BOB ARNOLD









CYCLE



It must be Spring
You said so when I took apart the last

Wall of firewood and broke out of the woodshed —
Spring Has Sprung ! is how you greeted me big smile and all

The peepers are alive in the pond with sunshine
The windchimes won’t quiet down

Is it warm enough to paint the house?
Will spinach and lettuce take to the ground?

When I heave my sledgehammer onto caked ice
At the north door, will it shatter and be gone?

Will you ever feel healthy again?

These are the new questions of Spring
After months and months of deep winter answers

BRINGIN’ IT ALL BACK HOME

To John in Tucson & many other friends ~
No need to ‘pretend’ you are family — you are !

And we are eating fine and well and hardy, even on the road. Thanks for asking. We manage to find a salad bar or some nutrient grain muffins. Yesterday morning, gone at 5:30 A.M., we were no time in Manchester Village, and it was 30 degrees and nothing at all was moving in sleepy tourist town except we did notice small lights and movement in a tiny cafe off from a bookshop (closed), where two young women were busy as bees at work making delicious bakery goods and teas. It couldn't have been more ideal. I noticed through tiny windows on the sidewalk one of the women decorating bread slices with the gummiest pesto spread. She already had lunch on her mind. They had an apple crisp at a very reasonable asking price, and I asked! Susan and I knew this occasion would never be beaten during the day and the day was just raring to go. Sunlight rising over the frosted roofs, job traffic making a go, maintenance trucks and the small compacts now everywhere on rural roads. Hardly anyone drives an old clunker like we have at home until you get deeper into the mountains and the last of the farm lots, and that's where we were heading after the apple crisp and Susan's muffin. Love a place that has maple syrup for your tea. Love a town that offers all-day breakfast. Newburyport, Ma. on the coast line has such a dark windowed breakfast place. We were there the day before. We had come down from the White Mountains that morning to the sea, borrowing the traits of evolution, those mountains still in Susan's hair. My sister Sherry, dead by her own hand, the lost one, right with us, with her mementos we brought along.

This last day of the 4-day road marathon to bring my sister home to New England (from Florida) we went straight up the eastern flank of the Green Mountains. As a young woman she went to college in these mountains, until a musician arrived on campus with his band and stole her away. We’re talking the 1960s. If you look on the map the state forest roughly spreads from Whitingham in the south to Stowe in the north, along routes 7A and 100. That was our partner trail.There is heaven between Manchester and some miles south of Rutland. Rutland has gone to the dogs, but the downtown still has the rough edges of old Vermont meets new age and some ability to make things work properly. The outskirts, like all outskirts now, junked up for the madcap middle-class. The torque to America's rise or downfall. It takes only a few seconds to scram out of the cheesy outskirts, and a savannah returns of maple trees and lilacs everywhere, a bonus year. The apple trees can be boasted about, too. It'd be easy to take the slip and slide ride from Rutland over to Woodstock and eventually Hanover, but the traveler would be cheated out of real Vermont — that's when you turn onto rocky tar-pitted bump shattered route 100 and head north along the Greens...into Stockbridge, Rochester, the mellow grasslands tucked around one corner of the road and what's left of a farm site. Now a Ford dealer is nicely abridged into the barn. The four corners of farm-life is still intact, and that slows the very modest neighborhood traffic down to a full-stop, a nod or wave and maybe even a smile through the windshields. Open the vehicle windows, a cardinal is calling. The sunlight has just crashed its wave over all the pasture. Cows all gone. Cow people all gone. The dandelions are a week behind ours blown to white seed further south at home, so the yellow flower, so abundant, is lionized and terrific. I'll have to get out somewhere along the line and pick one for Susan.

We've got about an hour, tops, between one brash civilization focal point where all the traffic has been left behind, and where we'll pick it up again. In that hour will be small-town — modest libraries with sunken weird hours, unpainted buildings and worn steps leading up into a room with dim lighting. The only place you'll find old cars and old trucks. A child outdoors happy playing with a stick. Women in mens clothing. No latte cafes, no gourmet pizza, no new-age spin. But here's the slow walking thought moments of Emily Dickinson and Lorine Niedecker, so slow it flashes. The new cars are speedy and compartmentalized, so the occupants blink and ask, "Was that a town?" Yes, it had a small village green, buildings old white with forest spruce trim, massive stone steps and foundations. Clothes on a rope clothesline. Maybe no cellphone reception — we left those self-yakkers miles back. The only reception worth your morning are the waterfalls surprising us and originating from a hemlock stand. The sign on a boardwalk access to one of the two falls proclaims one is about to cross upon a facility that is not maintained and one does so at one's own risk. Then I see how well it has been maintained with new spruce rails and bedding. Once upon a time the boardwalk wasn't even here and one traveled to one's desire by a footpath. I see the old footpath, and after enjoying the snow melt froth of the dominant waterfall, which reminds us somewhat of Nevada Falls in Yosemite, we climb over the hand rail and head up the footpath to the wilder and less showy cascade of water. The real mccoy. The one that makes you feel sexual and inspired and just your size. You seem to have reached this spot illegally. The water here is purer than the water inside yourself. Drink some. It's come from the bluest sky of long long ago.

late May 09

A VISIT WITH J.D. WHITNEY






COUSIN CROW:

I know
-----you
know I’m
here.
-----Tell
your friends.



