Friday, October 6

Dear Jim,

It´s a gorgeous late afternoon in Sacto. I´m at my favorite coffee shop. I´m surprised it isn´t crowded.

This afternoon I talked with dad. He sounded strong but he wasn´t animated. It must be horrible living in a rest home.

Today´s the first of our four October birthdays. Too bad there is so much family strife. It
breaks dad´s heart. He wants there to be a reconciliation before he dies, but I told him it isn´t going to happen. I did not mention the birthday to him.

Poor dad. Mom too. Everything they dreamed about when they were young, and the close family they thought they were building when we were young, has been destroyed.

Sis II and I were talking about the family strife last year. She wondered whether there would have been less if you had not died. Then she said no, you would have taken the other side.

You would have tried though. You would have tried to keep dad and mom from being heartbroken. The three of us have tremendous respect for dad and mom. You revered them.

Mom and dad lived their religious beliefs. But it´s more than that. They had incredible love for each other. They showed us how to be in a relationship, how to treat a woman and a man.

You realized they were living their love of God and practicing their faith in God. Their faith was not bullshit. They weren´t looking for something to do by being active in the parish. They did not go to Mass for psychological healing but for spiritual healing. Your love of God, religion, The Church, and your trust in authority figures made you realize how beautiful they were.

One of the reasons I never married is because I knew I could not have a marriage like theirs. It´s something you and I would have had to talk about as I got into my forties. I didn´t want kids. Did you?

The thing I really like about my job is all the kids. They crack me up. I usually try to engage them. As women say, ¨They´re so cuuuute!¨

If I retire I will miss them. They keep me from being an old fart. It´s too bad I didn´t want kids. They are the greatest joy, especially if you are madly in love with your wife.

Luck has a lot to do with life. Dad and mom felt blessed with each other, with you, the girls, and me.

I think that´s why you revered them. They were blessed. They blessed us with their love.

Love,

Dave

Friday, September 29

Dear Jim,

It´s a breezy evening in Sacto. I just got through talking with one of the women who takes care of dad.

She said one of dad´s arms cannot extend all the way. He injured it a long time ago. He should have gone to the doctor but he didn´t want to.

Dad never told me that. Did he tell you?

The woman must have a great eye. She said dad´s shoulders are not straight. Who ever looks at somebody´s shoulders? When I went to the chiropractor my shoulders were not straight, so she corrected them.

Speaking of a great eye, I´m getting mine back. I was worried because I noticed I wasn´t observing like I used to. All the time on the computer and tablet were ruining what I was always great at and loved to do.

Now when I walk I look even more. I see more too. It´s exciting to notice things between houses that I never noticed before and to look in the distance and feel like I´m on an adventure.

When I come home I love to look through the bars of the gate as I am entering. I see the stairwells on the other side of the property, the roof of the car port and the trees and buildings across the alley and beyond.

There is so much to see. Or, it´s a great big beautiful world. It depends on how you want to look at it.

It may be a great big beautiful world, but I don´t feel beautiful and America sure as hell isn´t beautiful. But I have to observe. I love to do it more than anything else. It´s my connection to God, the great beyond, the great sky.

I was at a bus stop way down in the South Area on Wednesday morning. I waited 25 minutes for a bus as I looked west across a four lane street and a huge piece of property without buildings and with tall palm trees in the distance.

It was exciting and beautiful. It wasn´t windy like the South Area usually is. I was almost at peace. I wanted to travel. I wish the sky was bigger in my neighborhood.

I need to look around more at the same time our country becomes more of a police state. ¨What´s that bastard looking at?¨

It´s scary to know that I´m on somebody´s camera and that they´ve saved me because they feel threatened that I looked voraciously into the space between their house and their neighbor´s.

I say this all the time – We are terrified and incredibly unfree. It´s a heart breaker. I want to feel freer as I get older. But to feel freer I need people to stop being afraid.

Today I read a few pages of Paz. He was talking about the Presidency of Diaz. Paz said that Diaz put an end to anarchy, but also to liberty. Here in America I feel we have put an end to liberty but not to anarchy. People who are glad there are cameras everywhere still worry about getting assaulted. I´m on film, but criminals get to roam the streets.

I forgot to tell you about a fight I almost got in. I was sitting on a lawn outside a two story medical building. It was 5 pm on a Saturday.

I was tired from working. I wanted to sit down. Since I had been cooped up all day I wanted to get some sun. So I sat on the lawn facing west with my back to the building and sidewalk as I read the paper.

