think the above video is an Austin City Limits performance from 1995 where she sings about a philandering, dead beat dad husband who let his family down. But hey, he found religion so he's a new man and she should take him back. The song's title tells you how she feels about that. "God may forgive you but I don't, yes Jesus loves you but I don't." She's come into her own as a woman and there's no room for him.

Night time. I was on U.S. 254, driving home from a late night at work. I flipped the radio dial around, landed on this woman's show. Don't remember her name. I would later read some article saying she was a cross between Oprah and Sex and the City. Women called in and talked about being women. The woman's husband cheated on her. She discovered him in his car in a parking lot. The stylist who cut his hair was going down on him. "Just empty your bank account and let the bastard rot," the radio host said. (Silence) She played this song. I was nearing that turn on the highway that would take me home. I cried loudly and uncontrollably. There was that time when I fell in love (or thought I did) with a woman other than my wife who found out. I think I subconsciously set myself up to be found out. I was in hell, my lying, unreliable heart going against my morals. How could I have ever entertained the thought? What if I made love to another woman? What if I hurt my girl, my lover, my best friend, the woman of my life? Made her feel hallow, like living...half a life? That's what the singer is singing about. What if I killed her soul like this? The man in the video is toxic and full of lies and poison. I don't want to be that man. It's a beautiful video. Like a ballet. Artistic. I love the way it borrows from West Side Story.

My latest favorite song. I wake up early in the morning to it. Love the way it sounds on my phone. A classic from 1979, a year that saw a lot of great music. Love those original Gerry Rafferty lyrics. "He's got this dream about buying some land. He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands." Dave Grohl sings, "He's gonna give up the crack..." It's hard edged, the signature saxophone sound of the original version duplicated by loud guitars. I love when newer artists take on '70s classics the way Sonic Youth did with the Carpenters' "Superstar" or Radiohead with their covers of "Nobody Does it Better" and "Rhinestone Cowboy." Foo Fighters has gotta be my favorite of the newer rock groups (and Radiohead). Yeah, they've been around for 20 years, which ain't really new until you think about the world's greatest living rock n' roll band, the Rolling Stones.

80 Proof Engine is a folkish accoustic bluegrass-punk band out of Newton, Kan. in the spirit such Wichita staples as Split Lip Rayfield and Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy. They regularly play at Sadie's in Newton and they'll be playing at Kirby's in Wichita this weekend. Unfortunately, I have a commitment this weekend and will not be able to make their show. Hopefully, next time. I wanted to show a video of them playing in some cellar, but this is the only one I could upload through YouTube on Blogger. Their new album is called Nastygrass. Upright bassist Dustin Nesser told the paper, Newton Now, the band is"an eight-cylinder alcohol-fueled machine." 

We can never have enough Leonard Nimoy. There were so many sides to him. He was much more than a Vulcan character on the Starship Enterprise. The man really did have feeling. His albums help make the late '60s and early '70s so wonderful. He was sensitive. What if he were a carpenter? Would you marry him anyway? Would you have his baby?

Stardust  written by the great Hoagy Carmichael. He was walking around the campus of his alma mater Indiana University in Bloomington one day in 1927 when the music entered his head. Recorded here by Louis Armstrong and his band Nov. 4, 1931 in Chicago. It's a sad song. The only way he can relieve the love he shared with a lost lover is through the stardust of a song that haunts his dreams. It's a standard, a prominent piece in the American songbook. Recorded by Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Nat King Cole, Django Reinhart, Ringo Starr. Armstrong's has to be the definitive version.

I want to reach you

I'm sitting in a beat up booth, watching darkness outside the glass window, gazing across the street at the honky tonk bar I could soon be drinking in, but I think I'll pass it up.

My job writing and investigating for a secret underworld society keeps me jumpin' like Jack Flash. Stuck in Grossmont County, Kansas again. Some kind of blues brewing within my soul like the piercing guitar solo at the festival somewhere in the spirited 196_.

The last time I did my laundry here was around 25 years ago. Had a job waiting tables at the country club here in the great town of Beulah. Waited on the upper crust during the lunch and evening hours. I remember late nights too, serving food and drinks to get-togethers of the Beulah Realtor Association, the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the board of directors of the local community college from which I'd graduated.