~



COUSIN FOG:

No sense
looking
--------far.
Here we are.


~



COUSIN STUMP:

Where
more of
-------you
once
stood
I
sit.



~



COUSIN GRAVITY:

Yes:
-----just
this little
tug
to
hold me
home
but
nothing more
yet.



~



COUSIN POISON-IVY:

For the berries
birds we love
love
----we
could almost
love
you.



~




COUSIN MOSS:

Surely
-------they
thank you—
those
shaded
stones you
fur.



~



COUSIN SUN:

Giving
shadow.
------Having
none.



~



COUSIN ANT:

All
---your
intricate
cities
-----down
where we can’t
see.



~



COUSIN COYOTE:

I see your shadow
goes
-----where it wants
without you.



~



COUSIN BEAVER:

Ah!
----The
sound of
one
----hand
clapping.



~



COUSIN CATERPILLAR:

Do you
know
----how
far you’re going?



~



COUSIN HOUSEFLY:

Of course
--------you’re
welcome here--
hear
-----our
name for you.

This is from JD Whitney's Longhouse booklet Cousins — not only a small book of poems, but what could be, and so is, an exceptional and easy-to-the-touch book for children. Sit in a circle and enjoy these.

MARSDEN HARTLEY






TO THE NAMELESS ONE



You, who have power over
everything obscure
Listen — come over here; sit by
my side
and let me say the things I want
to say—
I want nothing in the way of artificial
heavens—
The earth is all I know of wonder.
I lived and was nurtured in the
magic of dreams
bright flames of spirit laughter
around all my seething frame.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) American painter and poet and one who has never been replaced, wrote this poem late in his life taking stock of all around him, and still all around us.


in memory

Robin Blaser
Sherry Taylor

DEAR —

The world turned over and cried since I heard from you last. You may have felt a twinge? Heard a cry? Felt the wind shift. Made you wonder. An owl, or was it a hawk? the head shape was closer to an owl and it was midday when it flew low across the road and right in front of our truck yesterday as we drove out to town. Owl at this hour, or even a hawk....we said nothing but Susan thought of her father slowly dying in Albuquerque, but that may not have been right either. She didn't say anything and neither did I, but the image stuck for hours. In town we found some fine papers for my next little book and special papers for a booklet going to Norway. An arts council wants an immediate 25 and they want it by early next week, and we said certainly we would accommodate. The earnings pay for more real stuff. The ones on the point each and every day. The hawk, the owl. Amy's had a window seating and we took it and spoiled ourselves with my turkey sandwich with all the fixings, a lovely tomato soup for Susan, a fat bowl of NE clam chowder for the boy from Greylock. We still had enough time in the day to get back home, change duds, mow all the lawn and really sweat it up. Susan said we did the whole thing in 50 minutes. On the weather map it showed rain was coming from Utica, so that meant it would be here in 2 hours. It got here early, by an hour and a half. It must have been the lightning bolts and boosts of thunder that was aboard? We finished work just in time. I was cutting those fine papers from town as the rain thundered down upstairs on the steel back roof. If you were talking to me, I wouldn't have heard a word.

A week ago this same day I was at Camp Becket seeing my boyhood haunts and forests, and what was it that took me next door to Chimney Corners Camp, where my sister Sherry once upon a time went as a camper? Where I watched her ride a pony and my parents lifted me up into her lap on the saddle and around and around the corral we went. My sister always looked good in a cowboy hat. I played my first ping-pong here, outdoors, fresh green painted table tops with white frame out lines. Any time you want to play a game. Hundreds of girls in pigtails, glasses, white and green camp clothing, the cheeriest faces. My sister was one. I'm stopping for a moment to look around the campgrounds, easily a month before it opens, and so not one little girl is around. I can imagine them all coming out from under the trees and over the grasses and running running because they are young and they can. Yeah, that was my sister, too. 50 years ago.

That was exactly a week ago. Today it is the hawk or the owl flight, some omen. The moon will be full. The spring rain had lightning, quite unusual. We finished watching Last Chance Harvey and I was still taken by the concentration and sure handling by Emma Thompson about a single and mature woman just not wanting to be hurt by love. Not again. Not this time. Not ever again. Yeah, that was my sister, for a long time now.

