ME AND THE COWBOY
10.11.08
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD – That would be, ‘The Cowboy and Me.’ I’m always correcting his English, telling him, ‘If you were in my class, you’d be getting ‘D’s.”
Five, six, seventeen times a day, I tell him, “That’s, ‘I saw,’ not, ‘I seen’. See, saw, have seen. Don’t even use the word, ‘seen’.” Drives me crazy.
“I tell you this for two reasons,” I tell him. “First, I’m an English teacher and I can’t help myself; and second, when you’re talking to someone about, say, a job…or a bank loan…you don’t want to sound like a dumbfuck.”
That’s from growing up in Hemmingford, NE, where he was a football star running back who slept in English class. Cowboy. Someone asked him what he does. ‘Cowboy’, he replied. Like, ridin’ bulls and broncs? Used to; not professionally; just for kicks, he said, but not anymore.
There is nothing about a stockyard that he doesn’t know, and he’s full of animal stories.
Animal stories, stockyard tales, horses, bulls, and stupid, corny jokes that nobody laughs at when he tells them with great delight.
He stopped by here today to see if I wanted to ride shotgun with him to Pine Ridge in pursuit of his drug of choice, a Pine Ridge ‘dimer’, a ten-dollar corner-of-a-baggie bag.
(“Ask so-and-so if she’ll sell me a dime bag of her low-grade shit,” I once told a friend. He came back telling me, “She said with great indignation,‘Tell Vic I AIN’T GOT NO LOW-GRADE SHIT!”)
Anyway, there were cops all over Pine Ridge Village, cruising through the housing areas, checking out the dealer’s houses and any suspicious activity, which, in Pine Ridge, is any activity.
When my place got ripped off and I went to see a criminal investigator, he told me 85% of the Pine Ridge population is involved in drugs. Ironically, or perhaps, highly correlative, the figure parallels that of unemployment. I couldn’t believe the stat, but he said it was accurate.
Well, count me in, I guess. Me and the cowboy, out sniffing around for a Pine Ridge dime bag, which happens to be one of the lousiest deals in the entire country, if not the entire North American continent. A notorious ‘Pine Ridge Pinner’, or ‘pin joint’, is about the size of a toothpick, and mostly paper.
So there’s this whole underground economy going on, since 85% of the population is officially unemployed. Same same Shanty-town, Soweto, S. Africa; people gotta do something. You’ve seen the price of gas. Here, a person can step on their stash three, four, five times, turn their money over, and there you have it, a step up on everyone in the race for the American Dream.
“What do you want?” asked the Cowboy’s connection, an extremely thin, relaxed man in a hooded sweatshirt and plastic Adidas sweat pants, from the back seat, where he had jumped in. He didn’t seem bothered by my presence, although he’d never seen me before in his life. By virtue of being with the cowboy, I was cool, apparently. In any case, he didn’t appear to be concerned or suspicious.
What did we want? He had everything, he said, or could get it, and suggested we hide the shotgun in the trunk or something, with all the cops running around, you know, instead of like it was, in plain sight.
We took the dealer to three or four houses, and then to the post office where he needed to purchase a money order to keep his cable on, then back to his house, a typical run-down Pine Ridge home, with trash, broken cars, and mangy dogs hanging around the door, happily wagging their tails whenever anyone would exit the house, ignoring them in the extreme.
I had forgotten just how bad it was. Not just the dealer’s house. Every other house in the village looked the same.
“They cleaned up everything, and ran the drunks off the streets when Clinton came,” said the Cowboy as we headed to White Clay for shotgun shells. “They should have left it be so he coulda seen it the way it really is.”
“That’s great, Cowboy,” I said. “Could have seen. You’re making progress.”
White Clay, Nebraska, the watering hole for the Indians of Pine Ridge, and just across the S. Dakota State line, is worse than Pine Ridge, if that is conceivable. A choir of drunks stumbled back and forth across the street, talking to carloads of other Indians, and two men loaded three cases of beer into the back of their car while I sat waiting for the cowboy. All this activity was in plain view of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) patrol car, sitting parked just across the line.
Officially, the rez is dry. No alcohol allowed. All drugs are prohibited. Whatever they’re doing, it isn’t working.
-end
Monday, October 13, 2008
Reader Correspondence
For personal correspondence, particularly you mystery readers. I have no idea who some of you are:
Email: brovic48@yahoo.com
U.S. Post
Vic Glover
PO Box 434
Oglala, SD
57764
Thai Address
P’ Yai Vic Glover
42/24 Moo 3
Tambon Khuk Khak
Amber Takuapa
Prov. Phang Nga, Thailand
82190
Email: brovic48@yahoo.com
U.S. Post
Vic Glover
PO Box 434
Oglala, SD
57764
Thai Address
P’ Yai Vic Glover
42/24 Moo 3
Tambon Khuk Khak
Amber Takuapa
Prov. Phang Nga, Thailand
82190
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Me And Chief Peyote
Me And Chief Peyote
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - Brother Aloysius Weasel Bear likes to tell this tale about me and peyote, usually in a crowd of people.
“Brother was sitting there after the medicine had gone around a couple of times and got all peyotied up, and he looked at the fire and the medicine spoke to him, ‘What are you doing here? Take a look around. You haven’t got any relatives in here. These aren’t your waaaaaays. This is all ALIEN to you.’ ”
“Bro looked up at the fire, and looking left and right, pointed at his chest and asked, ‘Who?
Me?’ ”
“Medicine said, ‘YEAH, YOU. I’m talking to YOU! I want you to get up and get out of here and never come back. What are you doing here, anyway? You aren’t even supposed to BE here.’ ”
“Bro said, ‘They told me if I came in here and sat up all night, in the morning they’d feed me and give me a present.’ ”
“Medicine said, “NO! Get up and…no, don’t touch the drum. Just pass it. Pass the instruments. You aren’t going to sing. Get up right now and GET OUT!’ ”
“So Brother got up and went outside and was gone a long time, and somebody said go get him, so Brother Tom went out there and found him in a pup tent, trying to sleep, his foot keeping beat with that peyote drum, du du du du du du du du du.
“Tom tells him he’s gotta come back in for main smoke, and bro tells him to go away, leave him alone, but Tom says he can’t do that – a person has to sit up in there with everyone once they’ve taken in, so Bro comes back in and everybody is staring at him and he takes his seat and sits there for the longest time, looking down at the ground.
