His invention
by Mike Marcellino
Another chapter, Life stories series
Many days had come and gone in the writer’s life. Today, he sat down by the river to write, not sure what it would be about but had some ideas.
Sound.
He had thought about writing about sound, or soundless to be exact. Life without sound. What that would be about. Frightening, at first thought. Fortunately the writer had an answer to that dilemma – invent it. Invent sound, like the light bulb or electricity, like Edison or Franklin.
After all, it was, or is his birthday. “You’re forty-four,” said Harry already working on his first bike, wearing a Mexican bandana, but the bike shop owner was Jewish, at least he used to be with some Jewish cult, but I always forget the name. “I was Acidic,” he announces every few days. I thought, “Whatever that means.”
“Mathematics, music and the brain. What a threesome,” the writer thought.
He’d invent sound in his mind.
Things are better this morning on the Cuyahoga. Just one plastic bottle floated by. “Find the owner,” he ordered. The OD bridge is open to bikes, but not cars. “How perfect.” he said to himself.
He listened to the clanging bell. A boat, maybe. Yes, a boat. A loud whistle followed but nothing ever came round the bend. Slowly the draw bridge rose. Workmen were fixing it.
In his mind, he missed the boat, a thing he feared, missing jump off time. That’s a mission of no return.
But, the writer remembered – he had not missed a thing. It’s his birthday. He invented sound on his birthday.
He watched a train on a distant hillside, glad he wasn’t on it. He watched a little basketball float by.
“You may be asked for security information,” the recorded cell phone company voice stated as the writer waited for a human being.
“Shit,” he thought, “what does that mean?” Well, they couldn’t read his mind, could they?
At that instant he was disconnected.
“This call may be monitored or recorded,” the recorded person said. “How reassuring,” the writer thought.
With that he rode as fast as he could to the War Memorial, on Mall B, two blocks from the lake. In books they call it War Memorial Fountain Plaza, but the writer had never heard anyone call it that. He called it the Veterans Memorial.
But he decided to stop across the plaza to the statue of Lincoln beside the board of education.
“Lincoln” she said in a sweet Texas accent, Carolyn told about her song, “Captain, My Captain,” at Town Hall in New York City. The writer wasn’t at the concert but he still has the album and listens to it.
Lincoln walked forth, toward the War Memorial. His expression uncertain, a declaration in his left hand, his right palm opens for deliverance.
No speeches, not a sound. Lincoln walks forth to war over the rights of man, people to be correct. Now presidents, soldiers made of stone, metal, granite, weathered, discolored, and covered with the soot of man.
Lincoln looked straight at the tall statue, a hundred feet or more, high, of the naked warier reaching for eternal peace.
The writer never remembers the verse from Palms, exactly. It’s about seeing the light, something like that. The monument made of nickels, Jefferson, from kids in Cleveland, spearheaded by press, shaped by Marshal Frederick, surrounded by a bronze plated wall – named of the dead, World War II and Korea. Vietnam left on the Internet, wishing the fountain of eternal life would burst, rise again, and touch the sky.
The writer grew tried. His mind drifted, remembering early morning of his birthday. He turned the switch on his hand tuned radio. In an instant, he got a clear, strong signal – the Raccoon Festival and Allison standing there in the mid day heat, champion of the fiddle at 16, and the cutest, nicest girl he’d met. He forgot his marriage, wanted nothing but bluegrass, wondering if she’s 18. He settled for classical Canada CBC. The old signal evaporated the way it came.
It was music to his hears, but nothing like the sound he created in his mind. That’s still his invention.
His invention copyright by Mike Marcellino 2009
Notebook Writer: poetry, music, photography and writing of Mike Marcellino
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Life stories series: Saratoga r&r
Saratoga r&r
by Mike Marcellino
Day No. 7 of a series, ‘Life stories’
He loved the smell of the track, his first whiff as he neared on his bike. The writer’s first thought was uncle Buddy, lying there dead in the Jamaica cemetery, blocks away from the track where he rode winners without a whip. Now Lavelle 'Buddy' Ensor lives in a touch screen video inside the National Horse Racing Hall of Fame, a kind a new red brick building, across from Saratoga, one of the oldest and pretties tracks in America. Buddy rode thoroughbreds like Exterminator. He won millions of dollars in the years before and during the Great Depression. He died without a penny, but he threw great parties after a big stake's win and invited all of Baltimore.
