Do Police Get Tested For Drugs and Steroids????

         Gentle Readers,

Forgive the fomatting, as the PC is still vexing us.  Speaking of vexations, many are disturbed by the presence of man-made monsters, one of the most famous of which is Frankenstein’s Monster.  Some people refer to the monster simply as ‘Frankenstein’.  There are a lot of these Franskenteins in the world, the most famous being the United States Government.  We create and enable them and then they rattle the chains, break loose from the stone walls of the government buildings and come create nightmares in our lives.

At one end of the scale we have Bacarat Obama, Disaster in Chief of These United States and on the lower, lower, lowest end of the scale are those we pay to protect ourselves and our property…the police.  Currently, the Obama administration is using these police as a tool of terror and fear as it employs them into the Neverending War we are involved in.  It used to be nice when wars ended. 

It also used to be nice when a police officer was a sign of safety, not a call for fear.  On Youtube, for instance, you have numerous instances of police beating innocent motorists because the civilians have the temerity to film the jackboot thugs in action.  These days, if you buy a gun or a camera, you need to buy both, not one or the other.  If you buy a gun, you need a camera to show the unjust way the police treat you when they try to take it away from you.  If you buy a camera, you need a gun to protect yourself from being beaten by officers wearing uniforms that you paid for.

We pay a lot in taxes, to the fed, to the stores but most disturbingly, to our local governments.  In our instance, we must pay several thousand to the school district, even though we have never spawned a child.  Why do we have to pay for the education of a bunch of little wankers when we had the good sense to ‘keep it in our pants’?  We pay for our trash to be collected and we just has an increase in our water and sewer bills.  So if you pay for the water, the schools, the trash and sewer – why do you have to fork over even more cash to have the township collect all the other checks we send?  We have to pay the police, of course.

Did you ever get pulled over for speeding or some other minor infraction of traffic codes and have some beast with ‘roid rage bark at you through the window, while flexing biceps which are unusually bulging with veins, like those veins in his neck as he screams at you for asking a question.  If you are like us, and have long hair and look like a liberal, it is even worse.

If noise comes from our yard, we are confronted by one of these monsters.  It has not happened for a long time.  If noise comes from another yard and we call the police, the chief tells us that they do not have equipment to measure decibels and so the ordinance is unenforcable.  So we are paying to have laws unenforced.  A judge told us to sue the township but the fear of harrassment stops us.  If a neighbor is persistent in destroying a section of our property and the cops are called in, the focus is not on the neighbor who is trying to build on my property…we get grief because the officer sees long hair and for some reason ‘roid ragers hate that.  Maybe because a lot of them go bald from using the stuff.

This is a bigger issue than our yard and long hair, however.  The drug war, which is the biggest waste of money ever to face a country which cannot balance a budget and even threatens to take Social Sevurity away from senior citizens. allow police to search homes, yards, automobiles, test your breath and your blood.  In all our years of paying taxes, we have never seen a breakdown which shows payments for drug tests on policia.  A lot of them are known to confiscate drugs and keep them for personal use and it is obvious that many of them use steroids in order to be bigger and stronger than the bad guys…they do not realise that the rage induced by the steroids makes them criminal in the cranium.

Office workers, Walmart workers, garbage truck workers, forklift operators…all of these people are subject to random drug testing…what about the police? The dangerous ones with the guns, pepper spray and lots of buddies to help beat on you.  If you pay a tax, you should demand that police be tested for drugs and, specifically, steroids.  Why would anybody be afraid to do this unless they were terrified of the thugs?

We know that not all police are bad.  Our own grandfather was a typical drunken, irish paddy precinct copper.  He used to beat his wife and kids and they did not even have steroids back then.  The thing is…just pay attention the next time you get pulled over or see somebody else in that unfortunate position.  See if the cop is red in the face.  See if the veins in his neck look ready to pop.  See if you can make him chase you by taking his photo.

They had cops like this in Nazi Germany and also in Russia, back when it was the Soviet Union.  Then, America was too good to allow such shit.  Not anymore.  This weekend, when you are on your way to a fun event and notice the ton of cops on the highway, earning overtime while getting high on confiscated pot, think about the fairness of them NOT being tested regularly.

From The Poetry Corner

Returning Rhymerinos,

This song is not the sort of thing worth putting in our upcoming book of poems but it came out in a burst and so it gets typed anyway.
We hear a lot about bullies in the media today. Thirty years ago it was not so. Fifty years ago, when the world seemed pure because we could not see it, we did not think of bullies. We did not hear reports of third grade students being arrested for threatening classmates.
Fifty years ago we learned to arm ourselves against such people and even our toys suggested killing. Here are a couple of my toys from the 1960s… Once we reached age nine or ten, we replaced these with real knives and rifles.