After a while, I heard two people behind me pass on their bicycles. I didn´t like their sound so I turned to look.

It was two pieces of white trash – a man and a woman. They were either junkies or homeless or both.

I went back to reading the paper. Then I heard them arguing. I looked again, then went back to reading the paper again.

Then there was another noise behind me so I turned quickly. The man was running after a guy his own age and taller who was hurriedly walking his own bike to avoid a confrontation between them.

I decided I better keep watching in case the taller guy got beat up. He kept placing his bike between him and the punk, screaming at the punk to leave him alone as the punk kept screaming at him.

I was getting scared. I wondered what would happen. Then the guy walking his bike turned into the driveway of the building as the punk followed him screaming.

I couldn´t see them anymore so I thought, ¨You better leave.¨ As I left I passed the
punk´s bicycle laying on the sidewalk. The woman was gone.

I thought, ¨He´s going to come after you.¨ Sure enough, as I was approaching the corner I heard screaming. More than once.

Then, when I knew for sure he was screaming at me I turned.

¨Did you take my phone!¨
¨No.¨
¨Did you take my phone!¨
¨No.¨

We were real close. I said as firmly and calmly as I could, ¨Leave me alone.¨

He left. I don´t know if I scared him when I didn´t back down, or if he was tired from arguing with the other guy.

I was scared all the way home. I looked for a cop but didn´t see one. Every block I looked behind me to see if he was following me.

I was nervous for hours.

Do you remember that time at the S. F. Art Museum when we were sitting in the lobby looking through the glass doors? You said to me, ¨You have a way of seeing things that puts them into focus the way that glass door puts into focus what´s going on on the street.¨

That was one of the best compliments I ever received.

Love,

Dave

Friday, September 22

Dear Jim,

I´m sitting inside a noisy coffee shop, the one I usually go to to sit outside. It´s too crowded outside and it´s windy too.

I just finished reading the NYT. There was an obituary about Bernie Casey – the receiver for the 49ers when I was 12 and you were 21.

I had forgotten about him. Turns out he was an artist, actor and writer in addition to a football player. In 1977 he wrote a movie in which three black guys talk about life in America from a black point of view. I´ll try to get it.

He played eight years. I would have loved to have been good in high school.

The photo in the paper showed him making a touchdown at Kezar. We loved Kezar. So did dad. It was great to complain about – those ridiculous lines to pee during halftime. It was magical and urban – not stuck at the edge of town. I loved to see young guys on the roof of the high school across the street watching the game, and the fans who watched the game from the roofs of the houses across the street.

Remember when we went to the 49er v.s. Cowboy championship game when I was a sophomore? The 49ers lost when Willard turned the wrong way for the pass in the end zone. We were sick.

The niners got outcouched. Landry found a weakness in Wilcox and that won the game.

I remember the two guys in their forties sitting across the aisle from us. One guy was huge. The other guy I saw two years later at Candlestick. They were splitting a half gallon of gin. Incredible!

Do you remember? You might not because you weren´t interested in drinking like I was. That was the year I got grounded for sneaking out on New Year´s Eve and not coming home till the next morning. Dad and mom had a cow.

I don´t know how we got the tickets. Did you buy them? Was one of them supposed to be for dad but he gave it to me? That´s something dad would do.

That game was the beginning of the end of my following of football. It took until I was 20 to stop giving a shit all together.

It wasn´t just the heartbreak of seeing the 49ers lose a game they could have won. It was those guys across from us drinking. It was mainly remembering the guy after the game looking for a fight, ¨Anybody who isn´t a 49er fan I´ll kick his ass.¨

That might have been the last one at Kezar. They tore it down a long time ago. Now it´s a little stadium where neighbors use the track to work out.

In that photo in the paper there was only the original rail between the stands and the field. As the country became more violent they put a fence up. Then they put a cage over the tunnel where the players came onto and off of the field. A ref was hit in the head with a whiskey bottle.

I loved standing at the tunnel to watch the players. One year the 49ers had a game against a team whose all-pro guard went to college with you. I said, ¨Hey man. Can I have your chin strap?¨ He gave it to me.

I was desperate to see big men. I even went to the parking lot after the game to see the players coming out the other end of the tunnel into the locker room.

One time I saw a player whose shoulders were so wide it scared me. Another time the wife of a traded 49er was standing next to me as her husband´s team was entering the locker room. She was complaining about the way the 49ers treated her husband.

I need big men Jim. Dad is the greatest. He is mature. He never complains.

There are not enough men like dad. But we still need heroes.