Inside the gate he swung his bike over to the rusting silver chain link fence that kept him off the dirt. The track, fittingly across the street from a barren shopping mall dotted with higher weeds, had seen it’s better days but jockeys still put on their silks and roses walked along alone tied up to a training wheel. He would have taken that lone mare for a ride if he thought he could get away from it.
He could have been a jockey, still could if he could sweat and starve his way to lose 10 pounds to get down to 114, the top weight. One of the jockeys at the cheap Ohio track, 10 miles southeast of Lake Erie in a town called Northfield, namesake of the deserted mall, told the writer there’s no age limit.
He daydreamed, made up headlines in the Times -
Michael Ensor navigates Crapshootin $5000 Charles Town claimer win
Buddy’s great grand guides Easy Does It's maiden special weight romp by six
“What If?" "Great name for a horse." he figured.
Strange things happened, especially lately.
He knew he could do it, with practice. He felt like a bird when he lifted himself off the seat of his bike, and guided, glided easily. Feet on the peddles, it could be a dawn morning work.
Next month, the writer would find out if he is his father’s son and his great uncles nephew or not. An ex-paratrooper, Gary, picked out a horse for him to ride at his Texas ranch next month.
His daydreams reminded him of the night before, or the night before that, when white birds called to him, raced across the night sky, crossing just under a near full moon that looked like the sun. The next day he swore those birds had turned brown, but not black.
“I was born at the race track,” the writer leaned down and told the girl jockey in her silks and cap, waiting for her next mount.
“Well, at least I must’ve been conceived at the track.’ he clarified. She was the prettiest jockey he’d ever seen, always wearing baby blue and white.
The dirt of the track gave him chills. The infield gave him peace.
He was at home at race tracks - Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Saratoga, Pimlico, Sunland, outside El Paso, it didn’t matter where.
Saratoga R & R, copyright by Mike Marcellino, Life stories, seven in a series 2009
by Mike Marcellino
Day No. 7 of a series, ‘Life stories’
He loved the smell of the track, his first whiff as he neared on his bike. The writer’s first thought was uncle Buddy, lying there dead in the Jamaica cemetery, blocks away from the track where he rode winners without a whip. Now Lavelle 'Buddy' Ensor lives in a touch screen video inside the National Horse Racing Hall of Fame, a kind a new red brick building, across from Saratoga, one of the oldest and pretties tracks in America. Buddy rode thoroughbreds like Exterminator. He won millions of dollars in the years before and during the Great Depression. He died without a penny, but he threw great parties after a big stake's win and invited all of Baltimore.
Inside the gate he swung his bike over to the rusting silver chain link fence that kept him off the dirt. The track, fittingly across the street from a barren shopping mall dotted with higher weeds, had seen it’s better days but jockeys still put on their silks and roses walked along alone tied up to a training wheel. He would have taken that lone mare for a ride if he thought he could get away from it.
He could have been a jockey, still could if he could sweat and starve his way to lose 10 pounds to get down to 114, the top weight. One of the jockeys at the cheap Ohio track, 10 miles southeast of Lake Erie in a town called Northfield, namesake of the deserted mall, told the writer there’s no age limit.
He daydreamed, made up headlines in the Times -
Michael Ensor navigates Crapshootin $5000 Charles Town claimer win
Buddy’s great grand guides Easy Does It's maiden special weight romp by six
“What If?" "Great name for a horse." he figured.
Strange things happened, especially lately.
He knew he could do it, with practice. He felt like a bird when he lifted himself off the seat of his bike, and guided, glided easily. Feet on the peddles, it could be a dawn morning work.
Next month, the writer would find out if he is his father’s son and his great uncles nephew or not. An ex-paratrooper, Gary, picked out a horse for him to ride at his Texas ranch next month.
His daydreams reminded him of the night before, or the night before that, when white birds called to him, raced across the night sky, crossing just under a near full moon that looked like the sun. The next day he swore those birds had turned brown, but not black.