That really has nothing to do with this song but Michael Hendrick just wanted to show off his toys, as males are prone to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Neighborhood Bully (not to be confused with the Bob Dylan composition, of course)

She’s the neighborhood bully (3X)
I found out today.
She pushes from the left
She pushes from the right
I wish she would fuck off
So I could sleep tonight
Oh, the neighborhood Bully
Always got to have her way.

She don’t know which is East,
Don’t know where is South.
One thing she knows for certain
– how to run her fat old mouth
She the neighborhood bully (3X)
Wearing her welcome out today.

She shaves her head a-baldy
So she has no color hair.
She gets a tan in floodlights
Then bitches about the glare.
She the neighborhood bully (3X)
I just stop and stare.

She always has an alias,
Says she is a cop.
She comes on so damn shrill
She can force your balls to drop.
She the neighborhood bully (3X)
Ball-dropping waste of time.

(Drink 4X cans of Guinness and repeat first verse 3X)

Meanwhile, Back On Sutters Mill Lane…

Faithful Readers,
As today is a celebration of sorts, we look back – as is done at most celebratory times. One year ago today, our intrepid verbalist arrived in Ellensburg to make his home. He left behind Pennsylvania after fifty (‘fifty stinking years’ as he puts it) annums. He enjoys Ellensburg immensely but shudders in disgust when thinking back on his old neighborhood. Shown in the photo above, he had a nice little house there, all hidden in the shrubbery.

The odd thing is, it remained the only house with shrubbery in the neighborhood. When he arrived, no shrubs existed. He planted all of them with the exception of the two unimaginative forsythias on each corner…which did make nice homes for the robins. Now the shrubs have probably all been cut down, thanks to the PA Dutch/nazi german control-issues most inhabitants possess…think Stepford Wives only fat and stupid with poor taste in food.
They hate things that grow. They threw weed killer on his sunflowers. No beauty allowed.

When he built a porch to improve the property, Shiela Septic commented. Shiela and her two Septic parents always had a comment. One reason she could not keep a man for more than two months was largely due to suitors (haha) having to listen to parental wis-dumb through a cloud of smoke. White trash smoke. See, Shiela’s parents visited every day, an odd thing for a woman in her early fifties(they helped her with the down-payment and it thus became their vacation home) and they smoked a lot.
Maybe they are dead now! One can only hope!

Oh! The comment…in her typical daily rage, Shiela went red in the face (she was always red in the face, really) and let forth a pithy insult…”Why don’t you go sit on your porch?” The emphasis placed on the word ‘porch’ spat out in a tone usually reserved for crack houses. The sheer lameness of the insult disappointed him.
Sometimes she would find a man and the parents’ cars would not be seen for a week. Then they would show up and the new boyfriend’s car would disappear, along with the schmuck who saw something in her.

For those unfamiliar with white trash smoke – it is not ommitted solely by caucasians, it is called that because it comes from the cheapo brand of cigarettes that are displayed alongside the lottery machine. White trash love lottery tickets. Mostly anybody with no money loves a lottery ticket. Since we are all caucasians here, white trash is fair game, we reckon!

In his Ellensburg motel room, Hendrick found twenty lottery tickets under the cushion of the kitchenette table, coincidentally.
This sure sign that rooms at the Motel 6 in Ellensburg are never really clean unless guests clean up (yeah, right) after themselves following a stay is an open warning to all. Five months is a long time. The tickets were dated September 1, 2013. Some loser paid $20 to play Room Number 223 twenty times, as if ending up in that room was a good omen. No one lifted the cushion to clean there for five full months before Hendrick entered the room. Remember that, Motel 6-ers!