“Finally, with his hand shading his eyes, Bro looks up at the fire, and the medicine is staring right at him. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. Medicine said, ‘I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK!’ ”
“Bro says, ‘Sorry,’ and the medicine says, ‘IT’S TOO LATE! It’s too late for sorry. Now you must be punished! Sit there. Don’t sing. Don’t pray. Just sit there. And stop bothering me. Don’t ask me for ANYTHING!’ ”
Al is usually beside himself with laughter at the end of this tale, saying, “Bro never came back after that. I been going to peyote ceremony all my life and have never had the medicine speak to me, and brother goes in there ONCE, and peyote talks to him right away.”
Some of it’s true, some of it isn’t, like any good tale, and I’ve got to sit through his telling it time and again, watching people enjoy the joke, and watching Al enjoy telling it.
As for the medicine, it’s good. But it’s not for me. I’ve got my hands full already with a pipe, a drum, and a chainsaw. I don’t need to pick up anything else. And they should let you go and hang out under the stars if you like. You’ve got to sit there for sixteen hours, and man, it’s hard on your back.
Pt. 2
Sitting in the dark in sweat lodge the other night between rounds while the dipper was going around, with everybody catching their breath and getting a drink, Mike Red Cloud says, “Jack run peyote meeting last weekend.”
Everybody said, “Aho,” in affirmation.
Jack Red Cloud is young, in his mid-twenties. I don’t know if it was the first meeting he ever ran, but I think it was.
Then Mike says, “He was wearing sunglasses,” and everybody laughed.
“Everybody in there was wearing sunglasses,” he went on. “They should have give me a little notice..a couple days…and I would have been there…could’ve stopped by the gas station and got me some sunglasses.”
Everybody laughed again, and Mike didn’t stop.
“Everybody was wearing sunglasses. Water woman came in the morning…wearing sunglasses.”
- end
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - Brother Aloysius Weasel Bear likes to tell this tale about me and peyote, usually in a crowd of people.
“Brother was sitting there after the medicine had gone around a couple of times and got all peyotied up, and he looked at the fire and the medicine spoke to him, ‘What are you doing here? Take a look around. You haven’t got any relatives in here. These aren’t your waaaaaays. This is all ALIEN to you.’ ”
“Bro looked up at the fire, and looking left and right, pointed at his chest and asked, ‘Who?
Me?’ ”
“Medicine said, ‘YEAH, YOU. I’m talking to YOU! I want you to get up and get out of here and never come back. What are you doing here, anyway? You aren’t even supposed to BE here.’ ”
“Bro said, ‘They told me if I came in here and sat up all night, in the morning they’d feed me and give me a present.’ ”
“Medicine said, “NO! Get up and…no, don’t touch the drum. Just pass it. Pass the instruments. You aren’t going to sing. Get up right now and GET OUT!’ ”
“So Brother got up and went outside and was gone a long time, and somebody said go get him, so Brother Tom went out there and found him in a pup tent, trying to sleep, his foot keeping beat with that peyote drum, du du du du du du du du du.
“Tom tells him he’s gotta come back in for main smoke, and bro tells him to go away, leave him alone, but Tom says he can’t do that – a person has to sit up in there with everyone once they’ve taken in, so Bro comes back in and everybody is staring at him and he takes his seat and sits there for the longest time, looking down at the ground.
“Finally, with his hand shading his eyes, Bro looks up at the fire, and the medicine is staring right at him. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. Medicine said, ‘I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK!’ ”
“Bro says, ‘Sorry,’ and the medicine says, ‘IT’S TOO LATE! It’s too late for sorry. Now you must be punished! Sit there. Don’t sing. Don’t pray. Just sit there. And stop bothering me. Don’t ask me for ANYTHING!’ ”
Al is usually beside himself with laughter at the end of this tale, saying, “Bro never came back after that. I been going to peyote ceremony all my life and have never had the medicine speak to me, and brother goes in there ONCE, and peyote talks to him right away.”
Some of it’s true, some of it isn’t, like any good tale, and I’ve got to sit through his telling it time and again, watching people enjoy the joke, and watching Al enjoy telling it.
As for the medicine, it’s good. But it’s not for me. I’ve got my hands full already with a pipe, a drum, and a chainsaw. I don’t need to pick up anything else. And they should let you go and hang out under the stars if you like. You’ve got to sit there for sixteen hours, and man, it’s hard on your back.
Pt. 2
Sitting in the dark in sweat lodge the other night between rounds while the dipper was going around, with everybody catching their breath and getting a drink, Mike Red Cloud says, “Jack run peyote meeting last weekend.”
Everybody said, “Aho,” in affirmation.
Jack Red Cloud is young, in his mid-twenties. I don’t know if it was the first meeting he ever ran, but I think it was.
Then Mike says, “He was wearing sunglasses,” and everybody laughed.
“Everybody in there was wearing sunglasses,” he went on. “They should have give me a little notice..a couple days…and I would have been there…could’ve stopped by the gas station and got me some sunglasses.”
Everybody laughed again, and Mike didn’t stop.
“Everybody was wearing sunglasses. Water woman came in the morning…wearing sunglasses.”
- end
Indians Feeling Crunch Already
Indians Feeling Crunch Already
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD –
“What size shoe do you wear?” asked Dixon Tall Bear, my Korean War vet friend, lying on his bed at midday, his tiny 12 x 12 ft. shack filled with garbage, soiled clothing, fly-covered macaroni and cheese, dirty gauze bandages, dozens of cigarette butts burned into the floor, and take-your-breath-away stench. ‘Squalid’ is the word.
“These are too big for me,” he added.
I wear a size 13, but didn’t tell him. “What size do you wear?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“I wear elevens,” he said. “These are thirteens.”
I wasn’t going to take his boots, a good work boot, although I could have used them, and was cutting wood in moccasins. He asked me to open up his windows. It was stuffy in his house, way out on ‘the flats’ northwest of Oglala, a good two miles off the blacktop across open, tire-rutted prairie. It smelled like hospital or nursing home death.
“You’re going to need those boots,” I told him, wondering what he’d wear if he gave them away, and wondering why he’d offer me his boots. Did he think he wouldn’t make it through the winter?
