Reading tips emphasizing "a hands-forward position at impact," I realize that I'm at a stage in my golf career not unlike that of an infant who is still capable of learning any language, but understands none. Contact between club and ball remains elusive; once routine, perhaps meaning will flow from words like "moving the ball back in your stance."
Scenic route home. Half-night, dense fog, dark woods. Visibility, about 20 feet. I come to a crossroads: corner of Dixie Mountain Road and Dixie Road. One of them is correct. In the end, I choose both. In the end, I'm half-right. Before learning this, though, I'm chased by a giant white dog for quite some time. Then, it happens again.
Crystal Ballroom, October 12. I didn't think they'd be such hippies. But they were. It was okay, though, because they deafened us with chords and shouts and noise, and the first encore was a hot-tempo ditty with a chorus that went: Satan! And then: Satan! And then: Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan!
I held in my hands a stick, with which I knocked nuts from a tree. I then picked up my nuts and placed them into a burlap sack that dangled from the lowest branch of the tree. As I worked, I composed a song describing my work, with lyrics capable of bearing two meanings - one literal, the other rather ribald.
Went to Depoe Bay, blown by a whim. Stopped into a harborside fish-and-mildew joint for chowder and boxed Chardonnay.* A flock of southern Q-Tips, next table, were all thrown for a loop by some exotic dessert item the waiter called 'Sumerian berry pie.'
"What's a Sumerian berry?" they asked each other.
Also, once I sawr a whale.***
* Cold-kickin' it O.C.** style.
** Oregon Coast.
*** Not a typo.
En route, I learned that there is a neighborhood in Hillsboro called Quatana. And at a video store there, disreputable enough to cause customers to complain loudly on mass transit, an employee has been terminated for "sucking dick in the storeroom." I also learned that it is easy to disembark at Gresham and immediately be in a fight.
As I see the truck, I mention it to my brother by phone. Nonplussed, he remarks that he, too, would have to switch out his wheels before driving his truck cross country. He lives in North Carolina, where truck accessorizing is common. I reflect on this as the conversation meanders to workout farts and era-specialized cover bands.
To be continued...
Yesterday, as I drove to a bike shop staffed by a bald man who addressed bicycles as another might address a friendly dog, I saw a monster truck called the "Bi-Mart Advantage." Its monster wheels, six feet tall, weren't on. Instead it had street wheels, upon which rested eight feet of monster suspension, and then a truck.
To be continued...