Yet, somehow, even the Motel 6 was an improvement from the cute little house on Sutters Mill Lane. People were friendly and accepting. The immediate acceptance Hendrick found in the burg amazed him. He likened it to the friendly little towns in upstate New York from whence he came. He loved his property, he just hated the narrow-minded fucks surrounding it. Here we see our hero in Room 223, framed by an example of how he made it a home for seven months. And here is a shot of the wonderful Washington sky from the motel balcony. The sky could not even be seen in Temple, but for the wires, lights and pollution. Let it suffice to say he carries no regrets in leaving…all regret stayed in Temple with the Septics and all the other local dutch folk. Dutch people look friendly on the label of a can of corn but they are mean bastards in real life and if Michael Hendrick could pass on one life lesson, that might be it…

Of course no place is perfect and Ellensburg is not without it’s own supply of dumb assholes. Most of them move here from places like Seattle or other urban centers. They bring their ways…the leased cars, the lack of real property of their own, the tribal sports rituals. They don’t get it. Some of them are ex-police who have PTSD and sleep with all the lights on each night spying on neighbors who’s lives they intend to micro-manage once they get settled. The usual white trash stuff…

In Temple, Hendrick sold his home for $20,000 below the market value and made up the difference on Wall Street by trading in chinese stocks. The rest of the houses took a plunge in value and any money the Septics’ put into the little nightmare they call home is lost. By the time the mortgage is paid off, the house will be worth about forty thousand dollars less than it was when purchased.
Tough, huh? That’s one thing that can happen when you piss off the neighbors…they take your money in ways you cannot control…if you have neighbors like Michael Hendrick, that is…

We do not condone his actions but they do amuse us!

This is a free blog…if you find typos, please live with them.

Michael Hendrick Looks At Nipples

Curious Readers,

The title of this post may not come as a surprise to some, yet even Michael Hendrick admits that there are some nipples he does not want to see. Like Chris Christie’s…in the attached photo we see the big lug (Christie, not Hendrick) looking down to see if his nipples have stiffened from the touch of Mitt Romney. Christie will never be a US president unless an assassination occurs when he is a veep.

For many years, whoever was president on the twentieth year died in office. It started in 1820 when Henry Harrison stole more land from the native americans. He defeated Tecumseh at Tippecanoe and made a slogan of the event to run for president…and won. Tecumseh’s half-brother and medicine man, Tenskwatawa, threw a curse at all ‘great chiefs’ of the US, who were chosen every twenty years. Their deaths would be a reminder of what the US did to the Shawnee.

Christie is smart to (try and) run now. No prez had died since G.W. Bush’s buddy’s son screwed up his attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan. It goes largely unreported that John Hinckley Jr. had a scheduled lunch with Neil Bush, son of you know who, the day after the shooting. He did not make it.

It is well-known that the Hinckleys and Bushes have not only been in business together since the early 1960s but that the Bush family and the Hinckleys share a common ancestor – an oilman no less, Samuel Hinckley. Of course, after all that trouble Dubbya Bush, the last president before Obama, managed to kill any respect people had for him – but he lives.

But what about the nipples?

We promised you nipples, you are thinking…

It all started when Hendrick set to work merchandising the books he likes to sell. One of them is this one from 1974. 

Just about to hang it on the wall of a local merchant who kindly gave him space to sell, he thought he should ask the owner if it was alright to post partial nudity. The store owner is a woman and when describing the cover, he got to the part about the cartoon images covering the nipples. He started to describe the cover but ended up pointing vaguely towards his own chest and saying ‘private parts’.

Damn it – he was embarrassed!

But why?

It does give us pause to ponder, however, why male nipples are legal to show anyplace in public but showing female nipples can result in a fine, sometimes even for breastfeeding in the wrong spot. It has happened.

Back in the 1970s at the start of the punk rock movement, singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan, seen below,  ran into problems with his first musical group…The Nipple Erectors. The record company would not accept his ‘male/female both have them’ logic and so he changed the name of his group to The Nips. Later he formed The Pogues, based on the term Pogue Mahone, which was a derivation of the gaelic phrase meaning ‘kiss my ass’. In this world kissing ass is preferred to mentioning nipples – for some people, anyway.

Even male cats have eight nipples…or six…it is hard to hold the rascal steady enough to count them. Male cats allow tiny kittens to pretend they are nursing on them. They do this when the momma cat is out hunting and it keeps the little ones secure. We wonder if Chris Christie ever tried that but we do not want that image floating around our cerebral cortex…or yours! Sorry for that – blame it on Hendrick.

There are many types of nipples and even more ways to look at them. Instead of listing them all, we turn to Hendrick.

At fifty-seven years of age, he has seen more nipples than the average man (in person, that is). He chose to relate a bit about ‘funny nipples’. Some people, who have little sexual experience, find them funny just as diners who have never eaten a falafel think that sounds funny.

In his now-out-of-print novel (Portrait Of The Artist As A Little Bastard, TumbleWeedBastard Press, 2014) he tells of going to grade school in Upstate New York’s Mohawk Valley.