Remember that beautiful October Sunday when you were given a ticket to a 49er game at Candlestick? I listened to it on the radio. I was amazed at how boring it was: ¨God! I wonder what Jim is thinking?¨

You hated it. You said it was dreadful, that you could have been bicycling in Golden Gate Park.

The sun´s in about the same place in the sky as it was when Willard turned the wrong way in the end zone.

Love,

Dave

Saturday, September 16

Dear Jim,

Happy Mexican Independence Day. Last night I went to the celebration at the State Capitol.

It was great. The weather was perfect – in the 80´s and 70´s with no wind. You would have loved it.

I drank two bottles of water. So after each time I peed I wandered around. I felt awkward being white.

I wanted to speak Spanish, but it would have been contrived because everybody knows how to speak English. I understood a lot. I was very pleased with my improving ear.

You should have seen the women dancers. The color of their dresses were incredibly beautiful and romantic – very dramatic when they twirled. I wish I had one of them to come home to.

Toward the end of the night I moved way far from the stage, to the corner of the park on 10th and N. I sat on the lawn to watch the dancers. I must have been 150 yards away.

The lighting of the stage was very well done. I´ve never seen lighting in a performance I wanted to write home about. When I was up close to the stage, I had to decide what couple to focus on, what person to focus on, or whether or not to watch the men or the women. But from so far away, all I could see was a stage full of swirling colorful dresses. Poor America. We are so drab.

I was there from 5:30 to 8:00. I kept looking for a priest. Hopefully more than one. But I did not see one. That´s odd because the guy who started the movement for independence was a priest.

The bishop should have been there. The cathedral is two blocks away. He is a Mexican-American my age. He learned Spanish as an adult so he could be a more effective priest. He is someone Mexican-American parents can point to and tell their kids, ¨See. He loves his people so much he went out and learned the language.¨

Remember your Mexican friend from the seminary? I think he dropped out. All you guys who left would have made good priests.

Just before I went home the em cee led the Cry of Dolores – the Grito de Dolores – to celebrate the cry Padre Hildago made before the rebellion:

¡Viva Sacramento!
¡Viva!
¡Viva California!
¡Viva!
¡Viva America!
¡Viva!
¡¡¡Qué Viva Mexico!!!
¡¡¡¡¡¡VIVA!!!!!!d

I wonder if we´ll have a civil war.

Remember I told you I am reading Texas by James Michener? I have 400 pages to go in the 1300 page book. It´s getting tedious.

The most exiting parts are when he talks about Mexico.

Now I am at the settling of the panhandle. As I read the dialogue I visualize a TV show. Like a soap opera. I keep saying ¨He´s lost it.¨

One of the things I realize is how violent Texas was. Another thing I realize is they had no safety net. I wouldn´t have lasted a week in Texas.

I probably would not like it today, but I would love to see it. For now, I´ll keep pushin´ till I finish the book, just like a Texan.

Love,

Dave

Friday, September 8

Dear Jim,

It´s a beautiful Friday morning in Sacto. The killer heat is over, but it is still warm and the breeze is nice.

I´m outside at a table at my favorite coffee shop. At the other end is a minister who almost looks like a priest. His collar is different than a priest´s collar. He is talking with a guy he seems to have just met. Whether the meeting was arranged or not, I do not know.

I wish I had men to talk with. Last night I went to dinner with my neighbor, my friend.

He introduced himself to me when he moved in three years ago. He´s from Vietnam. We go to dinner once a week.

Last night he wanted me to watch a movie with him that he had already seen. So I did. He could not figure it out.

He brought his laptop over to watch it. He sat on the floor against the bed. I sat two feet from him in my beach chair as we looked at the laptop sitting on my folding chair.

It felt natural. I could have sat with him all night. I wish I felt a male camaraderie with other men like I do with him.

At work men never talk with me first. It pisses me off and breaks my heart.

It´s women who talk to me first. I appreciate the outgoingness of one woman. Other women talk with me because they know how to build relationships. They know I do not fit in. I appreciate their maturity, their adultness, to reach out to me.

The guys at work talk to each other, but they don´t talk to me unless I talk to them first. Even though they enjoy each other, I don´t think of their relationships as having male energy. I think of them as having gay energy or women energy.

The movie we watched was about a woman who cheated on her husband, got dumped by him, was not forgiven when she asked to be, then got dumped by the new guy. When she was asking for forgiveness and explaining herself, he husband said, ¨I would have listened to you then, but I do not want to hear it now. You lost your gamble.¨

I saw so much of myself in her. Her indecision. Her inability to find or make her place in the world. Her painful longing.