“I was born at the race track,” the writer leaned down and told the girl jockey in her silks and cap, waiting for her next mount.
“Well, at least I must’ve been conceived at the track.’ he clarified. She was the prettiest jockey he’d ever seen, always wearing baby blue and white.
The dirt of the track gave him chills. The infield gave him peace.
He was at home at race tracks - Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Saratoga, Pimlico, Sunland, outside El Paso, it didn’t matter where.
Saratoga R & R, copyright by Mike Marcellino, Life stories, seven in a series 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Life stories series: A scotter named lucky
A scooter named lucky
By Mike Marcellino
The prose daily volume 1
Life stories Days 3, 4 and 5 June 2009
The writer had lost track of the days. He just knew he had passed through days 3, 4 and 5.
He had a record.
Monday night he took off on his classic Japanese model to the drug store. Well, they really aren’t drug stores anymore. No new one he’d ever seen had a soda fountain.
He went to the drug store for Snickers, his favorite candy bar. Hoped they were on sale. The drug store was only a short distance, but he still had to ask for directions. His post traumatic delayed directional disorder was worse at night.
The Snickers bar was 89 cents. Out the door, he unlocked his classic Japanese model built like a tank. As he waited for the light to change, a fire truck came screaming by, red and white neon bubble flashing. The hook and ladder pulled into the other new drug store across the street.
“A drug store on every corner, a chicken in every pot,” he thought. “Why is that?”
He swung his leg over the cross bar, peddled slowly across the intersection. He had a green light. On his back he carried an Indian army surplus pack and in his left hand held a plastic thrift store bag containing a new pair of kaki shorts he got for six bucks and an army green shirt, Indian too, less than two bucks from the thrift store, a non-profit the black woman clerk said was owned by Jews.
Almost midway inside the cross walk, a pickup truck whizzed by, a near miss. Then suddenly out of nowhere he heard the winding motor of a scooter looking him straight in the eyes.
Smack, he got hit head on, the writer, the classic Japanese, another white guy and scooter all went sprawling onto the pavement.
Cars sped by. As the writer got up, the scooter guy, shaken, asked, “Are you ok? Are you ok?”
Then a black guy driving by sticks his head out the window, “I’m gonna waste you.”
The writer wondered, “Which driver is he talking about?” He did have a green light. .
His left thumb tingled a bit, that was it.
The writer punched in the hack’s name and phone number and rode off.
His bike came through without a scratch, leaving its mark on the front fender of a coffee cream scooter named “Lucky.”
(To be continued.}
A scooter named lucky, Life stories, Days 3, 4 & 5, Copyright by Mike Marcellino & Mike Marcellino Communications, 2009
By Mike Marcellino
The prose daily volume 1
Life stories Days 3, 4 and 5 June 2009
The writer had lost track of the days. He just knew he had passed through days 3, 4 and 5.
He had a record.
Monday night he took off on his classic Japanese model to the drug store. Well, they really aren’t drug stores anymore. No new one he’d ever seen had a soda fountain.
He went to the drug store for Snickers, his favorite candy bar. Hoped they were on sale. The drug store was only a short distance, but he still had to ask for directions. His post traumatic delayed directional disorder was worse at night.
The Snickers bar was 89 cents. Out the door, he unlocked his classic Japanese model built like a tank. As he waited for the light to change, a fire truck came screaming by, red and white neon bubble flashing. The hook and ladder pulled into the other new drug store across the street.
“A drug store on every corner, a chicken in every pot,” he thought. “Why is that?”
He swung his leg over the cross bar, peddled slowly across the intersection. He had a green light. On his back he carried an Indian army surplus pack and in his left hand held a plastic thrift store bag containing a new pair of kaki shorts he got for six bucks and an army green shirt, Indian too, less than two bucks from the thrift store, a non-profit the black woman clerk said was owned by Jews.
Almost midway inside the cross walk, a pickup truck whizzed by, a near miss. Then suddenly out of nowhere he heard the winding motor of a scooter looking him straight in the eyes.
Smack, he got hit head on, the writer, the classic Japanese, another white guy and scooter all went sprawling onto the pavement.
Cars sped by. As the writer got up, the scooter guy, shaken, asked, “Are you ok? Are you ok?”