Sitting next to him, at the back of the classroom in the ‘tall’ section, RandyNiples always flinched at the muffled laugh which arose whenever a nun called his name. He could not do much about it in class but he frequently ran in circles on the recess yard shouting, “It’s Nip-PELS!!!…I tell ya!!!…Nip-PELS!!!”

Our Dear Michael occasionally wonders what happened to Randy. The way he ran in circles would have made him true presidential material!

Obviously Pregnant???

Timid Readers, Please do not let the image of the devil scare you. We just post that to focus the attention on good things which have been turned to evil.
Like the Bible.
On Christmas Eve, Michael Hendrick reportedly attended a function to celebrate the spiritual holiday. The highlight was the host telling a story as it was described. The ‘story’ was the saga of the birth of Christ. It may have deserved a better designation than ‘story’but when the Bible is read from a Kindle or an I-Pad,  it stops being the Word of God.
According to the E-Bible, Mary was not with child as we have been taught these many years. No, now we learn that the Mother of the Christ was not ‘with child’ but she was obviously pregnant.
The first definition of ‘pregnant’in Merriam Webster is ‘cogent,’ meaning…: very clear and easy for the mind to accept and believe ~ or we can look at meaning One – having power to compel or constrain.. The word ‘obviously’ is not one which even appears in the Bible. The first known use of the word ‘obvious’ occurred in 1603…confusing? fuck, yeah!

So what are they doing to the message of the Living Christ which was put in text for good reason? We do not know. It is subversive and changes the way today’s so-called christians look at the scripture. A true Christian would protect the Word of God…what would YOU do?

Michael Hendrick on The Clash – “I Made Joe Strummer Avoid Drugs!”

Worldly Readers,
We miss Joe Strummer. Today we listened to The Clash Live At Shea Stadium and it brought back all those years to the Punk Rock days. Joe’s star still shines bright. He will always be missed by many. He was a good man.
In 1980, the start of the Reagan Era, we bundled up and went to the Sears Store at the mall and stood in line to buy our tickets. That is what you did back then. If you got there early, you got a better seat – it was that simple. We ended up with seats around the seventh row or so…good seats but we must have arrived late since we cannot remember who opened the show.
In the early days of punk, band members made a habit of spitting on the crowd while playing live and the pogoing crowds reciprocated moistly.
Like standing in line, it’s just what you did.
With this in mind and the spirit in our hearts, we set out in the cold last days of February (a crueler month than April, really)to get some drugs for the show. Two things daunted us…Reaganomics and a dry spell, translated ‘no money, no drugs’. As oft happened, we ended up at the door of Crazy Timmy. Crazy Timmy is actually the only person so crazy that we don’t have to change his name here…like Ferd. Timmy had been tossed by the Armed Forces after some schizoid incident involving a stolen tank and a German village.
His Section Eight got him plenty of pills – all the wrong kind. Psyche meds were more primitive in the seventies and eighties. They made you fat and sleepy and depressed. Today we have much-improved meds which give wack-jobs the gumption to initiate a school shooting.
Timmy dispensed a variety of pills that we never saw before. Even Timmy didn’t take them but he had to get the prescriptions filled so he could keep claiming his full GI benefits for being nutzed. So we pocketed the crappy tablets. We went there to see if we could get some pot to smoke before the show, actually, but even Timmy had no reef. He bought an ounce a month with his VA check and then cut it up into thirty bags or thirty one, for each day of the month; then he would smoke his way through them in the first week.
The pills were an afterthought because we thought he may have something abuse-ably fun.
The main thing we recall is the solid front they put up; Strummer out front, writhing around the mic-stand as he sang, Paul Simonon laying down the bass with legs spread in shooting stance, Topper Headon banging away on the skins and Mick Jones up there with Strummer, playing off him.
They launched into the London Calling Tour and they rocked the Casbah. Michael Hendrick, who drove us to the show, launched a handful of lithium, depakote and other odd dopamine blockers directly at Strummer’s head. Strummer clocked them coming from his spot at the edge of the stage. He ducked to stage left without missing a note. Hendrick volleyed a second, smaller batch of meds at Joe, who avoided them by ducking to stage right.
Yes, Dear Friends, he avoided the drugs.
We were there and saw it happen.
A great show!
God Bless Joe Strummer. We are not sure about Michael Hendrick.

This is a free blog. If you find any errors, report them to the authorities.

Free Book by Michael Hendrick, “Last Notes From a Tumbleweed Bastard: East to West” – Crazed Author Gives It Away!!!