I had brought another load of stove wood since Gina, behind the counter at Cubby’s store in Oglala, told me that Dixon had just gotten out of the hospital, and was burning newspapers for heat.
“He don’t look good,” she said. “He’s not taking care of himself.”
For the past couple of years, Dixon, who owns several hundred acres on Pine Ridge, has allowed us to cut wood on his land in Slim Buttes, and whenever he stops by, about once a month, I usually give him twenty bucks for a half load, although he normally only asks for ten. I hadn’t seen him for a year, and wondered why he hadn’t stopped by for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, sitting on a chair just inside the door with those oversized boots on his feet.
He’d lost some weight, which he acknowledged, and gave a half-smile when I joked that he needed to get back to his fighting weight, to ‘get your strength back’, I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
It was clear he wouldn’t be splitting any wood, although he had an axe lying on the floor beside his portable toilet, which I was thankful that he didn’t ask me to empty. He did however, ask me to fill his plastic water pail from the pump, just outside.
Backing up to his woodpile, I negotiated Betsy between piles of trash, glass, and who knows what lying around his house, stacking the wood and buzzing up some other longer pieces that he would never get to with the axe.
“You sure you can make it through the winter on one cord?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It doesn’t take much.”
Somebody had recently painted his house yellow. It used to be white, the girl at Cubby’s said, who had given me directions to his place.
“We got rid of his dogs and cats while he was in the hospital,” she had said, shaking her head. “And we tossed out his furniture. It was all infested,” she said, adding, “He’s going to need assisted care.”
After seeing his place and his condition, I could believe it. Who was going to look after a 73-year old man? Gina said he was her uncle, and they were taking him his meals.
Before I left, he thanked me twice. “Nobody has ever done anything like this for me,” he said.
I thanked him back, told him to get back on his feet, and left. He said he wanted to move back down in Slim Buttes.
As I drove away, with Dixon’s little yellow house shrinking and vanishing in the rear-view mirror, I told Betsy that she’d done a good job. “Mission accomplished,” I told her. We drove between the cows that didn’t want to move, and passed a small, ancient abandoned homestead that appeared to have been occupied twenty years ago, then on further, another place as small as Dixon’s.
Parked outside was a mud-caked fairly new car, by rez standards. People were living there, a young couple outside the place with a small child. No wood pile. I thought to stop and ask them what they were doing for heat, slowed down, but kept on going.
-end
p.s. I wrote this last week as Americans fixated on a fiscal crisis, thus the title. By odd timing and circumstance, I went to Oglala today about noon, and got flagged down by Dixon’s relatives, who recognized my truck. He told me Dixon died on Monday. Would I be a pallbearer and help dig the grave. They’re going to burn everything. Those were his wishes. Wake Friday night. Burial Saturday. Gina, over at Cubby’s, gave me the details.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD –
“What size shoe do you wear?” asked Dixon Tall Bear, my Korean War vet friend, lying on his bed at midday, his tiny 12 x 12 ft. shack filled with garbage, soiled clothing, fly-covered macaroni and cheese, dirty gauze bandages, dozens of cigarette butts burned into the floor, and take-your-breath-away stench. ‘Squalid’ is the word.
“These are too big for me,” he added.
I wear a size 13, but didn’t tell him. “What size do you wear?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“I wear elevens,” he said. “These are thirteens.”
I wasn’t going to take his boots, a good work boot, although I could have used them, and was cutting wood in moccasins. He asked me to open up his windows. It was stuffy in his house, way out on ‘the flats’ northwest of Oglala, a good two miles off the blacktop across open, tire-rutted prairie. It smelled like hospital or nursing home death.
“You’re going to need those boots,” I told him, wondering what he’d wear if he gave them away, and wondering why he’d offer me his boots. Did he think he wouldn’t make it through the winter?
I had brought another load of stove wood since Gina, behind the counter at Cubby’s store in Oglala, told me that Dixon had just gotten out of the hospital, and was burning newspapers for heat.
“He don’t look good,” she said. “He’s not taking care of himself.”
For the past couple of years, Dixon, who owns several hundred acres on Pine Ridge, has allowed us to cut wood on his land in Slim Buttes, and whenever he stops by, about once a month, I usually give him twenty bucks for a half load, although he normally only asks for ten. I hadn’t seen him for a year, and wondered why he hadn’t stopped by for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, sitting on a chair just inside the door with those oversized boots on his feet.
He’d lost some weight, which he acknowledged, and gave a half-smile when I joked that he needed to get back to his fighting weight, to ‘get your strength back’, I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
It was clear he wouldn’t be splitting any wood, although he had an axe lying on the floor beside his portable toilet, which I was thankful that he didn’t ask me to empty. He did however, ask me to fill his plastic water pail from the pump, just outside.
Backing up to his woodpile, I negotiated Betsy between piles of trash, glass, and who knows what lying around his house, stacking the wood and buzzing up some other longer pieces that he would never get to with the axe.
“You sure you can make it through the winter on one cord?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It doesn’t take much.”
Somebody had recently painted his house yellow. It used to be white, the girl at Cubby’s said, who had given me directions to his place.
“We got rid of his dogs and cats while he was in the hospital,” she had said, shaking her head. “And we tossed out his furniture. It was all infested,” she said, adding, “He’s going to need assisted care.”
After seeing his place and his condition, I could believe it. Who was going to look after a 73-year old man? Gina said he was her uncle, and they were taking him his meals.
Before I left, he thanked me twice. “Nobody has ever done anything like this for me,” he said.
I thanked him back, told him to get back on his feet, and left. He said he wanted to move back down in Slim Buttes.
As I drove away, with Dixon’s little yellow house shrinking and vanishing in the rear-view mirror, I told Betsy that she’d done a good job. “Mission accomplished,” I told her. We drove between the cows that didn’t want to move, and passed a small, ancient abandoned homestead that appeared to have been occupied twenty years ago, then on further, another place as small as Dixon’s.
Parked outside was a mud-caked fairly new car, by rez standards. People were living there, a young couple outside the place with a small child. No wood pile. I thought to stop and ask them what they were doing for heat, slowed down, but kept on going.