The phone rings almost on cue. The hawk, the owl? Here's my Floridian mother with a voice I've never heard before. With a voice you don't want to hear. It isn't even a voice. It's a sound from the wilder depth or edge of civilization. Now you want to hear it more than your own heartbeat because it is your heartbeat. Your mother, of your sister, is telling you that her first born is dead and no one knows why. Someone had to cut her hair from the blood holding her to the kitchen floor. The mail had piled up. The trash cans were never brought back in all week. The neighbors thought she was away. Relatives were everywhere around. Someone's baby, sister, aunt, cousin, mother was dying right under their noses, right before their eyes, and she was doing it in the convenient bauble of modern life — where we talk a blue streak for miles on cell phones and forget who to touch

touch

touch

touch

The sheriff will say something

The autopsy will focus

The family will gather

The ashes will be buried


Some one will forever be recognizing this one missing for the rest of their lives, but she's not there

~ BA

A 12~HOUR SONIC RIDE




We’ve done many many long rides through the mountains for decades and everywhere USA ~ Canada with fresh water at the window, blue sky horizon, late night stars on the brink of things, and often with nothing but the air between driver and passenger. The look one to the other. This was all there on this ride, but not yet warm enough for windows open, we did a 12 hour sonic ride to say goodbye to a very long winter and hello to the brightness to new, young leaves hazing the hillsides all around. Springtime.

Left this morning driving out of the woods at 6 with a golden coated fox leaping right in front of our car. Far enough ahead to get a good look at the movement — something wild. Lovely lighting to its coat. Little did we know we would see this again in about 10 hours.

We'd be 12 hours on the highways and back roads all day in a rental car which would swoon as its own sonic ride. I'll list the songs and artists with us all the way north up the great quiet interstate of Vermont, one of the finest in the country but taken for granted by most Vermonters. Few finer and cutting the edge of tree line and rivers unless you are in Idaho or Wyoming. We've seen them there. Depending on the hour you can be alone on this highway of pasture hills and sweeping curves; in fact somewhere way north a sweeping curve glides us out of Vermont and right into the high brow of New Hampshire, western edge of the White Mountains, town names Bethel, Franconia, Bethlehem. Gas is $1.99. Bananas are 49 cents a pound. These are the biggest signs in downtown Bethlehem. Curiously it’s the poetry capital of New Hampshire — and long before I knew that, or really the reason why — it had me with its alpine architecture, stone churches and modest mansions, many abandoned or long up for sale, with wrap around to-die for verandahs or ship size cupolas somehow balancing atop old homes, scalloped in wonder finish carpentry and decked out with windows all around. Looking to mountains. The people who built these, lived here, all gone. The side streets ticky-tacked together with temporary vehicles and residents. Not much is talking one to the other. The trees on the street look lonesome. The ancient villas and arcadia imagination is just lasting because it was formed and realized and built by folks who loved this world and made it stick in granite and snow. A little girl walking from school looks lost in a desert. After this town with no cops to be seen, and a sign celebrating poetry, and the mountain yodel — the next town is cheap stuff, nothing but cops in cruisers, big trucks storming through. Every town in the mountains is hanging on to a slippery slope. And either crooked with justice, or just a last piece of benevolence pie. You gotta test it to see which one it is. Buy some gas and say hello. Try those bananas. Step into the library and be greeted, or stared at.

It was solid music while driving, and driving was the key. Around all the Presidentials, the highest (Mount Washington and Adams, I much like Jefferson, too) still deep ribbed with snow. The ravines look fierce. The cog rail is probably running and we should have probably hopped on and gone up but instead we hiked the boulder isolation and snow melt river rushing down from Ripley Falls. The rocks had just come out of snow.

Road kill: 1 raccoon, 1 groundhog, and what do you know: brother golden coated fox somewhere in the mountains. Same as the one this morning. Our flash in the pan. Two turkeys crossed, one at a time, wide berth interstate without mishap, all with the timing, wisdom and pace of old codgers. Last thing, one roadside porcupine, dead ‘asleep’, with its 30,000 quills.

In Gorham two women sit out in the sun on folding chairs in front of the open bay garage door of their service station. They don't look shocked any longer that they aren't doing business. The warm sun is richness and business for right about now. People up here get by on day by day, though some already have woodpiles ready for next winter. An old woman gives her long and narrow garden spot in the yard, just where the sun falls the best, a long hard stare. I wonder what that will do? I see she already has brush poles up for her peas and some trellis for raspberries and the bed has been turned. She could care less about the highway that hollers by. She was here first.