The expressions on her face were incredible. I don´t like movies, but I could have watched her forever.

I felt her pain, the pain of her husband too. I don´t think she had the confidence to get her life together after the divorce.

She was distraught throughout the movie. It sounded like me. Her lover said, ¨You´re in a permanent state of restlessness.¨ Just like me. Remember the letter you wrote about telling your colleague about my wanderings? You referred to me as a restless American, but in a good way.

She was telling her lover that she always has a dream of being in an airport and not being able to get out. Her lover says, ¨You mean you missed your flight?¨ She says, ¨No. I just can´t get out.¨

I´m reading Don Quixote. He is a fool just like the woman in the movie. She wanted romance. Don Quixote had a romantic image of himself – saving the world, being a hero. He saw things that were not there.

I see myself in everything that I have been reading and watching. Like you used to say, ¨Direct address. Direct address.¨

Love,

Dave

Friday, September 1

Dear Jim,

It´s 8:00 pm in the hot, smoky, dusty River City. It was 107°. In San Francisco it was 106°. I told dad I would rather be in Sacto than in S. F. when it´s that hot. Dad agreed. San Francisco is humid.

One good thing about the smoke is that it blocks the sun so I don´t have to worry much about sunburn.

I had a chiropractic appointment at 11:30. I didn´t want to stay home all morning so I went to the neighborhood park and read for an hour, then walked to her office.

I love going there. Every two months I go. I started going because I thought that since
I´m getting older, It would be a good idea to keep myself loose and to catch any problems at an early stage.

She´s good for me – a real old school character. She´s a few years older than I am so I hope she stays strong. She gets physical.

How are you? It´s September. You loved September and October. You used to go to the beach during Indian Summer and run, following the patterns of the water as it came to shore. I was afraid to take my shoes off at the beach because of the broken glass.

When I was in the 6th – 8th grade and you were in college, the city started to get dirty with broken bottles, pull tops, fast food packages, and dog shit.

The dog shit was incredible. Remember the time I stepped in some and you made me take my shoe off and put it in the trunk?

Our sisters were with us. It was a night in Indian Summer. We were at an ice cream parlor.

In the 80´s I was with some people on Irving Street. You remember all the shit – when a woman slipped and fell real hard. She was pissed off. I would be too.

Cities are cleaner today. Bottles are recycled. There hasn´t been pull tops for Lord knows how long. People put their hamburger wrappings in the garbage now. There isn´t a lot of dog shit on the street or in parks because people scoop their dog´s shit into a plastic bag, then put it in a garbage can.

What´s funny, and I have been saying this for twenty years, women don´t walk barefoot anymore. When we were young, women walked barefoot all the time, even with all the glass and dog shit.

Now there isn´t a lot of glass or poop, but only a few people walk barefoot. Being barefoot was a woman´s thing – their connection to the earth, their trust in the universe, their willingness to cut loose.

Maybe being barefoot makes them feel vulnerable in this age of terror. They are afraid of being raped or having their purse snatched. Being barefoot and carefree will make them more of a target.

I also think women don´t want to walk barefoot because the world is fast and furious. Women want the power that comes with wearing shoes, or at least to be taken seriously when they aren´t barefoot.

And last, the world has become so male in all the bad uses of the term, that women have become like the old time men, hard driving and afraid to be vulnerable.

If my feet weren´t deformed, I would walk barefoot all the time. I don´t want anyone to laugh at them or ask me about them.

When I went to a custom shoe guy for inserts 17 years ago, he told me that I have everything you do not want in a foot – real wide spread of toes, real narrow heal, high arch, high instep, and the index toe much longer than the big toe. Remember you used to laugh at my index toe protruding through the tip of my sock?

My chiropractor and I talk a lot. I made her laugh one day when I said, ¨I love my feet.¨

They have been through club feet and a major operation. If they had been normal, I would have been a little better in sports. I did so much with them – all my wanderings through Golden Gate Park and along the beach; my nine years as a gardener; all the boogieing; all the wandering in Sacramento; the time I walked along the railroad tracks from Chico to Marysville – that was a great trip.

In the last week I needed to be barefoot. Twice when I went to the park I took off my shoes and socks to walk on the dry lawn. My feet got dusty and I loved the touch of the dryness.

I would love to be barefoot all the time. It´s good for your soul.

Wednesday was the end of my 37th year in Sacto. I wish I could say Sacramento is a great city. But it isn´t. It has nice weather. The City has great views. But weather and vistas have nothing to do with whether a city has soul or whether the citizens trust each other.

