I'm going back someday, come what may, to Blue Bayou

Looks like sculpture to me…

If only in my mind and sculpture and MacBook. Back before the beginning of time, or so it seems, I roamed St. Joseph, Louisiana, the parish seat of Tensas Parish. (Pronounced ten-saw, by the way, like Arkansas) As we get older, I'm told, we become more in touch with our youth and more aware of the distance between now and then. That particular season of my existence began to surface after a spring storm this year which downed some fair-sized trees at Wise Acres. Too large and too heavy to drag off to the brush pile, I resigned myself to sawing them up into manageable chunks.

But the more I looked at them, the more they reminded me of something. Something I had seen many years ago. Tupelo and cypress trees in the bayou, reaching barkless dead fingers out of backwaters and sloughs. And something else. Art made of these expressive pieces of nature. Primitive art, all the more powerful for its lack of, or even avoidance of, artistic sophistication.

I was also experiencing writing blockage on a novel I'm trying to finish for publication in 2019. A switch to sculpture often frees up creative inertia in writing so I began making pieces influenced by childhood memories of Tensas Parish. I became so immersed in it that I didn't much care about the writing; it has become an idée fixe, and the show even has a name this early in the game. "A love letter to Tensas Parish."

A fascinating man, Mayor Fields…(Washington Post Photo)

Four pieces in, I decided to contact some people from there. A talented poet/librarian named Garland Strother surfaced online. He agreed to send me a picture and a short bio. I will be posting his Tensas-oriented poems and materials at the show. I found a young entrepreneur from Tensas Parish, an LSU grad, Joel Brannan, who is building a distillery for his Magnolia brand vodka. I talked to the Mayor, Elvadus Fields, for a delightful hour. The list of honorees is growing.

If you come to the show (Hilliard Gallery, KC crossroads, May, 2019, First Friday May-June) expect to see representatives of Tensas Parish and St. Joe, the parish seat, on the walls. These are interesting people. All the more so, because they belong to an exclusive club: the least populated parish in Louisiana, and they're all making marks.

A little about that neck of the bayou: there are three towns in the parish, St.Joseph, Newellton and Waterproof. The parish butts up to the Mississippi River, and has a couple of big oxbow lakes. Lake Bruin is about 3,000 acres of extremely clear water.

Among the celebrated from Tensas Parish is a bodyguard for Huey P. Long who was present at the "assassination." That's in quotes because it's looking less and less like a murder and more like a ricochet accident. The assailant may not even have been armed, but the gun (they say) he had was a .32 revolver. Long died from a .38 caliber wound. Check it out here for some fascinating history.

Part of what makes Louisiana, Louisiana…

I shot my first duck in the parish bayou, a merganser. We were in a johnboat among the cypress trees, my stepfather, me, and a sweet water spaniel named Suzy who lived with us later in Tulsa. The shotgun was nearly as tall as I was, an Ithaca 16 guage pump that still hangs on the wall all these years later. The duck hit the water but was alive enough to slip in among the cypress roots and evade us. Suzy jumped into the water and caught it, swam back to the boat. It was the only duck we got that day.

So, a rite of passage occurred down there. But I quit hunting altogether about forty years ago. Blasting unarmed creatures when you don't need to do that to survive was counter to my idea of myself. Many things are. But the good people of St. Joe and nearby towns own qualities I would do well to aspire to, even at this late date.

Tensas Parish keeps declining in numbers, in income, in solutions. But I'm thinking with notables like those I've mentioned and those I'll meet, that may start to reverse itself. The mayor mentioned a lady named Vivian who left St. Joe to get a top nursing degree in Maryland. She came back and is investing in the town. She runs a restaurant and is rehabbing a derelict mansion as a home for women who need a sanctuary. I want to get her bio and a photo for the show. And others. I hope to have a nice wall of fame for the show in May. Y'all come, hear?

And I hope that book is on Amazon by then, and you've got a copy and recommended it to your book club and Oprah, and my royalties are better than the $12.74 I got last quarter.   

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

They sleep a lot. Then they run and play a lot. Works for people, too.

4th of July where'd you come from? Last I looked it was, oh, April or something. I was putting up temporary fencing for two tiny aussie pups, and yesterday I took it all down, rolled up the wire and put it in the barn. I have a t-post puller thank god, as they were pounded in deep. I'm just a fencing fool. Today I pledged allegiance to a neglected lawn, and mowed the front area. It's a big sucker. I'll do the back maybe friday. The pups love the lawn and the front pasture.

The new bookmarks are here! The new bookmarks are here! I'm living and coping with adult onset optimism so it doesn't take much to get me all abuzz. Good thing, too. Too many people are out to rid the world of natural highs just by being pissed off all the time. Life is short I think they will find, probably at the too late mark and then they'll only have time to say "wha...?"

What a voice. It could be a bass saxophone.