Then a black guy driving by sticks his head out the window, “I’m gonna waste you.”
The writer wondered, “Which driver is he talking about?” He did have a green light. .
His left thumb tingled a bit, that was it.
The writer punched in the hack’s name and phone number and rode off.
His bike came through without a scratch, leaving its mark on the front fender of a coffee cream scooter named “Lucky.”
(To be continued.}
A scooter named lucky, Life stories, Days 3, 4 & 5, Copyright by Mike Marcellino & Mike Marcellino Communications, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Life stories series: Chased clouds, empty sky
Chased clouds, empty sky
By Mike Marcellino
The Daily Prose, Volume 1, Issue 2, May 29, 2009
Two of a series
“Where to begin start? “he wondered.
“Start with radio, NPR,” as he had a portable, hand operated Shack radio. He began listening to public radio, riding his classic Japanese model bike to downtown Cleveland.
The writer was overwhelmed again. It was only the day after yesterday, the day before today. He forgot allergy pills, had stupidly got two plastic containers of conditioner at the dollar store, no shampoo. Yes, the conditioners were each a dollar.
His ability to scan labels - gone bad to worse, with or without glasses. No matter, 88 cent dime store specks, or the VA specials. He had some incurable eye condition he could have inherited from his real father, the assistant starter.
“The good news, the VA said, “double cornea transplants.”
A few years later, a really nice guy riding the Detroit bus asked the writer,” Are you on the transplant list?”
“That’s a really good question,” the writer thought to himself,”
“No. I’m not,” he answered.
“My first pair of VA glasses, gunmetal frames, high fashion,” he explained. “The top right rim split clean. “They must have been pretty thin,” he reasoned.
“Second pair, lightweights, rimless bottoms, fell apart right away, looked like silly putty,
Now that’s pretty funny if you need glasses just for show,” the writer said, wondering how he was going to write without eyesight.
“Blind people figured a way,” he knew that.
At the veterans’ medical center the writer handed the two broken glasses to the young man in the office. He asked him for a card but he didn’t have them. He said he was a “patient representative.” The writer, ex- orderly, in six months learned about health care. He was the only male on a surgical ward in Lakewood Hospital.
“These glasses are defective, contractors are ripping me and the VA off,” the writer said in consternation. “Investigate these glasses and get back to me, ok?” Without a word, he quietly put them away in a desk drawer.
Weeks later, the writer returned to the VA for another reason. He walked into the office of the patient representative and asked, “Did you look into my glasses?”
“No,” he responded, quietly and looking straight at me without another word, handed over two pair of broken glasses wrapped up in white paper and a red rubber band.
On the road, the writer rode toward the breaks in the puffy sky. He stopped on the near side bank of the river, at a drawbridge over the flats and tracks.
Junk floated on the Cuyahoga, dozens, on the layers of muck, discarded, mostly plastic bottles, all sizes, Styrofoam cups, faint, yellow striped off white rubber ball and a wooden desk drawer. Gradually, the mess on the water drifted, skating upstream.
“Fowl birds have more sense than to light on this water,” he thought. Then a goofy goose honked by.
The Cuyahoga, “crooked river,” as natives called it, was very celebrated. In the 1970s, the river’s ‘water’ caught fire. Another time, ex-mayor Ralph Perk’s set his hair on fire with a blowtorch. He aim narrowly missed the ceremonial steel ribbon. Both made world news.
The sun warmed the writer’s right shoulder. He felt it through an old green army shirt, probably Cuban. He’d done chores already – GI, no, err, rock star shower, brushed his teeth, tossed out pieces of his paper collection.
“Yikes,” he said to himself. “A call in public radio show about bikes – ageless, timeless commentators talking about ageless, timeless peddle power transportation. Right away he called the only station number on his cell phone. Turned out to be the wrong FM station but someone answered and he told him what he had to say about bikes anyway.
“We’re light years away from being ‘bike friendly,’” he told the guy at the WRONG station. “I know without doubt, this revelation won’t ever come to the earth’s most powerful nation. After all,” his thinking continued, “People in most of America’s towns, big and small, these days exist without a bus or train, intra or inner city and a third of our workers get to work carless.”