I wish I could say I am happy and feel free here, but I can´t. I remember moving to the old part of town when I got here. I loved it because of the trees and the old houses, but I felt the people were phony. They thought they were cool like the people at 9th and Irving thought they were cool and the people on Carl Street thought they were cool and the people at City Lights thought they were cool.

Now the phony bohemians are priced out of Midtown and we have the Yuppies from the Bay Area. I still love the trees and old houses.

Well Jim, I´m trying to free myself and love the times I live in and love my fellow Americans who I do not like. I want you and mom to pray for me.

I´ve been reading Octavio Paz – The Labyrinth of Solitude – in Spanish. He wrote it in 1950. Did you read it?

It´s great. He talks about the inferiority complex Mexicans have. He said the macho attitude of Mexicans is the way Mexicans, male and female, deal with the pain they feel from being torn from their connection to nature, their Aztec past.

He says Mexicans have tremendous passion that is pent up from not being able to be the type of person and the type of nation they want to be. They have all these holidays where they get drunk, scream ¡Viva Mexico!, and knife each other. But those things don´t heal the ¨rupture¨ from nature or get them on the track to ¨transcending their isolation.¨

I´m trying to heal my rupture and transcend my isolation. I´ve already drank and yelled. I never had the ability to fight.

If Mexicans never heal themselves, they can still scream ¡Viva Mexico! and ¡Viva Maria!.

I better heal myself, because there´s nothing for me, as an American or a Catholic, to shout about.

Love,

Dave

Friday, August 18

Dear Jim,

It´s been in the eighties for over a week. It feels like the Bay Area. I´ve been sleeping well and have not turned the air-conditioner on for a while.

I just finished reading an article in the NYT sports section. It says the owner of the Red Sox wants to change the name of the street outside Fenway Park. It´s called Yawkey Way.

The owner thinks Yawkey was a racist for being the last owner to hire black players. I don´t know if you would agree with the owner.

I don´t. If the owner was honest, he would say he is asking the City of Boston to change the name so he doesn´t lose customers as the country becomes less white.

What a statement that would be. Conservatives would appreciate the honesty. Liberals would hate the honesty. I don´t know what the uneducated non-white people would think. Maybe they would say they wish the motives were pure, but they would probably shrug and say they are glad the name was changed.

Maybe they don´t give a shit. It´s the educated non-white people who claim racism about everything.

There is a controversy over removing Confederate statues in Southern parks and other public places. If the movement succeeds, where will it end? Statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be removed. Teddy Roosevelt´s statue would be removed. So would FDR´s. Jackson Street would be renamed. Sutter Street would be renamed.

There was a letter-to-the-editor that said what is being overlooked in the debate about Confederate statues is the names of two forts – Fort Hood and Fort Bragg. The author says both forts are named after Confederate generals. He says renaming these forts is imperative, much more important than removing monuments.

I don know if General Hood or General Bragg were talented generals. If they were then don´t change the names. If they weren´t, then why keep the name of a lousy general?

The writer of the letter said that since the generals were fighting for slavery, their names should be removed. But what if they had great courage and inspired their soldiers and were trusted by their president? They could inspire black, brown, and yellow soldiers to have high standards of bravery and patriotism for their country like those two generals did for theirs. In fact, it is showing confidence as a nation and as a branch of the government to name two forts after noble enemies. How is that for diversity and tolerance?

It amazes me that so many educated white people jump on the racism bandwagon. They don´t see, or won´t admit, that the more white people admit guilt, the more demands will be made of them and the more they will be hated.

It´s easy for non-white people to claim racism and protest against racism. The universities support them. The major media supports them. It´s a lot easier to say fuck you today than in 1960. Maybe that is a reason King didn´t say it. It wasn´t socially acceptable. It is a lot easier to blame other people for your problems than in 1960.

There´s a billboard at one of the bus shelters. It shows a black college graduate in his cap and gown with his son with him. The sign says schools not prisons.

What horseshit. Most black guys don´t care about school. Universities would love to have more black male students. Dad said he stopped voting for school bonds because the schools got worse and worse as they received more and more money.

Remember when you were in college? The black activists weren´t there to get PHD´s and become diplomats to African countries. They were there to cause trouble. That friend of Sis II´s was hounded by the black activists to join the BSU but she refused.

Back to the South. The other day I came across a baseball anthology. One of the chapters was about announcers. The writer said that most of the great announcers grew up in the South. The reason is that storytelling between pitches is what makes announcers great. Announcers from the South grew up sitting on the front porch where everybody told stories. I remember when you said America´s greatest fiction writers are from the South – Melville, Faulkner, O´Connor.