-end
p.s. I wrote this last week as Americans fixated on a fiscal crisis, thus the title. By odd timing and circumstance, I went to Oglala today about noon, and got flagged down by Dixon’s relatives, who recognized my truck. He told me Dixon died on Monday. Would I be a pallbearer and help dig the grave. They’re going to burn everything. Those were his wishes. Wake Friday night. Burial Saturday. Gina, over at Cubby’s, gave me the details.
Honor of Mike
Honor of Mike
Glazier, Glover, Gouvan. Ever since Jr. High school, we sat in that alphabetical order, either beside each other or in line like that, depending on how the teachers laid it out. Ignored by most of our teachers, we fulfilled their low expectations and lived up to our own, pulling Cs and Ds.
Glazier, a semi-midget with a build like a chimpanzee, distinguished himself as a likable athlete and son of one of our assistant coaches who directed his boy into baseball as a catcher, football as a linebacker, and wrestling.
I was a class clown, sit down, stand up, lunch line comic, least effort grades, working as a fountain jerk at a hamburger joint, and coming in off the bench when Pretorious got in foul trouble.
Gouvan was invisible. He didn’t play sports or stand out in any way. Like Glazier and Glover, he was from the east end of town, the poorer side. He was, in the grim, cruel estimation of a high school mind, a non-entity, with a vacancy beside his picture in the yearbook. When he received his degree in cap and gown, it was almost anonymously. Did anyone know Mike? After high school, there was only one place for him to go. Vietnam.
I didn’t know he’d gone to the ‘Nam, having lost touch with many classmates after the cohesion of small town high school identification lost its hold. It wasn’t until my tour was over that I even knew he was there.
One day in an enormous open-air pavilion at Bien Hua air base, two days before coming home, I passed a platoon of soldiers sitting in a cluster on the concrete floor with their weapons and gear, out-processing.
We were all going home. It was euphoria at having lived through that nightmare, and dread of going home, and how to act once we got there. We had plans.
We had plans, we all had plans of what we’d do if we lived through the war. It was horrible, the war. Coming home, terrifying.
Sitting cross-legged there at the head of that group of men was Sergeant Gouvan. I walked by and did a double-take. “Mike?” I said, staring, not sure that was the same person who had sat beside, behind, and in front of me since kindergarten.
He stared back and looked hard. “Vic?” he asked. “Is that you?”
Mike had earned himself some sergeant’s stripes, E-5 in the ‘Nam, a survivor, now a leader of men. Yeah, Mike, a leader of men.
As a grunt, he no doubt paid a price for his promotions, doing something heroic and extraordinary, I like to think. The experience had bleached his jungle fatigues white, and had carved itself into his face, the sorrow barely hidden in his eyes. He looked ‘hard core’.
Glazier went to the Nam, too. Came back whole physically, but drank some till he died a year or so ago. That’s an understatement. He was horrified by his experience, emotionally deranged, and drank himself to death.
Mike and I spent just a few moments together that day, talking about our tours. He’d been up north, out in the bush, the boonies. Say no more. I’d been up north, too, flying medevac. Say no more. We said we’d get together for a beer, back in the States.
We never had that beer, and Mike has never attended a class reunion.
- end
Glazier, Glover, Gouvan. Ever since Jr. High school, we sat in that alphabetical order, either beside each other or in line like that, depending on how the teachers laid it out. Ignored by most of our teachers, we fulfilled their low expectations and lived up to our own, pulling Cs and Ds.
Glazier, a semi-midget with a build like a chimpanzee, distinguished himself as a likable athlete and son of one of our assistant coaches who directed his boy into baseball as a catcher, football as a linebacker, and wrestling.
I was a class clown, sit down, stand up, lunch line comic, least effort grades, working as a fountain jerk at a hamburger joint, and coming in off the bench when Pretorious got in foul trouble.
Gouvan was invisible. He didn’t play sports or stand out in any way. Like Glazier and Glover, he was from the east end of town, the poorer side. He was, in the grim, cruel estimation of a high school mind, a non-entity, with a vacancy beside his picture in the yearbook. When he received his degree in cap and gown, it was almost anonymously. Did anyone know Mike? After high school, there was only one place for him to go. Vietnam.
I didn’t know he’d gone to the ‘Nam, having lost touch with many classmates after the cohesion of small town high school identification lost its hold. It wasn’t until my tour was over that I even knew he was there.
One day in an enormous open-air pavilion at Bien Hua air base, two days before coming home, I passed a platoon of soldiers sitting in a cluster on the concrete floor with their weapons and gear, out-processing.
We were all going home. It was euphoria at having lived through that nightmare, and dread of going home, and how to act once we got there. We had plans.
We had plans, we all had plans of what we’d do if we lived through the war. It was horrible, the war. Coming home, terrifying.
Sitting cross-legged there at the head of that group of men was Sergeant Gouvan. I walked by and did a double-take. “Mike?” I said, staring, not sure that was the same person who had sat beside, behind, and in front of me since kindergarten.
He stared back and looked hard. “Vic?” he asked. “Is that you?”
Mike had earned himself some sergeant’s stripes, E-5 in the ‘Nam, a survivor, now a leader of men. Yeah, Mike, a leader of men.
As a grunt, he no doubt paid a price for his promotions, doing something heroic and extraordinary, I like to think. The experience had bleached his jungle fatigues white, and had carved itself into his face, the sorrow barely hidden in his eyes. He looked ‘hard core’.
Glazier went to the Nam, too. Came back whole physically, but drank some till he died a year or so ago. That’s an understatement. He was horrified by his experience, emotionally deranged, and drank himself to death.
Mike and I spent just a few moments together that day, talking about our tours. He’d been up north, out in the bush, the boonies. Say no more. I’d been up north, too, flying medevac. Say no more. We said we’d get together for a beer, back in the States.
We never had that beer, and Mike has never attended a class reunion.
- end
My Opponent
My Opponent
My opponent says he went to Washington to shake things up.
He went there to shake you down.
My opponent says he went to Washington to help you out.
He went there to rrrrip you off.
I’m Vic Glover, and I approve of this message.
My opponent says he went to Washington to shake things up.
He went there to shake you down.
My opponent says he went to Washington to help you out.
He went there to rrrrip you off.
I’m Vic Glover, and I approve of this message.