Late nights I'd cut out with friends I'd worked with at the plastics factory before I got the uptown job. We'd go bar hopping, cow tipping, smoke a little dope, play some rock n' roll. But those lost nights are all an opaque haze now, some fog of life that occurs as you're jetting and jaunting from station to station and sometimes

getting stuck

Dirt and sudz

"Get over here, Gunner, don't be a buttface," the woman yelled at one of the three boys running and crawling over the concrete floor. She's wearing a fatigue jacket over her slightly overweight frame, her dark hair in a bun. She's called those kids "buttface" about 10 times.

There's a pudgy bald guy, a woman (the only attractive one in the bunch) wearing a pink jacket and a gruff man in a fading red shirt, his long gray hair giving him a look like a tougher, countrier version of Frank (William H. Macy). Looks were all he had in common with the user loser character. This guy at Country Queen Sudz was in control of his clan.

"If you make another comment, you're gonna make my decision for me," the old man told his son, definitely not a model of fealty as I'd seen John Gotti, Jr. to be toward his mob boss dead father on a recent 60 Minutes.

A woman in a dark vanilla hoodie was mopping a leak under one of the washers cleaning my clothes.

"I hope I didn't cause this," I told her. "Did I do something wrong."

"Nah," she assured me. Machines there do that shit all the time.

That family comes into the laundromat once a week, she told me while swooping the mop over the water and soap. They live in Cash.

"Cash?" I said. "Shit, that's 30 miles away. There's no laundromat between here and there."

Nope. No place to go

The grandparents are raising the three boys and the baby in the carrier set on a table beside folded underwear, jeans and flannel shirts.

"So they were taken away from their mother?" I said.

"She gets supervised visits, but yeah they were taken away. She's on drugs."

"Meth?"

"Yeah," she said as she placed the "Caution wet floor" sign down. "Those little boys know their daddies but they're no better than she is."

Trap town

The last time I was in that laundromat (it wasn't called Country Queen Sudz then, don't remember what it was) I had washed my clothes at around 7 a.m. in the morning before work. I heard this woman on the pay phone, crying and pleading with somebody, sounding down on her luck and short of hope.

After my clothes were washed, dried and folded, I went into the broom closet-sized bathroom and changed into my country club uniform, black slacks, white shirt and black bow tie. There was a knock on the door. Less than a second later, I answered it, ready to go.

It was the woman who had been crying into the phone. Her eyes were still red with tears. I noticed she was holding a basset hound. "I'm sorry," she said tearfully to me as if she had disturbed one more person in life.

"It's okay," I said. I tried to sound compassionate regarding whatever she was going through, but I was soon gone. I wish I could've comforted that girl way back then but I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to be a life toucher.

I could never reconcile the poverty and sadness in Beulah with my job, serving rich (they seemed rich to me) -- guess the right word is upscale -- people at the country club. Today I would say I'm just doing my job, trying to get by like everybody else. These days I know everyone has problems. Strained marriages. Infidelities. Drugs. Alcoholism. Those well-to-do people had it to, but it's taken time, a lot of time for me to figure things out.

"I'm gonna get the fuck 'outa Dodge," my fellow waiter friend Keith said after each shift. One evening, he didn't show up for work. Four, 4:15, 4:30 p.m. No Keith. He'd been at Schmoochie's bar all day where he'd gotten blasted on gin, Jack, vodka, beer. I knew he did Coke, pills and other shit I had a healthy fear of ever trying. I didn't judge. If my friends wanted to get drugged and snorted out, that was cool for them, but I wasn't going there. I was a beer, weed and Jim Beam man.

I got out years ago, but I've made peace with Beulah like I've made peace with God. God's all perfect. Beulah has some shit, good and bad. There's no reason for me to do my laundry here. I can do that at the hotel I'll be staying in tonight. Guess I just came here 'cuz I wanted to write. Things are getting better.

I've found ways to comfort the afflicted, other human beings, you know.

                               "Something on My Mind" -- Karen Dalton

New Year floating

My job takes me to several towns. It's the nature of this business. I was in Rutherford County, Kansas last week where I ventured into the the county's historical museum. I'd been there just the day before and had the most delicious vanilla malt from the old fashioned soda machine in the restaurant area preceding the museum. After devouring a New York style cheese cake at Koch's Meats, I thought I better not put any more junk into my body but I was tempted.