It´s funny. I stopped following baseball a long time ago. You always followed it.

One of the major changes I noticed is how big the arms of the players are. When the Yankees were great around 1999, I was astounded when I saw a photograph of their huge arms being raised after a home run. I said to the guys I worked with – ¨Willie Mays didn´t have arms like that.¨

Remember that night you and dad came to see me play and I had all those passed balls? I was embarrassed. You were disgusted. Dad didn´t say anything.

I never saw you play. I remember how dejected you were when you were cut in the last round at college. I remember the green sweatshirt you wore to practice. I kept it a long time.

When I played Pony League the coach liked my drive. You remember him. He knew I loved being a catcher.

He also coached Babe Ruth. Once he invited me to catch at one of their practice games. Wow. The pitcher was fast, but he always hit my target. It was scary, but it was easier than catching the pitchers at my level.

Another time the coach said there was a Babe Ruth game at Balboa Park. Why don´t I go see the best catcher and best pitcher working together?

I could not believe how good they were. The catcher was so much more talented, powerful, and confident than I was that I wasn´t envious. I just accepted it and realized I wasn´t going anywhere.

That catcher never wanted to go anywhere. He stopped playing baseball before his senior year. He wanted to spend his non-school time being a salesman.

I love you Jim.

Is there a Polo Grounds up there?

Love,

Dave

Friday, August 25

Dear Jim,

How are you? Did you watch the eclipse on Monday? I wasn´t interested.

It was cool on Sunday and very cool on Monday. Monday reminded me of being South of Market. I wonder if the eclipse was why it was so cool.

I´m sitting outside at my favorite coffee shop. It is beautiful. It´s cool but not breezy, so you don´t get colder the longer you sit here. I got here at ten to seven.

I like coming here on Friday because the staff is in their street clothes. Usually they wear black, so their bright clothes bring the place to life.

There wasn´t much in the paper this morning. There was a big fight between a catcher and a batter at a Yankee-Tiger game. The Tigers are way back and the Yankees are 5 games back.

The Giants are 39 games out. Isn´t that funny? In May they weren´t drawing very well, so I don´t know how they are drawing now.

I´ve only been to one game at their downtown stadium. It opened around 2000. I went with dad and his church group around 2005. I can´t remember. It was a beautiful night and it is a beautiful stadium. You would like it.

There is a great view of the bay. The stadium is so nice it would be a wonderful place to sit during lunch, look out on the bay, then walk back to work.

The City has changed a lot. South of Market was a skid row when you started high school. By the time I graduated it was mostly rubble. Now it´s an area of ugly modern buildings, except for the stadium.

There are a lot of expensive apartments and condos, very tall and as ugly as the new office buildings. And there are still a lot of slobs, especially at the Cal Trans station. People who have a ticket can´t sit in the sun outside the depot because all the slobs sit out there and come in to use the bathroom. It´s a disgrace.

A city council guy in Sacto wants to see if there is a way to get the homeless guys working. It sounds like something from the fifties where an employer would come to skid row, pick up a bunch of guys, then drop them off at the end of the day.

I tried to call dad the other day – three times. He has a new friend who he was talking with, so the woman who runs the place kept telling me to call back. After the third call she explained what was going on and asked me to call another day.

Dad needs all the friends he can get. So do I. So did you. It´s amazing, the isolation of the three of us. Dad had mom and has always had God. I don´t think he felt isolated when mom was alive, but he always wished he had more friends. The guy from the navy he loved died in the eighties. The other guy dad really liked got Alzheimer´s in the nineties.

You and I had each other, but that was changing when you died. I tell people we were drifting apart when you got killed, that your death could not have come at a worse time for me. I say, ¨I don´t think we would have become affectionate again.¨

It would have been wrenching if you lived. We would have had to talk things over why I am a failure. If we didn´t, or if we did and things didn´t improve, we both would have lost.

We are different. I am the eccentric. You hated the anarchistic times. You were big on authority and order. I am defiant, so I fit right in to the fuck you society.

Even though today´s America is perverted and anarchistic, it is also very conformist. You can go to the river to get buttfucked, but you are a weirdo if you sit for three hours looking at naked trees. You can scream that you have the right to say any profane thing you want to, but if you quietly say we should remove all the surveillance cameras, people feel threatened by you.