The writer remembered when he was in Saigon, it was 1968, a now and then Chinese sedan and a few motor scooters, were hopelessly outnumbered, surrounded by bikes and tricycles, aka rickshaws.
A commentator told about an LA doctor prescribing biking for a patient. “It must be a joke,” she chuckled nervously.
“Wait, don’t you know the cost of treating overweight Americans run in the trillions, and millions are dying needlessly.” he wanted to ask her.
“Where to begin,” he wondered again.
“Bikes as a means of transportation are ethic. It’s the economy stupid, if not for pleasure, adventure.
It’s a good thing for us and our planet,” he cried, into a northwest headwind.
“Is anybody listening? They still don’t get it. Isn’t that politically correct?”
“How much money does the government have for bicycles?” a caller asked.
“We have no specific sum,” a planner responded.
Then a downtown commuter called, asking about showers.
“You should live in Tulsa,” the writer could a told him.
Luckily, the writer was saved by the day. The sun chased the clouds, emptied the blue sky.
“Another day at the office,” the writer relented, landing safely again in Phoenix.
He took his usual break before starting work, reached for a wad of Gambler tobacco. A black and white portrait of a smoking cowboy stamped on the pouch, half his face in shadow, he noticed.
The writer thought, “In God we trust” for some reason.
Back in the executives’ wash room, he looked in the mirror. His hair was out of control, without shampoo for days. Reminded him of this couple he knew won a Toronto twist contest, last standing on the cream & black checkered dance floor.
“Call on John Travolta. File a class action,” he suggested.
Chased clouds, empty sky, copyright by Mike Marcellino 2009
By Mike Marcellino
The Daily Prose, Volume 1, Issue 2, May 29, 2009
Two of a series
“Where to begin start? “he wondered.
“Start with radio, NPR,” as he had a portable, hand operated Shack radio. He began listening to public radio, riding his classic Japanese model bike to downtown Cleveland.
The writer was overwhelmed again. It was only the day after yesterday, the day before today. He forgot allergy pills, had stupidly got two plastic containers of conditioner at the dollar store, no shampoo. Yes, the conditioners were each a dollar.
His ability to scan labels - gone bad to worse, with or without glasses. No matter, 88 cent dime store specks, or the VA specials. He had some incurable eye condition he could have inherited from his real father, the assistant starter.
“The good news, the VA said, “double cornea transplants.”
A few years later, a really nice guy riding the Detroit bus asked the writer,” Are you on the transplant list?”
“That’s a really good question,” the writer thought to himself,”
“No. I’m not,” he answered.
“My first pair of VA glasses, gunmetal frames, high fashion,” he explained. “The top right rim split clean. “They must have been pretty thin,” he reasoned.
“Second pair, lightweights, rimless bottoms, fell apart right away, looked like silly putty,
Now that’s pretty funny if you need glasses just for show,” the writer said, wondering how he was going to write without eyesight.
“Blind people figured a way,” he knew that.
At the veterans’ medical center the writer handed the two broken glasses to the young man in the office. He asked him for a card but he didn’t have them. He said he was a “patient representative.” The writer, ex- orderly, in six months learned about health care. He was the only male on a surgical ward in Lakewood Hospital.
“These glasses are defective, contractors are ripping me and the VA off,” the writer said in consternation. “Investigate these glasses and get back to me, ok?” Without a word, he quietly put them away in a desk drawer.
Weeks later, the writer returned to the VA for another reason. He walked into the office of the patient representative and asked, “Did you look into my glasses?”
“No,” he responded, quietly and looking straight at me without another word, handed over two pair of broken glasses wrapped up in white paper and a red rubber band.
On the road, the writer rode toward the breaks in the puffy sky. He stopped on the near side bank of the river, at a drawbridge over the flats and tracks.
Junk floated on the Cuyahoga, dozens, on the layers of muck, discarded, mostly plastic bottles, all sizes, Styrofoam cups, faint, yellow striped off white rubber ball and a wooden desk drawer. Gradually, the mess on the water drifted, skating upstream.
“Fowl birds have more sense than to light on this water,” he thought. Then a goofy goose honked by.