By the way, talk about laid back and cool, David Basse, KC's jazz legend, has such a resonant everyday speaking voice I asked him to say a word or two about a couple of books on the new bookmark. Then I sent the mp3's to a podcast I frequent. Give a listen--it would be enjoyable to hear David read a to-do list. (These are short, :30's)

Got to thinking while on the mower today (there I go, thinking again) how I used to welcome summer as a kid. No more teacher's dirty looks. The heavy pneumatic doors of Horace Mann School with their glass and chickenwire prison windows closed behind me and the free world of summer hove into view. A kid's mind regards three months of summer freedom pretty much as a lifetime, an infinite vista. "The endless laboratory experiment of being alive," as Scott Bradfield put it in a recent book review.

Joe, Joe, ease off. But what a summer!

I didn't know what I'd do out there, I just knew it would be fun and no one would grade me on it. Multiple choice took on fresh meaning. One such summer I was introduced to McCarthyism. Commies were everywhere. I was enthralled. Maybe some of my grandmother's neighbors were communists. Or spies. The rabid senator made that case on black and white TV. I had just gotten a little printing press with rubber type and I put out the first fake newspaper. I wrote libelous things about neighbors, then hawked the paper on the street. Few takers at a nickel apiece. If only I'd known about the magic "An anonymous source said..." plausibility ploy.

This summer I'm doing what I can to not finish a novel and the internet is helping immensely; I'm even reading my Tommy Hilfiger emails and thinking of answering them. I'm resisting the thousand words a day groove, but I'll get back into it. Why not? All the other books are making me so rich, (an anonymous source alleges) why would I not finish another one to put into the grinder? I read somewhere there are 600,000 to a million books published each year in the U.S. alone. About half are self-published. Mine aren't, so far. Maybe they should be. On average these million books sell 250 copies a year. But like I said, that old optimism works for me.

Happy summer! g

The Reset Button: Cole Lindbergh

Horses See Ghosts. Published in April.

Busy year. When you're flogging away doing the stuff that you're meant to do, writing, welding, it's a focused flurry. Not much room for anything else. Then when that book is published and that sculpture show has opened, you come down on the graph like an S&P correction, BLAM. Running on empty it seems. Valley, not peak.

That's the time to get started on more projects, after a suitable rest. So a podcast happened. Number 44. It's up right now on Cole Lindbergh's Kansas City Podcast, and what an honor. This young guy has accomplished a lot since his even younger days at Worlds of Fun, the premiere KC entertainment park. He's the reason for a lot of the fun at that institution of rides and games. Cole is walking, talking, dancing, singing exuberance and positive energy--and what a treat to meet him. (Click here to hear podcast)

Cole, helping Worlds of Fun earn its last name...

We took a short tour of Wise Acres then settled into my quiet loft office upstairs in Freddie's studio building in back of the main house. I had listened to him on "This American Life" and his own podcast, and wanted to meet him, see if some of his sparkle and verve might be catching. I forgot there were microphones and a recorder as we talked. You'd think that a serial extrovert like Cole might unnerve a brooding solitudinarian, but this was a fresh fun couple of hours, indeed.

His podcast subjects range from talented rappers to paranormal investigators and everything in between; their shared commonality being they are Kansas City born. I'm off his beaten path, fifty miles south in Resume Speed, Kansas, but out he came on a Friday afternoon, helping to kick off the Memorial Day long weekend. What a reset button this guy is. If you need a lift, check out his blog and especially some of the videos of him singing, dancing and performing signature Lindbergh antics.

Not that he doesn't take anything seriously, of course he does. His concerns match many of yours, but his main cables and gears are those of a great ride at a very amusing amusement park. His earliest desire was to be an imagineer at Disney Studios. I think he's something beyond that. An imagineer of his own effervescent life journey. And a potent reminder, if this thing is only a one-time deal, have some fun along the way.

Click here to hear the episodes with Cole Lindbergh...

Might as well blog, can't dance...

GW, watching the snow that's keeping him from working...

One of those spring days with stuff coming down, snow, rain, indeterminate crap. With a sculpture opening deadline looming and not many pieces done yet, the ones in my head look pretty good but actually finding and welding the right pieces are a long way from something to show. I'd be out in the shop's open doorway now, but the drifting stuff is coming in there, so the pups and me are stuck indoors. They're having a rare quiet moment, gathering their considerable energies in sleep, so they can throw themselves at me. Freddie says I'm supposed to be pack leader, not one of them. The latter is more fun.

That classic looking Buick, main picture above, is a 1957 or 1958 Century convertible, and I ran across it while thinking back to my (tossed) salad days as a field engineer for a paving company in Omaha, right out of art school. That car, or one very like it, was my company car, believe that or not. It was a hand-me-down, having been the company owner's wife's car.

When asked if it was my car by a visiting college chum, I said no it was a company car. He said, who do you work for, Playboy? So I had it okay back then, especially on sunny top-down days. It lasted me about a year, but it wasn't suited for the off-roading I had to do on paving projects, and the transmission went. Old beat up pickups were my mode for the remainder of my time with Cornhusker Paving Company.

Cash and Millie sleeping amongst tax crap and art mags...