I think you felt that I should have grown up, stopped rebelling, got a career. I look at all the tattooed idiots, all the sluts, all the queers and say, ¨You guys are pretenders. You don´t know what it´s like to be different.¨

We are different Jim. That is what made our drifting apart scary and heartbreaking. I needed you for your respectability. You needed me for my free spirit. I hated the respectable world more as I got older. You felt I needed to rein in my free spirit.

That´s it for now.

Love,

Dave

Sunday, August 13

Dear Jim,

It’s early. The sun isn’t up. I feel like sitting outside, but its cold so I’m in the kitchen with the window open.

Last night I didn’t eat much. I feel light. I’m trying to eat less at dinner, but I’m also trying to eat more each day.

I’ve gotten thin. In high school I weighed 173. Twenty – five years ago I weighed 155 -160. Now I weigh 135. Eight more pounds than you weighed all your life.

A lot of people say I’m too thin and look shitty. I think one of the reasons I’ve gotten thin is I’m trying to be like you. I’ve never been able to move on from your death so I cling to you by trying to look like you.

Like dad used to say, “Life is a vale of tears.”

Tuesday is the anniversary of when dad proposed to mom – the Feast of the Assumption. I didn’t know that until dad told me a few years ago. I call him every year to acknowledge it. I won’t be able to this year, so I will call him tomorrow. He appreciates it.

Poor dad. Some men from his retreat group were supposed to visit him on Friday. I called him that day at 4:30 and said, “How’d it go?” He said, “They didn’t come.”

He was really disappointed. I felt sad. He was excited that they were coming. He needed the company.

Dad tried to be stoic. He said something like – things don’t always go as you hope they will. When we hung up he said, “Call me tomorrow.” I said, “I will.”

I didn’t want to. I had to come home to call when I really need to stay out late on Saturdays. I said to myself, “Christ Dave, dad would do it for you. He’d visit you all the time if you were an invalid.”

Today is Sunday the 13th. Thirteen is considered an unlucky number, but somebody said to me that thirteen is a great number – the twelve apostles and Jesus. I thought that was profound. Maybe that’s too New Age for you.

I was attracted to the New Age for a long time because I knew something was very wrong with our society. Astrology, numerology, color, sound, vibration, and the voice spoke to me. They provided me with passion and soul the way blues did before my New Age stage.

But the New Age is mainly about prosperity – getting rich. Nobody in the New Age is saying walk everywhere you go and don’t spend a lot of money. Leaders of the New Age are as evangelical as television preachers, only New Agers don’t have the balls, the common sense, or the vision to believe in God, or the passion to kill or die for what they believe in, or the passion to inspire others to kill or die for their own beliefs.

Our society is dead Jim. I think of the vitality that has gone out of me. I think of how terrified people are of one another. Won’t look at one another.

The other day as I was going through articles I had cut out and poems I had cut out so that I could get rid of the ones that didn’t mean anything anymore. I threw a lot out. Some of them smelled.

There was one I wanted to keep but it was musty. I went online to see if it was there. It was, so I threw it out.

It was about the deadness of our society. I read it in 1998 when my friends were getting rid of old books.I don’t know when it was written, but I guess the guy was 25 when he wrote it.

He approaches our dead society by writing about jail. He says we grow up in cribs and high chairs and car seats. We sit in classrooms, work in offices, travel in cars. All our life we are confined.

He says we are afraid to say what we feel because speaking about what we feel is not socially acceptable. We fear what’s locked up inside us and we fear others because we don’t trust ourselves.

He says that because more and more people are in jail, we are now a prison society and we accept our prison society. He is right. There is no shame or embarrassment about going to jail. People love having security guards and security cameras everywhere because they are afraid.

That’s interesting. Criminals have no fear of going to jail or preying upon people. Law-abiding people are willing to be treated like criminals with cops everywhere and cameras everywhere, but nobody feels safer. I wish people would get courageous and say, “FTS. We are tired of being treated like criminals you are supposed to protect us from.”

But we Americans don’t have the pride or ego to do it. It outrages me when I think that the outstanding quality of Americans isn’t Yankee ingenuity, American know-how, the can do society or, as they used to say about San Francisco, the city that knows how. It’s fear. We are scared shitless.

So am I. I am incredibly stifled. There is no sense of freedom when I walk. Everyone is either afraid or in their little world. Houses have bars or burglar alarms or cameras. There are motion detectors and killer dogs. Businesses have cameras and there are cameras at major intersections.

When I look someone in the eye their eye seldom has a sparkle – usually a glare. If I smile at a woman or a kid, I have to worry about a dirty look or having the cops called on me. I am afraid to look people in the eye. That’s what America has come to .