The Cuyahoga, “crooked river,” as natives called it, was very celebrated. In the 1970s, the river’s ‘water’ caught fire. Another time, ex-mayor Ralph Perk’s set his hair on fire with a blowtorch. He aim narrowly missed the ceremonial steel ribbon. Both made world news.
The sun warmed the writer’s right shoulder. He felt it through an old green army shirt, probably Cuban. He’d done chores already – GI, no, err, rock star shower, brushed his teeth, tossed out pieces of his paper collection.
“Yikes,” he said to himself. “A call in public radio show about bikes – ageless, timeless commentators talking about ageless, timeless peddle power transportation. Right away he called the only station number on his cell phone. Turned out to be the wrong FM station but someone answered and he told him what he had to say about bikes anyway.
“We’re light years away from being ‘bike friendly,’” he told the guy at the WRONG station. “I know without doubt, this revelation won’t ever come to the earth’s most powerful nation. After all,” his thinking continued, “People in most of America’s towns, big and small, these days exist without a bus or train, intra or inner city and a third of our workers get to work carless.”
The writer remembered when he was in Saigon, it was 1968, a now and then Chinese sedan and a few motor scooters, were hopelessly outnumbered, surrounded by bikes and tricycles, aka rickshaws.
A commentator told about an LA doctor prescribing biking for a patient. “It must be a joke,” she chuckled nervously.
“Wait, don’t you know the cost of treating overweight Americans run in the trillions, and millions are dying needlessly.” he wanted to ask her.
“Where to begin,” he wondered again.
“Bikes as a means of transportation are ethic. It’s the economy stupid, if not for pleasure, adventure.
It’s a good thing for us and our planet,” he cried, into a northwest headwind.
“Is anybody listening? They still don’t get it. Isn’t that politically correct?”
“How much money does the government have for bicycles?” a caller asked.
“We have no specific sum,” a planner responded.
Then a downtown commuter called, asking about showers.
“You should live in Tulsa,” the writer could a told him.
Luckily, the writer was saved by the day. The sun chased the clouds, emptied the blue sky.
“Another day at the office,” the writer relented, landing safely again in Phoenix.
He took his usual break before starting work, reached for a wad of Gambler tobacco. A black and white portrait of a smoking cowboy stamped on the pouch, half his face in shadow, he noticed.
The writer thought, “In God we trust” for some reason.
Back in the executives’ wash room, he looked in the mirror. His hair was out of control, without shampoo for days. Reminded him of this couple he knew won a Toronto twist contest, last standing on the cream & black checkered dance floor.
“Call on John Travolta. File a class action,” he suggested.
Chased clouds, empty sky, copyright by Mike Marcellino 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Life stories series: No outside signal
Art work by Ashley Pastore, Copyright 2009No outside signal
Chapter 1
By Mike Marcellino
The Prose Daily Volume 1, Issue 1, First Edition, May 28, 2009
He woke up, not knowing how, or why, it happened. He lived with bikes in absolute mellow chaos; he was surrounded in an old dirty red brick building on West 3rd Street, just up the hill from the Flats. Made the French roast too strong, put in some 2 percent. Taking a shower should be pretty simple, but this day that is not the case. You see, the cold water has no knob, to turn it. Bike wizard, Harry, a short balding guy who says he’s Jewish, left a big wrench, that didn’t work for me the first time, letting out cold water; no matter, Cleveland water doesn’t read the bill anyway.
Today the writer used his now rusty small wrench without a problem. Out the door he goes, flying down the steep hill past the vacant run down café. Swear a cop parked his souped up Ford out front.
His first destination, carrying his unidentified army surplus pack, a laptop on his back, his hideaway of broken glass and old tires, nasty grass. He sat down on the edge of concrete, abutment to a bridge too far, a bridge to nowhere, but a clump of green hedged mixed with concrete across the chasm. The writer took a smoke, a mix of menthol Kite Turkish tobacco and what ever happened to be dropped in by a stranger.
Back on the road, he crossed the old, once mighty city’s industrial heart, The Flats. Peddling easily on his classic Japanese, he felt comfort in the passing trucks, 16 wheelers, and haulers in oil, asphalt and cement for starters. St. Mary’s the latter, Universal Oil the former.