Literate Readers,

Our excuse for being away this time is that we have been busy…as usual for the past year or so…

To keep it to the short blog form, we are pleased to announce that a member of our LNTB blog staff is releasing his first of three books in October just before Samhain.  It shall be printed by the Sheradin Press, prestigious publisher of the Paris Review, Cornell University Press and many other upscale publications.

Last Notes From a Tumbleweed Bastard: East to West by Michael Hendrick will be released in Ebook format but a number of hard copies of the journal-sized book will be free for the asking…depending on who asks, and how nicely! If you would like a copy, you can send a request here.

If you want to send Mr. Hendrick a couple bucks for postage, we are sure he will appreciate it.

The volume is a mix of flash fiction and poetry. Half was written along the Eastern Seaboard of the USA and the other half, entirely in the State of Washington during the past year, Hendrick’s first year there. There will be more to come. We asked about the subject and the author was characteristically obstreperous.

“What’s in it?” he laughed, wiping cider from his chin, “I’ll tell you what’s in it. I paid a buck a book for the fucking saddle stitch binding, damn it! I hope they appreciate it when their ‘print on demand’ books start coming unglued in ten years, the ungrateful bastards!…and for free, what in fuck am I thinking? Hell, it’s easier for them to let you push them downstairs in a wheelchair than it is to get them to read a book. Maybe if it’s free, they will read it!”

Don’t be put off by the churlish reply since he does refer to himself as a ‘bastard,’ too…but he has a point, which is that we all need to encourage reading more in ourselves and others. How can you know what is really going on if you do not read?

If you want a copy, get your name in. We will have an email address as well as snail mail address for you to send your requests.

We hope you take advantage of this offer…and do tell your local librarian!!!

The Law, Automatic Weapons and Dead Children at Schools

Gentle Readers,

We do not want to muddle the message this time so, simply…

If it were not for police and law enforcement agencies in the USA, there would be no legitimate reason for automatic weapons to appear anywhere except military training installations and at war.
Why do police need automatic weapons? Perhaps to kill more tax-payers more quickly. Do police departments possessing automatic weapons ever engage in fire with criminals, using these weapons? In all towns and cities? Really?

If they were not available here to buy, they could not be used by criminals as justification for the police to own them. Why do we rarely hear automatic weapon fire in news videos of domestic police action? If an officer spends hours a week at a target range, why not shoot a perp with a regular gun? That would takes skill…like the type of skill used to shoot somebody in the leg as opposed to in the back when they run…they DO get paid to train at shooting.

Why do they need automatic weapons…really….(the border police can use hand grenades and landmines…they would be much safer for the nation and we are sure the would enjoy watching the videos).

A grim thought for the weekend and sorry for that…but we thought about this before and lately have been reminded…

All Best, Bloggerinos!

this is a free blog so typos are often found within…

Who Sent the Private Investigator To Check Us Out??? Where Is Old Snarly?

Gentle Readers,

This message is not really for you.

We are dropping the editorial ‘us’ in parts to make it less confusing. We think Cynthia Oldsnarly may have sent them.

On Friday, a private investigator named Kellie showed up at our Motel. She checked in with no luggage or purse, wearing a short-ish white dress and stylish hair and nails.
She came out of the front desk office and wandered the parkinglot aimlessly for an hour and then went to her room, near mine, when I came out on the balcony to see which room the possible hooker was going to visit.
As it turns she kept obviously spying on me, looking through the open spaces of a luggage rack on a car parked between us.
So, I decided to STARE at her to let her know she was not un-noticed. This prompted her to come over and up the steps to the balcony, where we sat drinking and chatting…about me…all about me…she said she would be gone in the morning and i watched her leave on foot, no luggage or purse, just a copy of Beatdom we gave her to read…

She kept me up talking about myself until 3am. We did not talk adult topics or any such shit…so why do people spy? why do they lie? why do they not be real in 2014????

funny thing is…we hide nothing, as all you kind readers know…and any import given to us is undeserved, since we are morons.

best from the staff!

*tis is a free blog…if you see typos, live with it or contact us about our exclusive paid blog!!!!!

For ‘Lit Undressed: Fashion In Literature’…My Favorite Bellbottoms

Gentle Readers and Friends of Flesh and Republished Blogs,

We have been tied up in many projects of late and the Fall performance by the Lit Undressed group of Omaha, NE, looms large in our headlights. The Omaha Lit Fest, a wonderful event and one of the many cultural offerings to be found in the ‘NoDo’ (Northern Downtown) area of Omaha, is partly funded by the Nebraska Council for the Arts, as well as many other community-minded organizations. Omaha seems like a great place to live. The more we hear about it, the more we find to like.