In The Company of Others
In The Company of Others
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD – When my sister died up here a dozen years ago, her daughter, Tracey, laid a red telephone inside the casket with her. After an initial surprise, people smiled, knowing Wasonna, and thought it appropriate, because she’d spend hours on the phone in a single call, your ear turning a burning red, and she left an outstanding bill of $650 for Nelson, her husband, who after tying up loose ends, followed her six months later to the spirit world.
The only time I had seen my father cry was that day, when upon seeing her laid out in the casket, he made an abrupt turn in the doorway of the viewing room, sputtering out in a quaking voice, “I can’t do this,” and returned to the foyer.
My mom was composed, slope-shouldered and vacant at the burial, standing off to the side, vulnerable and alone in her thoughts, and oddly not standing beside my dad. I put my arm around her and squeezed her, and my sister Marilyn, the one who thinks I’m a pagan, stood with dad. Tracey and Nelson stood together, everyone zoned out with sadness.
From Omaha and Pine Ridge, Indians and black people, our people, our family’s mixed heritage, were all gathered around a hill on Holy Rosary cemetery, and someone, a lone voice, sang a haunting spirit departing song that was incredibly beautiful. Wasonna danced through life, and several of her young Pine Ridge students were there, leaving tears and flowers on the grave of their dance teacher.
It was ironic that she preceded my father in death by two years, since she was always the one talking about ‘when daddy dies’, the way siblings do when talking amongst themselves about who’ll take care of mom.
Earlier that morning, twenty family members sat around a long banquet table for breakfast, cheering one another and laughing over eggs, pancakes and sausage, disconnecting from the sadness of the event.
Marilyn and her husband Gabriel, looking the part of a born-again Hassidic Jew with flowing white beard, proclaiming the Messiah on his sleeve and the twinkle in his eye, would often end his sentences with, ‘In The Name of the Lord.’
At one point in the adult conversation, his nine-year old son pestered his father with, ‘Dad, I gotta pee. Dad, I gotta pee,’ yanking on his dad’s sleeve, and the non-stop talking Gabriel, already engaged in a profound religious conversion with whomever was sitting beside him, turning and shouted with exasperation, “Well, go pee in the name of the lord!”
- end
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD – When my sister died up here a dozen years ago, her daughter, Tracey, laid a red telephone inside the casket with her. After an initial surprise, people smiled, knowing Wasonna, and thought it appropriate, because she’d spend hours on the phone in a single call, your ear turning a burning red, and she left an outstanding bill of $650 for Nelson, her husband, who after tying up loose ends, followed her six months later to the spirit world.
The only time I had seen my father cry was that day, when upon seeing her laid out in the casket, he made an abrupt turn in the doorway of the viewing room, sputtering out in a quaking voice, “I can’t do this,” and returned to the foyer.
My mom was composed, slope-shouldered and vacant at the burial, standing off to the side, vulnerable and alone in her thoughts, and oddly not standing beside my dad. I put my arm around her and squeezed her, and my sister Marilyn, the one who thinks I’m a pagan, stood with dad. Tracey and Nelson stood together, everyone zoned out with sadness.
From Omaha and Pine Ridge, Indians and black people, our people, our family’s mixed heritage, were all gathered around a hill on Holy Rosary cemetery, and someone, a lone voice, sang a haunting spirit departing song that was incredibly beautiful. Wasonna danced through life, and several of her young Pine Ridge students were there, leaving tears and flowers on the grave of their dance teacher.
It was ironic that she preceded my father in death by two years, since she was always the one talking about ‘when daddy dies’, the way siblings do when talking amongst themselves about who’ll take care of mom.
Earlier that morning, twenty family members sat around a long banquet table for breakfast, cheering one another and laughing over eggs, pancakes and sausage, disconnecting from the sadness of the event.
Marilyn and her husband Gabriel, looking the part of a born-again Hassidic Jew with flowing white beard, proclaiming the Messiah on his sleeve and the twinkle in his eye, would often end his sentences with, ‘In The Name of the Lord.’
At one point in the adult conversation, his nine-year old son pestered his father with, ‘Dad, I gotta pee. Dad, I gotta pee,’ yanking on his dad’s sleeve, and the non-stop talking Gabriel, already engaged in a profound religious conversion with whomever was sitting beside him, turning and shouted with exasperation, “Well, go pee in the name of the lord!”
- end
Fill The Void
Fill The Void
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - Right now, the only bill I’ve got is a post office box in Oglala, twelve bucks, twice a year. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Sure, that could all change at any time, so I’m not boasting, but that’s one of the benefits of living simply. Ole Betsy, my truck, is 48 years old, and in the past two days, she’s delivered two loads of stove wood, and two loads of lodge wood without even breaking a sweat.
There’s no water bill, because there’s no water, a development I’ve been working on for three years, and they say I’m on the list. When it eventually arrives, the hookup to the line, it’ll be free.
There isn’t an electric bill because Lake Creek Electric won’t hook you up until you’ve got water, a Catch 22, but I don’t want their service anyway, since I’m generating my own power from the panel on the roof. The sun will run this computer, my string of tiny lights, a low-watt table lamp, and my coffee pot. What else do you need? Well, a refrigerator would be nice.
I don’t have a telephone, because I don’t like waking up to a ringing phone, and because I prefer telepathy (Not altogether reliable. People aren’t always in a receptive mode. And sometimes, when they are, they don’t act on it. “Are you guys picking up on my signals?” I ask the folks around here, and they say, “Yeah, it crossed my mind.”).
No TV since 1991 because there’s other things I’d rather be doing, except during the NCAA tournament, so I don’t have a cable or satellite bill.
There’s no loan or credit card bill, since I don’t own plastic. So, what’s the flip side? There’s got to be a downside to all this, right?
Well, the first is, it’s Pine Ridge. That takes a lot of appeal out of it already, doesn’t it?
You take friends, ceremonial life, and The Mission out of the equation, there’s no reason to be here.
Outdoor toilet? Yyyyyeah, that’s another factor. You can get by, but indoor plumbing would be nice. That can happen once the water arrives.
Heat? Wood stove. Hot water? On the wood stove. You need a truck and a chain saw.
Laundry? By hand, out of a bucket. Shower? Out of a bucket. Ain’t too many women who’d care to live under these conditions. Right away, I’d need to make a bathroom, and do something like install a solar shower. And mirrors. Well, yeah, everything would change. Curtains, furniture. Probably need to build her a house. Maybe in another state.