Slipped quickly past the now quiet amphitheatre, where was it “Keith” Michaels, a once hot lead singer with Poison, turned cowboy complete with long gold hair and a matching straw hat? Got in Sunday for a dollar.
All roads lead to rock and roll in Cleveland, the edifice on the lake. But in Tower City, the old, once golden train station, the writer found solace – free rock and roll music piped in by Bose, what class, Forest City!
The Tower, the writer had once encountered years ago, on a strange day, probably running Veterans for Clinton from his hotel bedroom, fifty some yellow stickums, all with notations, the meet up and van caravan, linking up the Arkansas boys, Army, Marines and all, and some curbside revolt of Vietnam War combat veterans. Though he remembers well this spiritual occasion, suffice to say now, he called the place, “Crystal City,” after a place across the Potomac from DC.
The writer made it downtown, a bee line, pretend courier, carrying a top secret, highly classified message to Phoenix Coffee, the Cleveland + Plus version in the dim sun shadows below little, bland brick Key tower. Inside, outside no signal, he tapped at his laptop, “What to do next? I don’t have a clue, there are too many choices. But the once that suits him best is to run away.
Then he remembered, he forgot about the OD Bridge across the Cuyahoga to the East Side, raccoon suddenly shoot bike right into a city cave, he for fortune he entered into a dark or darker tunnel, the perfect flash back, waiting for the Americal and his next mission, still looking for an outside signal. Having nothing better to do, except hit the lake till his hat floats. Fuck, then he remembered, “Shit, there’s no surf in Cleveland, just tons of pollution.”
He got the key to the executive bathroom, a heavy ice cream scooper, walked though a maze of two glass doors, walls all the same fucking grey. He stopped in his tracks, a neon EXIT and that dreaded alarm warning. Open the door and all hell breaks lose, but he did it. The lock gave him trouble, on the men’s room door, adorn with a lifeless black suited symbol.
“It would help if I could see it,” he thought.
The writer was actually able to pass urine, aka, take a leak, no thanks to his prostate, bladder or kidneys.
“Free at last, free at last, thank God, free at last,” that pause in his life brought on his favorite quote.
“Ditto, Martin”
He could easily drift off into the Kennedy and King assassinations and the lack of real investigation.
“Better yet, ‘go find a guitar, play harmonica, live up to their labels.
Vincent isn't "Short" anymore, still a block south from Lake Erie, the closest to The Theatrial Grill's the Theatric Garage and a Holiday Inn Hotels and Express all weather sign's on the door of the old, historic National City Bank building.
It stopped raining. The daily commute underway in force.
"No outside signal," Chapter 1, The Daily Prose, Volume 1, Issue 1, First Edition, Copyright May 28, 2009 by Mike Marcellino, aka, Mike Marcellino, a sole proprietership in the state of Ohio, " Flash True Fiction" and "True Flash Fiction" and "True Fiction." all Copyright Mike Marcellino, aka Mike Marcellino Communications, May 28, 2009
Friday, October 26, 2007
Fields of destruction, a short story
fields of destruction
Even in 2007, most baseball fans know of Bob Feller, who could have been the best pitcher in baseball history if he hadn’t “walked off the mound” to join the Navy on Monday, December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The mound in the diamond of Cleveland Municipal Stadium, built in 1931 and destroyed 64 years later, which just happens to be my age to date.
What not many people ever knew, except Iowans, was they called young Feller “the heater from Van Meter,” Iowa that is. Today’s population 866. The railroad tracks headed west and a farm road called R Road make a cross and that’s Van Meter.
Feller could be one of the heroes of William Casey Blake, who hails less than 20 miles or so down the road east in Des Moines. Blake plays ball in Cleveland’s new ball park. It’s called Jacobs Field, rather poetic, I think, and something like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, near the train station.
Whether Iowan Blake was named after the mighty Casey who struck out breaking a bunch of hearts I don’t know. Probably. The third baseman and a few other Cleveland Indians may be the subject of a few not exactly upbeat poems after the “Tribe” fell apartment after getting up on Boston 3-1 in the best of seven American League Championship.