The event takes place October 13-15 and rehearsals started this week. Here is a brief summary of the event, this go-round:

The focus of this year’s (downtown) Omaha lit fest is Silk & Sawdust, the heart and mechanics and literature. Authors will participate in panels, readings and discussions to lift the corner of the curtain on their methods and processes, and look at the literal tools of production—including book-making and design, and our curious nostalgia for the typewriter.

Included in this theme are fashions of famous literary characters—from the Tin Woodman’s heart of silk and sawdust in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to Jay Gatsby’s pink rag of a suit in The Great Gatsby, to Jane Eyre’s grey and black gowns and Virginia Woolf’s explanation of fashion in Orlando, fashion plays a major role in many characters’ roles and sometimes the storyline.

When presented with ‘fashion’ as a subject, we immediately blogged about old shoes…a more recent blog which can be found by searching on this page. This time, we decided to write about…well, you can read the title….

My Favorite Bellbottoms

Getting my money’s worth out of the Nehru shirt I purchased was no easy feat. It could not be worn to catholic school because it would not work with a tie. Too nice to wear while out playing in the fields, there was no way my parents would let it see the inside of a church. If the flag of rebellious dress was to be foisted, the bellbottom jeans became the banner to wear.

There were many styles to choose from. Colored denim, red with black patch pockets, for example, were becoming passe’ as the low-riding, button fly, hip-hugger style with the slit pockets and wide flare took top wrung on the fashion ladder. I stuck with the zipping fly, being more practical than trendy. ‘Landlubbers’ was the brand of choice for the hip. Headshops and other counterculture stores sold them, while you could buy Wrangler, Lee and other popular brands, not near as cool, at Sears and other ‘straight’ stores.

Landlubber Jeans also advertised in Rolling Stone, so they had to be good. Dylan, Robert Plant, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones…they all wore Landlubbers.

Eventually, the company expanded from jeans to corduroy offerings.

Worn correctly, they had to be long enough…preferrably, slightly too long. The ideal pair had the heels worn away at the back bottom seam from being tread under bare feet, platform shoes or a pair of Dingo boots with a metal ring on the side, as advertised in Rolling Stone!

Being well over six feet tall, I preferred Dingos and often enjoyed the sight of a friend caught in mud in the middle of a cornfield, trapped by thick sole and heels which had settled into plowed Earth as we stood in a circle and puffed. Enough said about The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys!

At first, bells were available in denim only, which presented a quandry in that denim jeans were ‘play clothes’. For school wear, we had the loud plaid pants with the wide cuffs which fell across the top of our platform shoes. Play clothes stuck around until replaced when worn out. School clothes needed to be new each year. This led many to cut straight-legged jeans up the inseam to the knee and insert a triangle of fabric to make the leg ‘flare’ into a ‘bell’. My mom was not going in for this. It was by skipping lunch and saving bus money by hitch-hiking to school that cash to get a store-bought pair became available.

At the headshop, stacked in neat piles between the vintage WWII gear, which was also en vogue, the slacks beaconed. The wide-wale corduroy, low-rise, slit-pocket with the little flowers, known as ‘Keith Richards pants’ due to a popular photo of him wearing them, proved the perfect ticket to trendiness. Not denim, the nuns could not say a word about them being jeans, just like they could not argue that the black ‘tails’ I kept hanging in my locker for daily wear was not a ‘jacket’. In retrospect, certainly I looked like an ass. This was done purposely to rile the ‘squares’ and the nuns, especially. They had dominated what we wore for all of grammar school and now, in high school, we could fight back. Brandishing the only tattoo on a student – a homemade starfish on my left hand – I had already trumped authority at 16 years of age. With hair to my shoulders, they didn’t even notice the earring. This was 1973.

The Nehru sold at a garage sale but those cords wore down to a frazzle. They attracted attention. Every non-polite epithet for ‘homosexual’ was hurled at me while hitch-hiking in such style…but when you are young, you like the attention! Now, everybody has tattoos and earrings. The starfish was surgically removed around 1990 and the earring came out long before. Both became too popular among the same group they used to annoy. Too old to wear three pairs of boxer shorts, and the tops of my jeans at mid-thigh to reveal them, soon I begin my 55th year…that may sound old to some but I would not be young again, if given the chance…I would miss growing up in the 1960s… things were much more fun.