Well Jim. When I was young I was described as a free spirit. Now I feel like a weirdo.

Pray for me.

Love,

Dave

Friday, August 4

Dear Jim,

It’s overcast today. Just like downtown San Francisco.

I’m sitting outside at my favorite coffee shop. I just finished reading an article about the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

It made me ill. You and I hated the hippies. I have always felt that the hippies milked San Francisco for everything they could, then went out to make as much money as they could – and do as many illegal and immoral things as they could – just like the capitalists they hated so much. I know you agree with me.

You had a more difficult time with the hippies than I did because you were their age. They hated western culture. You loved it. They hated Christianity. You loved Catholicism. You read great books. They read the North Beach horseshit. You were sick because of what Vatican II did to The Church. They wanted to rock out at Mass or pretend they were Buddhists. They loved The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. You liked Glenn Yarborough and Ed Ames. They smoked dope every day. You were never drunk or stoned. They were promiscuous. You weren’t. They thought they were cool. You knew you weren’t and you hated their arrogance and hypocrisy. They thought it was their God-given right to avoid Vietnam. You felt guilty that you got out on a medical but other people had to die.

The hippies broke your heart Jim. You had nothing to be part of, even though you opposed the war and had the highest hopes for Bobby Kennedy.

You were close to Sis I, but you had nothing in common with her hippie friends. The Church you loved had gone to hell. Even though you had a great career ahead of you, you didn’t feel a part of the times. You didn’t love America. You loved baseball and you loved the family, especially mom and dad.

I remember when you said you wished you had gone to Berkeley instead of S. F. State. You said you would have been exposed to more interesting people. I think you meant people who were not from the U. S. The weather might have had something to do with it too. The weather at state is horrible and the campus was ugly. Berkeley gets lots of sun and back then the campus was beautiful.

In 1991 I went to Berkeley one Saturday – one of the famous streets near the university. It was like Haight Street in 1967. I was disgusted. I haven’t been back.

I haven’t been to The City, except to catch the peninsula train to Sis II’s, in a long time. I sure won’t go this year. The Summer of Love my ass. It was the summer of promiscuity.

I remember being on Haight Street before it got jumping. A buddy of mine and his mother had moved over from The Haight. She saw what was coming and wanted to keep her son from it. He ended up being a stoner and a drug dealer.

Anyway, he said “Let’s go over to The Haight and see the beats.” So we took the bus over.

I assume it was 1966. It might have been 1965, but I don’t know if dad and mom would have let me go that far in 1965.

It was sunny so it had to be Spring or Fall. It wasn’t cold. There were some guys with really long hair who looked weird to me.

We went into the liquor store with all the pussy magazines, then looked at Cavalier and Carnival. Remember those? I had never seen such a thing.

The guys with long hair may have been weird, but the neighborhood wasn’t. Just different. There wasn’t trash all over like in 1967.

I didn’t return to Haight Street until dad and mom and I, and maybe Sis II, took that woman from Ohio over to see the hippies in the summer of 1967. It was foggy as hell and all the slobs were bundled up and there was trash everywhere. The woman was astounded. Between the fog and Haight Street, she probably never forgot San Francisco.

Our great aunt and uncle hated the hippies, though they would never say it. What had San Francisco come to?

One sunny Sunday after dinner I went with dad to take auntie and uncle to their apartment on Bush Street. There was a concert in the Panhandle and hippies everywhere. We passed a hairy bastard just as he was letting go a humongous loogie. It astounded even me. Auntie was disgusted.

What’s amazing about the hippies and their getting wasted was that they did it in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It dawned on me in my forties that if you live in San Francisco and have to get stoned every day, you are an idiot.

It’s not that I never got wasted. I did a lot. But I could walk for hours in Golden Gate Park without being stoned or drunk and marvel at the beauty. I could sit for an hour at the beach looking at the horizon and dreaming.

I’m naturally high. That’s one reason I have contempt for the motherfuckers.

One more story before I go. When I started gardening I was 30. One of my customers was 65. She knew I grew up in San Francisco.

After a few visits she came out to me while I was weeding. We started talking. The she said, “What were the hippies like?”

My blood began to boil. I put the trowel down. I looked at her. I said, “My grandfather had all the prejudices of his day. But he was honest. He went to Mass every Sunday. He knew he was a sinner.” Then I said, “The hippies weren’t honest. They didn’t believe in sin, but they were the biggest sinners of all.”

This was fun Jim.

In our next life we’ll live in San Francisco when it’s beautiful.

Love,

Dave