Two girls who looked to be around the same age as my daughter sat in a booth with laptops, taking advantage of the free wi-fi. They looked to be creating beautiful pictures on Instagram.

"Wow, you can just sit here and do that?" I said. "You can do your homework here?"

They told me they could. I asked them if they had ever tasted the great malts or shakes from the soda fountain.

"I've never had any shakes because my parents can't afford them," she said.

I felt such pity for the girl I wanted to buy her a malt, but that would be a bad call. I didn't want to look like a weirdo. Then I wised up and remembered the kind of bullshit my parents used to play on me. She might've asked for a malt and her parents probably gave her that line so she wouldn't bother them about it. Close the case. I live a hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck existence and I scrounge up for a soda fountain malt at least once a month.

When my mom was a little girl in Jett, Kan. (pop. 3,000 in the '50s), her family was poor. She was embarrased about living in a shack and didn't want to bring friends over to see it. The McElroys were one of only two families in town still using an outdoor shitter. The other family, the Whites, lived a hop, skip and a jump from them near a place the poor neighborhood kids used to play around called "the hill."

For Mom's family, ice cream was a rare treat. Every New Year's Eve, Vickie (Mom) and her brother David (Uncle Dave) got to stay up past midnight and celebrate with root beer floats. It may be the only time they'd get a root beer float 'till the next year.

I'm in my 40s so I've seen a lot of New Year's Eves. I've had great fun at parties with my filmmaker/sportscaster friend Adam Knapp and the Roger Sterling of our gang, Russ Thomas, at New Years parties.

I remember one New Year's Eve in Beulah, Kan. where I'd attended Grossmont Community College. It was the early '90s. I was around 21. I was at Centerstage night club when I wound up at a table with my old college journalism teacher, Bill Bidwell, and his friend Bev Beaman. We all counted down as the ball on the TV above the bar was about to drop in Times Square. Dick Clark was on TV, smiling like he was born with a microphone in his hand. The bar served us all free plastic cups of Champagne.

Bill died back in 2003. Bev died this year.

I've been forced this year to think about what really constitutes being rich and poor, about how I want my life to end, which I hope won't be for a long time.

My brother, Jimmy, and I see Mom at Homestead in Jett at least every weekend. It's a home for people with dementia-Alzheimer's. We usually visit at different times, but both of us have taken Mom out to McDonald's for their McFlurrys, which are to die for. Even though Mom's lost a lot of weight and doesn't eat that much anymore, she sure devours those McDonald's shakes.

We're still not rich, but it's a vastly different world from the family shack near the hill. I hope to do better as a person this next year (only my family knows my deepest flaws) and bring joy to Mom's life. (It could be five more years, it could be 10.)

And I hope in 2016, that I can touch more lives. Behind all the drinking, pissing, screwing and fighting of my young life, at the core, I think that's what I really wanted to be -- a life toucher.

                      (Sorry) I Ran All the Way Home -- The Impalas

Neon

Dec. 29, 2015. Twenty years ago today I signed my life away at Zeller Motor Co. in Ark City, Kan. for a black, shiny, spankin' new Plymouth Neon. I was  what my favorite character, Red Foreman, from That '70s Show, would call a "dumbass." But I wanted a cool car, to score with chicks and blast Green Day and the Sex Pistols in my stereo. When I'd write a hot story, I felt like a rockstar, like Elvis or John Lennon.

On this day 53 years ago my parents were married in the Bible Baptist Church in Jett, Kan. (pop. 3,500 in the '60s.) There's pictures of them feeding each other wedding cake. They divorced 10 years later. One night -- I was 3-years-old -- they told me they didn't love each other anymore. I kept walking back from Dad's chair in the living room. "Daddy, do you love Mom?" "No." Then to my mother's chair. "Mom, do you love Dad?" Shaking her head. "No." I tried to be such a little man, not to cry. I think I barely did.

I almost cursed God and told Him where to go this morning, but I remembered when I was a little boy in the early '70s and I had nowhere else to go.

I asked Dad last week, "How did you feel when Mom left you? You must've been in hell." He didn't say much. Just, "been there, done that."

I could say this is gonna be a bad day, but I'm going to press on. I might crack some jokes. People like my jokes. I feel a little like Don Draper in the episode of Mad Men where he revealed in a client meeting that he was raised in a brothel and used to go through the John's trousers, looking for money and loving the sweetness of the Hershey bars he found.