And dump trucks, during snow removal. Winter is an off-season for concrete paving so, when I wasn't balancing the books between Cornhusker and Ready-Mix Concrete, I was picking up snow loads in the parking lots of hotels and other places that contracted with us. A pint of Schanpps, a faulty heater at two a.m., looking for a place to dump a load of snow. Far cry from a luxury convertible with the top down on a sunny day.

I remember one such hot day when another field man and I were working out at the airport. He went into acting. I went into advertising. His name was Terry Kiser, and to prepare for an upcoming play at the Omaha Playhouse he and I would read his lines for Mutiny on the Bounty, he from memory, me holding the script. It must have looked odd, all our gesturing and shouting out there in the swirling dust of a construction area. It was great fun. The Playhouse had spawned some fine actors like Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Nick Nolte. Nolte was currently playing in The Deep, with Jacqueline Bisset. And now Terry was giving it his try.

Terry Kiser, the actor's actor...

He wasn't so much interested in films as in legitimate theater, so he went to New York and did well. Now and then he'd appear on TV as a character actor in Barney Miller and other popular shows.  He was known as "the actor's actor" in New York, and wrote a method book for other actors. He did "Weekend at Bernie's" and said, "I get a movie and what's my part? A dead guy."

Well, the snow has stopped, so it looks like I have to pull myself out of this pleasant reverie and get some welding done. That day, with the yellow Buick parked, top down, under the blue Omaha sky; Terry and me shouting parts from Mutiny, it seemed there was all the time in the world and then some. The time between then and now is a blur, a head-snapping  minute or two. Some dreams materialized, others hit the rocks far from the mark. Not complaining. But I would like a day or two back then through the lens of now, to savor a few moments, not hurry on to the next thing. 

That next thing is upon me. I hope to see you at the opening, May 4th, the Hilliard Gallery at 1820 McGee, First Friday at the Crossroads, KC.

Eddie Arcaro, Ghost Horses and Nothin' But Blue Skies.

Eddie Arcaro, the outlaw leghorn.

Another Ben Carmean cover off the ball outa the park design.

The vacuum the dogs left us hasn't been filled by a longshot, it's a crater, but various creatures are tumbling into it and vying for attention. Squirrels are coming closer. Roosters and peacocks and peahens are here part time, though one rooster has taken up residence. I worry about him at night. If anyone reading this has a line on a small chicken coop or something the rooster can stay in at night, contact me. I might get some chickens to keep him company. He's a bit of an outlaw. Banished I think. He chases the squirrels and the cat that comes around to eat the dry dogfood that I mix with the chickenscratch.

The peacocks jump up where I feed the wild birds and fill up. Now the rooster does that. He stays in the loafing shed with the horses, hollers get up get up at first light. His crow sounds like "Eddie Arcaro." Then he comes up on the deck to crow, remind me to get his water and food.

I think Eddie Arcaro is in my life to get me up and writing earlier. Not that I've been terribly lax in that department; I've done another book of poetry titled "Horses See Ghosts" and it's waiting for a publisher at the moment. The cover is another wonderful Ben Carmean creation. He does more than one and it's always hard to choose, because he starts with great and ramps up from there. Horses do see ghosts, I've watched them at it. This cover captures that. Stands to reason they would see horse ghosts.

As if things weren't weird enough...

I guess I have to finish the novel now, though that has its attractions. My characters are breathing now and going about doing things that surprise me. That book is "L.A. Hardscape" and it's about a lapsed boxer turned hallucinatory private eye in current day Los Angeles, replete with fires and quakes, human trafficking, and Nazi art theft caches. No shortage of stuff going on there.

In other areas, the shoebox ford is in the shop having (sort of) original suspension reinstalled and scrapping the damn airbags. I got tired of bottoming out on shadows and expansion joints. And having to set the car off the drive shaft every time I drove it. I got a set of leaf springs from Shoebox Central that were pre-lowered at three inches. That plus the two inch blocks will give it the old taildragger profile I so loved in high school. The new suspension will be better than the original 1949, not hard to beat. Suitable transportation to the malt shoppe for me and my gal Freddie.

Blue Horse & Wagon, rolling to The Hilliard Gallery in May

Speaking of F, she gave me these super shades a couple days ago, which she got me for a pre-valentine's gift at a ritzy boutique. Mad bomber glasses. Which is no reference to the morons in ski masks, but a simpler time.

Writing. Been doing some short stories and placing them in some paying venues, some non-paying. Poems. I was curious to see how many stories, essays, blogs and poems I'd actually had accepted from last year's tally and am up to twenty seven. Still paying my dues and approaching with hat in hand, but making headway. Got some coming out in February and in spring issues, so the winter hasn't been idle. Plus the May show is approaching at The Hilliard Gallery. Here's a little preview of that. Blue Horse & Wagon. And I have a pile of Kevin Lee hot rod and bike parts waiting in the wings. When I went out to shoot Blue, I saw Eddie Arcaro looking at himself in the shiny reflection in a car. He was mesmerized. Thinks he found a new friend. It made me happy. That and the thermometer says sixty in the shade. Not bad for Kansas on January 27. I wish you well. G