- end
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - Right now, the only bill I’ve got is a post office box in Oglala, twelve bucks, twice a year. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Sure, that could all change at any time, so I’m not boasting, but that’s one of the benefits of living simply. Ole Betsy, my truck, is 48 years old, and in the past two days, she’s delivered two loads of stove wood, and two loads of lodge wood without even breaking a sweat.
There’s no water bill, because there’s no water, a development I’ve been working on for three years, and they say I’m on the list. When it eventually arrives, the hookup to the line, it’ll be free.
There isn’t an electric bill because Lake Creek Electric won’t hook you up until you’ve got water, a Catch 22, but I don’t want their service anyway, since I’m generating my own power from the panel on the roof. The sun will run this computer, my string of tiny lights, a low-watt table lamp, and my coffee pot. What else do you need? Well, a refrigerator would be nice.
I don’t have a telephone, because I don’t like waking up to a ringing phone, and because I prefer telepathy (Not altogether reliable. People aren’t always in a receptive mode. And sometimes, when they are, they don’t act on it. “Are you guys picking up on my signals?” I ask the folks around here, and they say, “Yeah, it crossed my mind.”).
No TV since 1991 because there’s other things I’d rather be doing, except during the NCAA tournament, so I don’t have a cable or satellite bill.
There’s no loan or credit card bill, since I don’t own plastic. So, what’s the flip side? There’s got to be a downside to all this, right?
Well, the first is, it’s Pine Ridge. That takes a lot of appeal out of it already, doesn’t it?
You take friends, ceremonial life, and The Mission out of the equation, there’s no reason to be here.
Outdoor toilet? Yyyyyeah, that’s another factor. You can get by, but indoor plumbing would be nice. That can happen once the water arrives.
Heat? Wood stove. Hot water? On the wood stove. You need a truck and a chain saw.
Laundry? By hand, out of a bucket. Shower? Out of a bucket. Ain’t too many women who’d care to live under these conditions. Right away, I’d need to make a bathroom, and do something like install a solar shower. And mirrors. Well, yeah, everything would change. Curtains, furniture. Probably need to build her a house. Maybe in another state.
- end
Art Form
Art Form
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - I didn’t stop with those Tiki Gods. Those were produced in high school and given to friends, two-inch wooden carvings to be worn around the neck. My inspiration came from a magazine ad, and I thought at the time, ‘Hell, I can make my OWN DAMN Tiki Gods.’
With the enthusiastic encouragement of my art teacher, I tried a half dozen oil paintings, but the brush stroke on canvas fell far short of my concepts and ability. I did some sculpting, weavings, and a big-ass clay monkey that appeared in the yearbook, with me looking like a true, sure enough geek.
Was the art there all along, in hiding, waiting to come in off the bench, or was it strictly the encouragement of a teacher that guides us in a particular direction? I don’t know. If my physics teacher were just as nurturing, would I have become an atomic scientist?
The atomic scientist future dissipated in the face of my grades, so my guidance counselor suggested that I might have a promising future in the war that was raging at the time.
As a helicopter medic in Vietnam, I practiced my work as an art, though hurriedly, probably stopping some guys from bleeding to death, and making others laugh on their way to the hospital. I never administered morphine. The guys who asked for it didn’t need it, and the guys who needed it never asked. I told them all, ‘Everything is going to be okay,” even when it wasn’t.
Snagging cameras in the ‘Nam, I sunk from medicine to print journalism, opting for the Sunday feature section, as opposed to hard news, which seemed cruel, cutthroat, and satanic. In the end, I produced thousands of photos, some exhibits, some awards, and later in TV, some commercials, a few feeble, short bullshit films, and the nightly news.
Then there were about a half dozen colorful ‘box delta’ kites, including a gigantic twelve-foot wing-span ‘Bat’ that flew over Luken’s Lake, Lake Michigan, seven states, and could lift a small child off the ground.*
Along the way, there were gardens, landscaping, stone masonry, a 700 ft. Robert F. LaFollett Memorial River Walk on the S. St. Vrain in Colorado, ceramics, triple-deck tree houses, igloos, scary luge sled runs that sent at least one mother of a five year-old into hysterics, really fun but dangerous swings (ask Bob Luckett) over water and frightening ravines, and snow sculptures of crashed cars and an eleven-foot Bigfoot, the stuff that dads do.
When they became old enough to verbalize their thoughts, my kids demanded I quit the saxophone. Within the family, I was totally outnumbered, 6-1. Mack, our German Shepherd, didn’t care for it, and El Negro Frijole, ‘Black Bean’, our cat, didn’t appreciate my music either. When they saw me picking up that horn, they’d look at me sideways, lay their ears back, and leave.
Between Bigfoot and tenor sax, there was a dozen years in the classroom at three universities where I honed a stand up comedy act before captive audiences in three different disciplines. One spring, in a communications class with the windows wide open, we listened to a robin for 45 minutes.
On another occasion, I took a Black History class to the DuSable museum and a rib joint** in Chicago, and had a hard time creatively explaining the crumpled roof on the university van. The story involved a State Street underground parking garage with a low clearance.
There was a whole line of people behind us honking their horns, until all those Negroes, some of whom were interior linemen on the football team, piled out and told those folks hollering back there to shut up and back the fuck up, which they immediately did after locking their doors and rolling up their windows.
For a final exam in a creative writing class at a different institution, we all met at a Mexican restaurant, drank tequila and ate combo platters, laughing and drinking and enjoying ourselves since the administration demanded that classes meet for finals, even if there wasn’t one. It was an artistic expression, even if it wasn’t.
Then once during a meeting of the 40-member university senate, my position being secured by the need to have a representative ‘person-of-color’ on that policymaking and governing body, I really did fall asleep, my head on the desk, and by virtue of leaning too far forward on my chair, which was on rollers, the thing flipped out from under me, sending me to the floor in a great crash, momentarily stunning all of the assembly.
I had no recourse to recover from my embarrassment but to leap to my feet and shout, “I’M AGAINST IT,” then calmly reposition my chair and sit down. After their initial shock, everybody laughed, not sure of what had happened, except for the person just behind me who saw the whole thing, since everybody was already listening to one of the Deans, who was Chair of the meeting, and in an odd situation of uncanny circumstance, accepted my declaration as a motion, and announced, “So moved. Do we have a second?”