Some friend of mine has given me tough love. He always did. I better get to work now. I write and investigate for a secret underworld writing society that takes me away from home a lot. There are a lot of secrets to my job I'm unable to reveal.

secrets

But then there always have been.

             "Lord, This Time You Gave Me a Mountain" -- Elvis Presley

Seeker

When I was a little boy in Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the '70s) I would go to church every Sunday with my Grandma and Grandpa Mac. My parents didn't attend church at the time. Mom had some hang-up about how the walls would crumble down if she ever darkened the door of a church. But they thought it was good for me to go so I attended the Bible Baptist Church with my grandparents.

I don't think I'll ever again be as religious as I was at 8-years-old. When my Sunday School class would sing, "Come Into My Heart, Lord Jesus," I was sure, I was a believer, I was asking Him to come into my heart. We had the visuals of storms and thunder to go with "How Great Thou Art." Later when I heard Elvis sing that song I thought it was pretty cool.

I've never told anyone this, not even Maria, I don't think, but the first job I ever aspired toward -- after being a cowboy when I was between ages 3 and 5 -- was preacher, a career, which at that time meant devotion, kindness and respect. When I first heard of Martin Luther King, Jr., it didn't surprise me that he was a minister. Of course a Christian would want people of all races treated equally and with kindness.

The first President I remembered (well I remembered a little about Jerry Ford), but the first I really got to know was Jimmy Carter. When I heard that Carter was a born again Christian (again when I was 8-years-old) it didn't surprise me a bit. After all Jimmy Carter was a good man. He was kind and he stood for good things like peace. Of course he would be a Christian. Of course, even at that age I knew his religion didn't mix with job as President. I'd learned in first grade during the 76 bicentenniel year that the pilgrims came to this country in search of religious freedom and church and government were separate.

Anyhow I was going to be holy. I was going to be like Jimmy Carter or Pastor Paul from the Bible Baptist Church. I knew I'd have to straighten out my ways and quit cussing, fighting on they playground and creating mischief.

By the time I was in fourth grade I knew that wasn't going to happen. By the time I was in jr. high, I'd stopped going to church. Felt there was a lot of artifice.

Also, in later years I became more rebellious, hardly believing in God. And when I did think about Him, I was scared. It didn't help that Christianity didn't have such a good name anymore thanks to right-wing loud mouths like Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson (et. al) and fundamentalist political extremism.

I've made peace with God, though. I've found my faith again and I'm confident I'm not a weirdo. The Christians on this earth I strive to emulate aren't the Jerry Fallwells, but the Jimmy Carter types. Other people can do what they want. I just know where I stand. I have friends who are agnostics or atheists, but I know I need a Higher Power. The idea of someone dying for me personally 2,000 years ago to absolve me of my terrible sins and grant me salvation appeals to me.

I'm not into war or destruction or badmouthing people of other beliefs. I just decided God is love. In my view He's more like a kind father than an avenging, punisher. Instead of a fiery hell, I believe God lets us suffer the consequences of our actions. Much like how my wife and I are with our kids. Once my son was crying after he did something wrong and said, "I know you have to punish me." "I don't like that word," I told him. "I prefer the word 'consequences.'"

This morning I went to church for the first time in months. My job writing and investigating for a secret underworld society often takes me out of town or out of state. But in one of those towns, I decided to attend a church with stately old architecture. Unfortunately most of the congregation was old and when they die, I don't know what will happen to the place.

I think I made a friend there with a guy named Ray. The other side of it was I heard some things from a guest speaker, which I didn't like. But I'll save that for a future blog. It's no reason to give up on church, on communion with others who want to touch The Divine. Hey, I've been out drinking on Saturday nights with friends and when we didn't like the bar we were at, we just found a better one.

That's all you gotta do. I'm still going to be a seeker. Still searching for answers and if I don't find them all, it's okay. Still got love.

                            Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers -- "Jesus Gave Me Water"

Holiday season

Happy Kwanzaa!

I think it's so neat how there are all these holidays and diverse customs this time of year. It truly is a holiday season. Peace and goodwill toward men -- those aren't just words. To truly feel the words and show sincerity in them, you have to mean that you want world peace. No bombing. No boots on the ground, no hating the enemy and blessing the weapons that will kill them. It means peace from border to border, nation to nation, surpassing oceans and deserts, seeing everyone in the world as your neighbor who might need your help.

