ARCHIVES - 1996 to FOREVER

The first bad news: my old friend Billy, Ginny's uncle, died Sunday. I didn't know that until today.

Ginny told me tonight that it was all good, he suffered a lot during the last months.

Billy smoked cigarettes and he was a major factor in my life after I got out of the army. 50 years old and single, he told me a lot about how life works.

He was a milkman for 50+ years... who could know life better?

He was four months younger than Mom. Unlike her, he died of a preventable disease.... emphysema. Just like two of his sisters.

Billy told me not once, but numerous times... "Live for right now!"

And he did that. Never missed a day at work... never.

When I was in junior high, I went out on the route with a milkman, my next-door neighbor, Melvin. It was a lot of work, but we got eight hours' work done in three... and had eight hours' pay and the rest of the day off.

Except for those days (starting at oh-fucking three hundred) when things got wrong and we were on the route for twelve hours.

But Billy, he was true to himself, and he did well.

He was a ladies man... when I got out of the army and came back to Topeka to live with Ginny and Bob Mast, he was "going" with a lady who owned and ran a liquor store.

At the time, I loved Canadian Club whisky... he would bring me a case every week, at about 1/3 price.

And he was a dancer... he would woo the ladies at the Moose, and most likely at other places that I didn't frequent.

In fact, he was the one who got me into the Moose, even though I had to sign a paper saying that I believed in god. He told me to not worry, nobody would even think about it, much less ask me about it... and he was right.

At the time, you couldn't drink in Kansas unless it was a private club... no whisky bars, no liquor stores. no

Billy was a lot like my Uncle Earle, come to think of it. He helped guide my life. And I loved him... and now he's dead, dammit.

........

The other bad news of the day: Karen didn't get her Chemo today.

Her blood, specifically the white cell count, was too low.

Well, day-um.

A minor setback, I hope.

As a chemo patient, she is in danger of infection, and more so now.

And there's not much else to do but hope, dammit.

O'yeah, and feed her those nutrition drinks that she hates.

She'll get another shot tomorrow for her WBC, and we'll talk to the doc. He was off today. Hopefully she'll get the chemo on Thursday....

I went to the funeral home tonight to see Ginny. Man, I hate funeral homes.

This particular one has some special significance for me.

In the first instance, when we first moved to Topeka, Mom and I were flat broke... and we wanted to go to the library.

We looked it up in the phone book, and it was on West 10th Street.

We lived on 11th, and it was wintertime. And we walked about three miles in the cold, and we came to a place that looked like the library in Enid, only prettier.

And we went in... and found that we were expected to view somebodies' body. Which one did we want?

They explained that the library was yet another two blocks down the street....

Ginny;s family has been pretty well demolished... and every damned one on them because of smoking.

She told me that Billy had been in a lot of pain lately, and that it was good that he was gone from that.

And I think to myself, what the fuck am I doing smoking these cigars?

Stupid.