Campers,

I am definitely having my mind and keyboard and just everything getting locked into an assembly line for my writing much as I’ve assembled my own day in coherent (to me) groups of habits to make patterns and my morning pattern works cause there’s always that thing that wants you to get back in that warm bed (if you could – ever tell a hillbilly mother that you’re too sick to go to school? – my old report cards are filled with one’s in the absence column.

Hell, I was the brat except I got a bigger break that being pampered.

Naw, I got ignored and for a very smart little kid that freedom was wonderful.

I kept my outbreaks to a lower profile as I got older.

Oh, when I was two and my mom turned her back and went to attend to me in the bath and came back a few minutes or seconds probably …

I was running naked up and down the gutters on Chouteau Avenue which was next to our place at 1456 LaSalle Lane and was the racial dividing line for that part of the St. Louis slums after the war.

Got double pneumonia outta that one and back in the hospital for first time since I was born.

Next time I spent a night in the hospital I was 30 years old and a firefighter and had my usual sore throat that wouldn’t quit and the doctor looked at my throat and friggin’ gasped …

"Why haven’t you had your tonsils out !?!"

I allowed that I didn’t really know what tonsils were despite being a high school graduate and all and going to Forest Park Junior College to study first automobile tech cause it was the closest I could find in the course book to machine tool engineering which is what my new father-in-law was a national expert on cause he ran a place right at the gates of the dark lush green gates of the Ozarks and people (country people, hillbillies) got to be as good as anyone at making anything out of metal, not directly but by making these dies which were molds that replaced the old clay molds they used to pour hot iron into to get the outline of a gun barrell was where it really got started with Eli Whitney way the fuck back in the day but you already knew that and if you don’t, smarter cowgirls and cowboys will look that shit up.

So, where was I?

Lemme take a break here and smoke some pot.

Damned near 8 am and still totally straight.

"Whose fault is that?"

That’s what Jens always said when I told him I hadn’t smoked anything that day and he was right.

My point is that I’ve taken to searching for Great-Great Grandma Eliza Jane Roberts Gamble’s Demon in her picture and wondering if it can move around and maybe possess my consciousness when I’m asleep.

I will allow here that many of the things I do, projects politically for instance and carrying double sided signs covered in incomprehensible to all but Allan Ginsberg …

So, I’ve been taking a picture of myself with Grandma Gamble’s picture in the background and I want to see if my face looks like hers.

This is about day 4 or 5 and you be the judge ..

Where was I?

Yeah, I was gonna take a break and get high and watch the friday morning news on You Tube where my favorite broadcaster hides behind the moniker, ‘Beau of the Fifth Column’ and if you’re reading this man, gimme a shout out and come via your computer and do an interview with me?

…