That leads right into good will toward men. It means you show love and respect to other men and women, no matter what their religion, country of origin or holiday customs are. It means you value the person in prison, the homeless person, the troubled soul addicted to meth.

My faith tells me this is what keeping Christ in Christmas really is. Funny, I bought some old raggedy, paperback book about the Sermon on the Mount for 25 cents at a thrift store today. Maria might get mad at me, dragging another book home, but oh well. I want to read the author's analysis of the greatest, most famous sermon in history. There are books in my bookcase as well as my children's bookcase. Books scattered around the kitchen table and the bathroom. I think it's a pretty good way to live.

Christmas parody letter 2015

("I don't know if there'll be snow but have a cup of beer.")

Dear ______________,

Well hello finally. Didn't think I'd get around to the old Christmas letter this year, did you? Thought ol' J. Guy's through with blogging. Probably just focusing on his job. (I have to laugh at that one.) It's true my job as a nationally published writer has had me busy meeting movie stars and going to places like Gibraltar near Spain. No it ain't easy, but I always find time for my blogger fans (all five of you) and I always catch the gay yuletide cheer of Christmas and write about it.

Above, you will find a picture of me with Eugenie Bondurant (Tigris in Hunger Games: Mocking Jay 2). I have first-hand knowledge that she's a lovely, friendly person. Totally non-pretentious. Sorry I don't have a picture from my meeting with Jennifer Lawrence. Yes, Ms. Lawrence wanted to kiss me as she admitted to doing with her co-star Liam Hemsworth so I had to tell her I'm married.

Nothing says I love you like giving someone a material gift at Christmastime. Remember that classic holiday movie, A Christmas Story where Ralphie wanted a Red Ryder shotgun? Well how 'bout buying someone you love a big, huge assault rifle? As we celebrate our Dear Savior's birth this year, let's remember that the answer to these isolated incidents of gun violence where PEOPLE (not guns) kill people is more guns. 

Lock and load those guns Christian soldiers because there's a War on Christmas. Can you believe how Starbucks removed from their cups the traditional Christian Christmas symbols like snowmen, Christmas trees, Santa and toy soldiers? (All that stuff about them coming from Druids is bullshit. Ask Kirk Cameron.) Would you believe some non-Christian smart alec said to me, "Maybe you'd like Starbucks to go back to their original design where the mermaid bore her bare breasts?" 

The subject of body parts not to be seen in public reminds me of my good friend, LA filmmaker Mark Kenny, a WSU graduate like myself. Mark is very concerned about men's health. Every January when it's Men's Health Month, he posts invaluable information on Facebook about stuff like reducing the risk of testicular and prostate cancer. But would you believe that a few years ago some prude reported Mark to Facebook for showing a life-like drawing of a penis and testicles.

Here is what Mark wrote on Facebook:

"10 more days till Men's Health Awareness Month, where I honor the coward, prick "friend" that, years-ago, anonymously reported one of my posts as pornographic to Facebook. Now, every year in January, I fill my Timeline with testicles and penises for educational purposes... like, "this is what a dick looks like," and other informative posts." (That's one thing to appreciate about Mark. Not only is he a talented producer/director/film editor. He'll also show you what a dick looks like.) 

"I hope to eradicate the Puritanical tyranny that still exists in modern society," Mark continued. "It's the 21st century. Please speak openly about penises and vaginas... and don't freak out if you see one or two, especially if they are doing what the fuck they were made for."

OMG! He's going to show pictures of penises and vaginas doing what the fuck they were made for , which is most prominently, well...My grandma is on Facebook. Okay, actually she isn't. Neither grandma is because they're dead. But if they were alive, I bet they'd be playing bingo on social media. Everyone else's grandma is.

Speaking of sex, I decided to talk to my 14-year-old son, Max, about it. We were in the car, driving to a Boy Scout meeting, so we didn't have to look at each other. "What do you think about sexting?" I asked. "It's not good," he answered. "Do you think it's right for a boy to ask a girl to text him a nude picture of herself?" "No," he answered. "No is right, son. It's not only against the law for kids, it's disrespectful to women. It objectifies them." "I know," he said. "One more thing, sonny boy...