That’s about all I can remember of twelve years in higher ed, except that it had an unreal, boy-in-a-bubble quality to it. Apart from the robin’s song and the comedy, there was little art. It was more like a presumptuous, pretentious racket.
Up here on the rez, I produced mostly ceremonial items; staffs, cedar bags, drums, drumsticks, shields, several sweat lodges, six pipes, nearly a half million in grants, three squadrons of airplanes, and a book.
Of 88 drums, about four, maybe six of them were good enough to make it through all four rounds of a Lakota sweat lodge. The one I kept for myself got stolen. Of the 493 shields I produced over a decade, I was happy with two or three. The rest were just circular artwork with feathers and beads. The one I kept got stolen.
Sometimes I still make a drum if I can find a good cottonwood log and have a buffalo hide show up, but mostly it’s just tales now, the words magically appearing on a computer screen.
-end
*The Bat’s life ended in Slim Buttes, across the White River in a tree in an ancient burial ground. I never retrieved it, leaving it’s color to be faded by the sun, it’s wings ripped and shredded by the wind.
**Maybe you can imagine a scenario of twenty-six African American university students trying to figure up how much they owed toward a shocking $450 food and drink bill with an automatic 15% gratuity, which nobody anticipated, leaving several of the students pale as the bill went from hand to hand, each one declaring aloud, “All I had was such and such, and a coke.”
They spent more time name-calling and arguing amongst themselves over the bill than they did eating the meal. It was really quite humorous. All I had was the baby back rib platter and a coke, and when they looked to me, that’s what I told them. The bill was eventually paid by one unfortunate plastic-carrying student, who angrily exclaimed as he signed off on the bill, “All y’all damn niggas better pay me back!”
As we spilled back onto the street, I recall almost everyone leaving the place angry and bitching. The sour mood was amplified on the two-hour trip home by the crushed roof of the van, repeatedly banging against the metal inner liner each time we hit a crack, bump, or pebble in the road, making it sound like we were traveling in a bass drum.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - I didn’t stop with those Tiki Gods. Those were produced in high school and given to friends, two-inch wooden carvings to be worn around the neck. My inspiration came from a magazine ad, and I thought at the time, ‘Hell, I can make my OWN DAMN Tiki Gods.’
With the enthusiastic encouragement of my art teacher, I tried a half dozen oil paintings, but the brush stroke on canvas fell far short of my concepts and ability. I did some sculpting, weavings, and a big-ass clay monkey that appeared in the yearbook, with me looking like a true, sure enough geek.
Was the art there all along, in hiding, waiting to come in off the bench, or was it strictly the encouragement of a teacher that guides us in a particular direction? I don’t know. If my physics teacher were just as nurturing, would I have become an atomic scientist?
The atomic scientist future dissipated in the face of my grades, so my guidance counselor suggested that I might have a promising future in the war that was raging at the time.
As a helicopter medic in Vietnam, I practiced my work as an art, though hurriedly, probably stopping some guys from bleeding to death, and making others laugh on their way to the hospital. I never administered morphine. The guys who asked for it didn’t need it, and the guys who needed it never asked. I told them all, ‘Everything is going to be okay,” even when it wasn’t.
Snagging cameras in the ‘Nam, I sunk from medicine to print journalism, opting for the Sunday feature section, as opposed to hard news, which seemed cruel, cutthroat, and satanic. In the end, I produced thousands of photos, some exhibits, some awards, and later in TV, some commercials, a few feeble, short bullshit films, and the nightly news.
Then there were about a half dozen colorful ‘box delta’ kites, including a gigantic twelve-foot wing-span ‘Bat’ that flew over Luken’s Lake, Lake Michigan, seven states, and could lift a small child off the ground.*
Along the way, there were gardens, landscaping, stone masonry, a 700 ft. Robert F. LaFollett Memorial River Walk on the S. St. Vrain in Colorado, ceramics, triple-deck tree houses, igloos, scary luge sled runs that sent at least one mother of a five year-old into hysterics, really fun but dangerous swings (ask Bob Luckett) over water and frightening ravines, and snow sculptures of crashed cars and an eleven-foot Bigfoot, the stuff that dads do.
When they became old enough to verbalize their thoughts, my kids demanded I quit the saxophone. Within the family, I was totally outnumbered, 6-1. Mack, our German Shepherd, didn’t care for it, and El Negro Frijole, ‘Black Bean’, our cat, didn’t appreciate my music either. When they saw me picking up that horn, they’d look at me sideways, lay their ears back, and leave.
Between Bigfoot and tenor sax, there was a dozen years in the classroom at three universities where I honed a stand up comedy act before captive audiences in three different disciplines. One spring, in a communications class with the windows wide open, we listened to a robin for 45 minutes.
On another occasion, I took a Black History class to the DuSable museum and a rib joint** in Chicago, and had a hard time creatively explaining the crumpled roof on the university van. The story involved a State Street underground parking garage with a low clearance.
There was a whole line of people behind us honking their horns, until all those Negroes, some of whom were interior linemen on the football team, piled out and told those folks hollering back there to shut up and back the fuck up, which they immediately did after locking their doors and rolling up their windows.
For a final exam in a creative writing class at a different institution, we all met at a Mexican restaurant, drank tequila and ate combo platters, laughing and drinking and enjoying ourselves since the administration demanded that classes meet for finals, even if there wasn’t one. It was an artistic expression, even if it wasn’t.
Then once during a meeting of the 40-member university senate, my position being secured by the need to have a representative ‘person-of-color’ on that policymaking and governing body, I really did fall asleep, my head on the desk, and by virtue of leaning too far forward on my chair, which was on rollers, the thing flipped out from under me, sending me to the floor in a great crash, momentarily stunning all of the assembly.
I had no recourse to recover from my embarrassment but to leap to my feet and shout, “I’M AGAINST IT,” then calmly reposition my chair and sit down. After their initial shock, everybody laughed, not sure of what had happened, except for the person just behind me who saw the whole thing, since everybody was already listening to one of the Deans, who was Chair of the meeting, and in an odd situation of uncanny circumstance, accepted my declaration as a motion, and announced, “So moved. Do we have a second?”