Fans in Cleveland (and it will probably catch on) are calling it “The Collapse.” Cleveland sports team history is filled with bat shattering two word nationally, if not world known, epitaphs.
The Catch, the Polo Grounds , September 29, 1954.
Some think say hay Willie Mays’ An over the shoulder wide receiver style back to home plate the greatest grab in baseball history. The San Francisco Giants turned a 2-2 tie into a win and went on to defeat the Indians who put into the record books one of the best seasons in baseball history. The Giants took four straight off the Indians winning the World Series. Someone on Wikipedia says that people say that Vic Wertz drive to straight center traveled 450 feet. That can’t be possible, can it? Wikipedia, did they ever play “polo” in the Polo Grounds?
But, I am getting ahead of myself and away from the freshest Cleveland professional sports team suicides, in a 53- year- long trail of unraveling I followed until I collapsed.
I affectionately titled my story, “Fields of Destruction” because the Indians remind me of the Vietnam War era classic, “The Eve of Destruction.” I thought the song was called “Fields of Destruction,” having been in some of those fields and by Eric Burdon and the Animals rather than Barry McGuire, that I now remember as a movie with Tom Cruise about a football players’ agent that I saw part of a few times.
I was almost in Van Meter once without even knowing it’s the home of the Bob Feller Museum. Actually, Van Meter is just a few miles west along Interstate 80 from a whole Google of Super 8 motels. I have a Super 8 card somewhere. I came as close as Jimmy’s All American restaurant and bar, a place where a writer from Cleveland posing as a movie scout was immediately and continuously hugged and kissed and bought beers all Wednesday night, the only night things jump in Des Monies, I as told. Just call me lucky, but that does put some distance between me and the Indians.
What not many people ever knew, except Iowans, was they called young Feller “the heater from Van Meter,” Iowa that is. Today’s population 866. The railroad tracks headed west and a farm road called R Road make a cross and that’s Van Meter.
Feller could be one of the heroes of William Casey Blake, who hails less than 20 miles or so down the road east in Des Moines. Blake plays ball in Cleveland’s new ball park. It’s called Jacobs Field, rather poetic, I think, and something like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, near the train station.
Whether Iowan Blake was named after the mighty Casey who struck out breaking a bunch of hearts I don’t know. Probably. The third baseman and a few other Cleveland Indians may be the subject of a few not exactly upbeat poems after the “Tribe” fell apartment after getting up on Boston 3-1 in the best of seven American League Championship.
Fans in Cleveland (and it will probably catch on) are calling it “The Collapse.” Cleveland sports team history is filled with bat shattering two word nationally, if not world known, epitaphs.
The Catch, the Polo Grounds , September 29, 1954.
Some think say hay Willie Mays’ An over the shoulder wide receiver style back to home plate the greatest grab in baseball history. The San Francisco Giants turned a 2-2 tie into a win and went on to defeat the Indians who put into the record books one of the best seasons in baseball history. The Giants took four straight off the Indians winning the World Series. Someone on Wikipedia says that people say that Vic Wertz drive to straight center traveled 450 feet. That can’t be possible, can it? Wikipedia, did they ever play “polo” in the Polo Grounds?
But, I am getting ahead of myself and away from the freshest Cleveland professional sports team suicides, in a 53- year- long trail of unraveling I followed until I collapsed.
I affectionately titled my story, “Fields of Destruction” because the Indians remind me of the Vietnam War era classic, “The Eve of Destruction.” I thought the song was called “Fields of Destruction,” having been in some of those fields and by Eric Burdon and the Animals rather than Barry McGuire, that I now remember as a movie with Tom Cruise about a football players’ agent that I saw part of a few times.
I was almost in Van Meter once without even knowing it’s the home of the Bob Feller Museum. Actually, Van Meter is just a few miles west along Interstate 80 from a whole Google of Super 8 motels. I have a Super 8 card somewhere. I came as close as Jimmy’s All American restaurant and bar, a place where a writer from Cleveland posing as a movie scout was immediately and continuously hugged and kissed and bought beers all Wednesday night, the only night things jump in Des Monies, I as told. Just call me lucky, but that does put some distance between me and the Indians.
Copyright by Mike Marcellino 2008
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