I'm so proud your my son

Anyway, my earlier reference to penises could have segued into the art work on my daughter, Gabby's, Christmas list. Here it is.

Notice the "want-o-meter" Gabby drew, while resembling such classical phallic symbols as knives and swords, also kind of looks like a man's weiner. But she didn't know and even if she did, I don't expect Gabby to grow up pruddish. She's thinking about following her mom into nursing. I sure am proud of those two gals.

Not the types who would have a cow over a drawing of what Donald Trump would call a man's schlong. 

But who is the culprit, the high-headed, puritanical, holier-than-thou prick who reported my friend Mark to Mark Zuckerberg? I've been investigating, private dick capacity because that's what I do in my job. But I have yet to uncover this caper. Oh don't worry I will. I'm getting closer. While I don't know the person's identity I do know the penis reporter, the dick whistleblower, the schlong leaker to be a dark, shadowy figure hiding on the fringes of modern high-tech society, assuming various fake social media personalities. It could take work beyond my pay grade, the investigative skills of a team like CSI:Cyber to unlock the mystery, but it's out there. Somebody in Facebook land doesn't like pictures of dicks.

And in other news, Maria's brother, Thurber, had to go to the hospital due to problems with his anus and bowels. You see, he was sitting in the lavatory of the history building, Fiske Hall at WSU, a place I know from experience only has one-ply toilet paper. He was reading a copy of an independent student newspaper entitled the Daily Pooper, an Onion type of satirical publication disseminated in restroom stalls throughout campus. Anyway, Thurber, who weighs 400 pounds was having difficulty having a movement and it got so bad he had to go to the hospital. He's doing much better now, having had an enema, removing much undigested red meat from his internal plumbing.

Hey, I wonder if the reporters from the Daily Pooper ever get a poop scoop. Lol.

Here's a picture of myself and my children visiting my mother at Homestead of Augusta, an assisted living facility for people with dementia.

BTW, I've decided that stuff I wrote above in the letter about nothing saying Christmas like material gifts is bullshit. Christmas is about peace, joy, love, sacrifice. Just do what Jackie DeShannon sang about and put a little love in your heart. If you love someone, let them know. Don't just say it, but show it. By all means, say it too, though. Always watch what you say because words hold the power of good and evil and feelings are fragile. Cherish every moment. And if you have a relative who likes to go on at Christmastime about Fox News and Obama being a Muslim, just think of it as entertainment. Hot air. Behind all the bull crap, that uncle or dad or brother-in-law may be a good person.

Well that's all my crap. Have a Holly Jolly Christmas and let's make the new year great. Sanders in '16!

Your friend,

J. Guy

Since this year is Sinatra's birthday (same day as my daughter's birthday) I'll leave you with this happy video of Frank and Dino.

Sect

As a child I went to the Bible Baptist Church in Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the 1970s). My grandparents, the McElroys, took me. We mostly attended Sunday school, rarely stayed for church, which was all right because the preacher, Pastor Paul, used to say if you have to choose between Sunday school and church, pick Sunday school. "You'll get into the meat of the Word."

My church attendance became more sporadic as I got older and I totally stopped going when I was in junior high. Why not? Most of the kids my age there were a bunch of hypocritical, two-faced lying bitches and bastards who came to church for the purpose of posing to the Good Christian Bitchin' Worldly Churchly World that they were Hot Shit and their stink was a-steamin' like a 1910 Stanley Steamer.

I went to a few all night church lock-ins for junior high students. The Big Boys just threw their weight around (weren't Christians supposed to be the ones persecuted against? Weren't you supposed to be kind to people like Jesus or was that just talk & God incarnate was reduced to some idolatrous symbol of all their vanities?) I was in eighth grade. One guy kept telling me about the disgusting things he'd done with his many girlfriends. He didn't get caught in the drug bust at the sock hop the night before, but yeah he smoked, the sly-not-getting-caught devil.

My grandpa Mac died. I started searching for answers. I didn't like the answers. God -- what did he do but send the scum of the earth -- the damned, the forgotten -- to burn forever in some pit down below. Then there was Calvinism with its doctrine of pre-destination which held that God determined before you were born whether you'd go to Heaven or Hell. So basically you could find Jesus but if you weren't of the Elect you were SOL. Where do you fit in? You'll find out when you die.