That’s about all I can remember of twelve years in higher ed, except that it had an unreal, boy-in-a-bubble quality to it. Apart from the robin’s song and the comedy, there was little art. It was more like a presumptuous, pretentious racket.
Up here on the rez, I produced mostly ceremonial items; staffs, cedar bags, drums, drumsticks, shields, several sweat lodges, six pipes, nearly a half million in grants, three squadrons of airplanes, and a book.
Of 88 drums, about four, maybe six of them were good enough to make it through all four rounds of a Lakota sweat lodge. The one I kept for myself got stolen. Of the 493 shields I produced over a decade, I was happy with two or three. The rest were just circular artwork with feathers and beads. The one I kept got stolen.
Sometimes I still make a drum if I can find a good cottonwood log and have a buffalo hide show up, but mostly it’s just tales now, the words magically appearing on a computer screen.
-end
*The Bat’s life ended in Slim Buttes, across the White River in a tree in an ancient burial ground. I never retrieved it, leaving it’s color to be faded by the sun, it’s wings ripped and shredded by the wind.
**Maybe you can imagine a scenario of twenty-six African American university students trying to figure up how much they owed toward a shocking $450 food and drink bill with an automatic 15% gratuity, which nobody anticipated, leaving several of the students pale as the bill went from hand to hand, each one declaring aloud, “All I had was such and such, and a coke.”
They spent more time name-calling and arguing amongst themselves over the bill than they did eating the meal. It was really quite humorous. All I had was the baby back rib platter and a coke, and when they looked to me, that’s what I told them. The bill was eventually paid by one unfortunate plastic-carrying student, who angrily exclaimed as he signed off on the bill, “All y’all damn niggas better pay me back!”
As we spilled back onto the street, I recall almost everyone leaving the place angry and bitching. The sour mood was amplified on the two-hour trip home by the crushed roof of the van, repeatedly banging against the metal inner liner each time we hit a crack, bump, or pebble in the road, making it sound like we were traveling in a bass drum.
Who You Used To Be
Prepare To Guard Yourself
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - It’s not just me; everybody is complaining about the flies. As cooler weather approaches, everyone has swatters handy for the annual onslaught of flies endeavoring to gain entry into our homes.
I’m allllll in their heads. I know their best moves, exit plan, and which way they’re going to take off. Your best bet is the ‘Overshot’, where you overshoot the target, kind of like a plane on a runway, or the topspin you need to bring the shot just inside the baseline.
It’s what I call, ‘Closing the Back Door’. And what’s going on in the fly’s mind? Probably, not much. Hardwired since the beginning of time, he’s like, ‘I’m outta here…OH FUCK!’ Sometimes there will be this last, fraction-of-a-second, moment-of-death confused hesitation that seals their fate.
And you bet it has occurred to me that the Creator can take any one of us just like that, like me and my swatter.
“Yeah, he/she dropped…just like that. I was just talking to him/her yesterday.”
And if are we playing God against the flies, then what about a carrot?
Louie Cook and I ambled in the heat on his father-in-law’s land, a spread of two homes, a cottage, a barn, and some rusty farm equipment laying about. Most everything had been sold off and the kids weren’t interested in the place. They had their own lives, their own stuff. The old man, 92, was in a rest home in Rapid City, I think.
“I don’t want to live that long,” said Louie.
“A guy works all his life and accumulates and gathers, and then, he un-accumulates, and then what?” I asked Louie.
He didn’t answer.
Each day is a blessing, isn’t it? Most of us might say yes, but I wonder about the infirm in nursing homes, and those who don’t recognize their sons and daughters, and when they go, the survivors say it was a blessing.
I know I must be hanging around old people when I hear them start in telling a story about who they used to be.
Brady, twenty-something, sitting there at Louie’s table, began telling us about what kind of shape he used to be in. I had to stop the boy.
“Who you used to be?” I asked. “Let me tell you about who I used to be. Louie, tell him about who YOU used to be.”
Louie, who is generously overweight and moves like a penguin, laughed and said, “I used to be able to KICK ASS.”
“I used to be somebody,” he added, laughing.
And who did you used to be? Who could you have been? It’s never too late, is it, to be somebody?
-end
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - It’s not just me; everybody is complaining about the flies. As cooler weather approaches, everyone has swatters handy for the annual onslaught of flies endeavoring to gain entry into our homes.
I’m allllll in their heads. I know their best moves, exit plan, and which way they’re going to take off. Your best bet is the ‘Overshot’, where you overshoot the target, kind of like a plane on a runway, or the topspin you need to bring the shot just inside the baseline.
It’s what I call, ‘Closing the Back Door’. And what’s going on in the fly’s mind? Probably, not much. Hardwired since the beginning of time, he’s like, ‘I’m outta here…OH FUCK!’ Sometimes there will be this last, fraction-of-a-second, moment-of-death confused hesitation that seals their fate.
And you bet it has occurred to me that the Creator can take any one of us just like that, like me and my swatter.
“Yeah, he/she dropped…just like that. I was just talking to him/her yesterday.”
And if are we playing God against the flies, then what about a carrot?
Louie Cook and I ambled in the heat on his father-in-law’s land, a spread of two homes, a cottage, a barn, and some rusty farm equipment laying about. Most everything had been sold off and the kids weren’t interested in the place. They had their own lives, their own stuff. The old man, 92, was in a rest home in Rapid City, I think.
“I don’t want to live that long,” said Louie.
“A guy works all his life and accumulates and gathers, and then, he un-accumulates, and then what?” I asked Louie.
He didn’t answer.
Each day is a blessing, isn’t it? Most of us might say yes, but I wonder about the infirm in nursing homes, and those who don’t recognize their sons and daughters, and when they go, the survivors say it was a blessing.
I know I must be hanging around old people when I hear them start in telling a story about who they used to be.
Brady, twenty-something, sitting there at Louie’s table, began telling us about what kind of shape he used to be in. I had to stop the boy.
“Who you used to be?” I asked. “Let me tell you about who I used to be. Louie, tell him about who YOU used to be.”
Louie, who is generously overweight and moves like a penguin, laughed and said, “I used to be able to KICK ASS.”
“I used to be somebody,” he added, laughing.
And who did you used to be? Who could you have been? It’s never too late, is it, to be somebody?
-end
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