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Woke about 0730 or so. After I woke up around 0400 after going to bed at 0100. Don't sleep much these days, not continuously anyway. Used to but I had this medical misadventure four years ago. The insomnia is apparently a permanent thing but being retired and moderately wealthy I sleep whenever I please. And it pleases me a few times a day and that works for me. I got up and had a drink of lemonade and went back to bed and slept to 0700 or so and gave up on getting any more sleep. Drink lemonade regularly since the kidney stone. Brush my teeth and shave and shower and dress and check email and news. 0900 by then and I go to town and Wal-Mart for a couple of things I forgot when I went yesterday. Stop at Tractor Supply for something. Twin Falls has had a Tractor Supply for several years now, in the old Kroger building on State Street. State Street is the main drag, once a two-lane that was part of Highway One. That would be state Highway One. It's been a four-lane for twenty or more years and the one traffic light in 1964 is now a dozen. Kroger had more stores in small cities like Twin Falls but in the late seventies the Teamsters pushed it a little too far. I worked at that Kroger store when I was in high school and quit because I didn't want to be in a union. Dad worked for General Motors when I was born in Michigan and the unions there got pretty nasty during strikes. Shot up a house on our street and killed a three-year-old kid. Dad decided to leave Michigan and return to his former home and that's where I grew up. Actually I got older. Some would question whether I grew up. At any rate as a teenager I bagged groceries at the Kroger store on State Street. Lot of the kids I worked with figured they would get a full-time job at a Kroger store and have it knocked. Early 1970s and the department managers who worked eight hours at fourteen dollars an hour or better for little more than filling out some forms a couple times a week for inventory and the part-time kids did all the work. Schedule themselves eight hours or so of overtime every week and bump your paycheck up thirty percent. That worked pretty well until Kroger had had enough. Looking at a strike they went for the best deal they could get - tell the union they could have what they were asking for but they would have to close some stores. Union said OK but you can't fire anybody. Kroger said OK. The State Street store closed a couple of years later and the full-time employees got reassigned to other stores. Memphis was nearby and absorbed most of them, one or two went to larger towns in the area. I had already left and was working at a local bank and where that went is another story. Back from town a little after 1100. Check messages. Need to check some things, banks and such, and pay some bills but that can wait. Take a nap in the La-Z-Boy. Wake up at 1400. Anytime after 1200 is good for a drink and I pour some Old Charter in one glass and Jim Beam in another. Vanilla Coke with the Beam and regular with the Charter. Girlfriend likes Beam and I haven't yet convinced her on Charter. Wearing a thermal Henley but drinking in one don't feel right. Put on a long-sleeve tan Wrangler shirt like I wear all the time. Ice up and light a gas station sweet cigar and go out to the front deck. Got tired of having the plastic Adirondack chairs from Wal-Mart blown all over the place and got some real wood ones. Last tornado was two years ago so these things should stay put. Smoke cigar and sip Beam and Coke. Kitty cat prowling around and sniffing everything and once in a while rubs against the lower legs of the Wrangler jeans. Wearing Dickies socks because Wrangler socks are a little thicker than I wear generally. Sometimes I sleep in them but don't wear them with shoes. Sometimes with rain boots. Drink Beam and Coke and smoke cigar. Watch kitty cat. Kitty cat's name is Jessica. My best girl is named Jessica. Kitty cat doesn't know or care. She's a cat. Finish cigar and drink, watch the light fading. Go back in the house and put ice in the Charter and Coke, come back out and sit down and drink. Hour later feeling mellow and think on whether to read some news or pay bills or take a nap or write or something. Decide to write.
I was born in Michigan on account of Dad went there in the 1952 to work in the automobile factories. Lot of people from southern states did that and the money was good especially compared to being unemployed in the south. He and his brother had bought a small farm and needed money to pay the mortgage. Brother stayed home and worked and made what money he could and with the money Dad sent they managed to keep it. During the next seven years I and my younger brother were born in Flint but Dad didn't like the way things were going there and decided to return home. So Mom and Dad took their kids - my brother and me and our two older sisters that were born down south - back home. I was about four years or so old and so I grew up in the south. Or as I said I aged. Autism was barely a thing back then and if I acted a little strange as a child they didn't worry much as I seemed to be otherwise all right. So until I started school and for a while after it wasn't a big deal. Conditions were improving and Dad and his brother made fair money on the farm and Dad worked at a factory to help out. Eventually the hundred and sixty acres had eighty added and then another eighty. Renting another hundred or so they had a pretty good operation by the time I was in middle school. Brother and I worked on the farm after school and enjoyed it more than school as driving a tractor is infinitely more fun than sitting in a classroom. I was four when we returned from Michigan and had a couple of free years before starting school. Only a few upper-class people sent their kids to kindergarten or pre-school in those days and I believe that when I started school there were a half dozen or so in my first-grade class of about thirty. There were two classes so there may have been some in the other class but it seemed most or all of the upper class were in my class. Kids of doctors and bankers and just rich for whatever reason. There were two doctor's kids and a dentist's kid and an optometrist's kid that were in my class all they way through high school so I guess they were grouping us somehow from the beginning. First-grade classes were in one of two old buildings a considerable distance from the rest of the school. Third through sixth were in a big new facility that had just opened about that time and a couple of years later we would go there but for now were in the old building by the courthouse and jail. Teacher was Mrs. Garner. Plump and seemed old but I was six so thirty probably seemed old. Very nice and the teacher of the other class had a reputation for being mean but I never had any run-ins with her so I didn't worry about it.
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