And it was religion, man. Plastic. Sterile. Self-righteous. Rules over rules. No sex. No drugs. No rock n' roll.

But I had a hang-up on destruction. Self-destruction. Nightmares about Armageddon destroying the world, a holy conflagration. The world turned. High school. College. Work and love and joy and pain. I was nearing 30. I was going to get right with God before the aliens came or gremlin-like demons from Hell invaded before we'd had enough sex to procreate and produce a dynamic race of Christian soldiers. (The doctor, an old man who examined me from head to toe, said I needed to see a psychiatrist. "This stuff about religion -- son, he's real smart.") The loud rap music outside my apartment building at 11 p.m. -- that wouldn't be my life any more.

                                               Jehovahkill

I was on the county beat with the Clarion newspaper in Hot Fisher, Texas. I'd sit in the library before going to the office, a quaint, country-old two-story building with the slowest elevator in the world. What started as intellectual curiosity and perusals through the library turned into an obsession with World Truth magazine from the Army of Yahweh sect. I sought out their temple, a creamy white building like a kingdom that resembled a White Castle restaurant. There were signs picturing trumpets and a high guard tower in back that reminded me of a radio tower beaming transmissions of Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower."

 And there would be no hell in the traditional fiery pit sense, just a lot of explosions where your grandma's arms and legs might catapult from her body into the foul air, just arrests, beatings, torture, an evil world government ruled by a charismatic anti-Christ. It was all in the Bible. But if you were strong enough to take it, paradise awaited -- lions with the lamb and the purest virginal wife this side of Mary.

They had the correct Biblical interpretation. There was only one.  The people I worked with, whom I'd previously had pizza and beer and played pool with -- they wouldn't make it. The county road commissioners and townships patching up the roads -- they would be destroyed in the figurative-(possibly) literal fire because they were of Satan's "systemites."

But I would be spared. Love love love love we love you jeff you're a stayer a survivor old life was a bunch of crap New Personality was a crown World was supposed to end in 1992, the same year the computer Hal was to be formed, but this didn't happen and the temple leaders chalked it up to New Revelation.

But I couldn't stop looking back like Lot's wife did when Sodom got destroyed. (She became a salt shaker.) I liked when I was in college. I liked playing beer pong. I liked being a tree-hugging, ACLU loving liberal. I liked reading banned books. I liked socializing with office holders and evaluating the political system. Sure I drank, smoked and fornicated but I was just living my life. I did some good in the world too. But it's okay okay okay Satan pissed off you found the Bible.

"You might want to watch what you read, Jeff," the old man said with a smile. He loved me. "Mortify (deaden) your flesh." Might as well hang there like old man penis. No kissin', no huggin' till a wedding day. Fight it. Fight the devil, Jeff. Devil after me like a roaring lion bringing hot legs so pussy whipped, mini-skirts, cheri hair, curved lips, child-bearin' hips, she's sportin' high-heeled shoes, young man blood risin' rhythm rock the car on fire way down low thrustin' crusin' fast-slow Don't look with lust in your eye DAMMIT, God made me a MAN for fuckin' out loud!!!!!

Fighting angels with swords in your bedroom. Lines forming face and my hands cuts all over my wrists and arms don't get infected infected infected cleanse my body. Smoking cigarettes frantically and with old Hollywood-style freakishness. But --

say it say it bitch

The truth will set you free.
The truth will set you free
The truth will set you free

Awake no sleep 8 wks blackness around eyes

I left the paper and Hot Fisher, Texas, the Army of Yahweh, their specially printed Bibles left lying like a gun in the rain-splattered parking lot. Splitting Texas dirt and spruce. Night-time fleeing. A thief in the night.

I didn't understand the whole damn thing and I was scared to broach it with my thoughts, but I guess I really started believing in God, really for the first time, after I saw my child born. Such a miracle. I felt a calming and I knew the drama, the hocus pocus, legalism, destruction was over. I can't dig it. I go for that line in the Beatles' "Revolution" -- "but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out?" I couldn't believe I was holding a baby only a few minutes old.

I decided God was love. He's the paragon of righteousness, right? If I would love my kid even if he was gay, how could God do any less?

Just breath, Jeff. Live this moment. Love humanity. It's okay not to know all the answers.

We know a lot about love.

"Daddy Was a Preacher but Mama was a Go-Go Girl" -- Southern Culture on the Skids