Just like the soft spots of the Canadian Rockies, or Yosemite, where we have peeked in at their villas for the wealthy, there is at least one grand hotel in the White Mountains. If done right you can slip in and slip out and pay for nothing and still stick your feet into their bubbling warm spa for ten minutes, watch your girl sway her hips against the cellar pinball machine and win bonus games, then pack your breakfast in and sit on rocking chairs just where Babe Ruth sat and enjoy your meal in the free as can be sunshine. Getting it good is just asking for enough.

I selected a good handful of CDs from 100s of compilations I made over the years and let them fly as we flew. I jotted down some titles; others are a note to the musician(s) only...running out of paper to get every title down. It was a 12-hour sonic ride and this is why ~


Bob Dylan, "Blind Willie McTell"
Steve Earle, City of Immigrants
The Turtles, You Showed Me
Link Wray & The Wraymen, Walkin' with Link
Deon Jackson, Love Makes the World Go Round
The Byrds, So You Want to Be a Rock n' Roll Star
Rolling Stones, The Last Time
Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl
Madeline Bell, I'm gonna make you love me
Rising Sons, By and By (Poor Me)
Gene Clark, So You Say You Lost Your Baby
Kaleidoscope, Pulsating Dream
John Kay & the sparrows , Square Headed People
Spirit , I Got A Line On You
Moby Grape, 8:05
Ruby & the romantics, Our Day Will Come
Leonard Cohen, The Future
Jerry Butler, I dig you baby
Jeff Beck, Shapes Of Things
The Hollies, Sandy
The Troggs, Love is all around
Morphine
Eileen Jewell, Rich man's world
Steve Earle, Jericho Road
Swan Silvertones, "oh mary, don't you weep"
Mimi & Richard Farina, Pack up your sorrows
Sonic Youth, i'm not there
Van Morrison, my bucket's got a hole in it
Freddy Fender, noche de ronda
Willie Nelson, senor
Ali Farka Toure / toumani diabate
Nabiha Yazbeck, astahel
Angelique Kidjo, naima
Richie Havens, tombstone blues
Letterstick Band, yi-rrana
Radiohead, 15 step
Virginia Rosa, la vai alguem
Zulya, lullaby
Eliades Ochoa, tribute to the cuarteto patria
Milford Graves
Mimi & Richard Farina, bold marauder
Townes Van Zandt, "I'll be here in the morning"
Roy Harper, forever
Radiohead, reckoner'
Billie Holiday/organica remix, summertime
Jesse Winchester, Dangerous Fun
Muddy Waters, My Home Is In The Delta
Arthur Big Boy Crudup
Doc Watson & Merle Travis, Way Downtown
Mike Seeger & Bob Dylan
Rodney Crowell
John Lennon
Iris DeMent, I Don't Want To Get Adjusted
Michael Hurley
David Blue
Victor Jara, "manifesto"
Roy Orbison
Buck Owens
Jack Kerouac
The Spinners
Roland Kirk
Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
Perry Como
Martha Wainwright, "Faraway"
Djivan Gasparyan
Virginia Rodriques
Almeda Riddle
Rachid Taha
Lars Hollmer
Dolores Keane
Jackson C. Frank
Traffic
John Jackson
Ramblin Jack Elliot, South Coast
Ramblin Jack Elliot, If I Were A Carpenter
Tim Hardin
Bob Dylan, Boogie Woogie Country Girl
Anthony & the Johnsons, "Knockin on Heaven's Door"
Opal
John Barry
Henry Mancini
Ennio Morricone
Frank Hutchison
Gene Clark, Gypsy Rider
Mississippi John Hurt
Jim Ringer, Tramps & Hawkers
Nat King Cole
Cesaria Evora, recordai
Mario, "pireotissa"
Tortoise
Ween, "japanese cowboy"
Sleater-Kinney, what's mine is yours
Son House, country farm blues
Juke Boy Bonner, houston beat
Hank Williams
Mary McCaslin, "my love"
Moby, run on
Johnny Farmer, death letter"
Fanfare Ciocarlia (romania)
Billy Bragg/Wilco, "way over yonder in the minor key"
Gonda Manakovska (kosovo)
Van Morrison, what makes the irish heart beat
Agathonas Iakovidis
Gare du Nord, pablo's blues
Nabiha Yazbeck, astahel
Bap Kennedy, drunk on the blood of christ
Trad. music Auvergne, France
Theodosia Stinga
Rev. Gary Davis (anything)
Petshop Boys, vampires
Curtis Mayfield, super fly
Vashti Bunyan, window over the bay
Johnny Rivers, memphis
Maria de Barros
Rico Bell
Cat Stevens, if you want to sing out, sing out
Morrissey, pregnant for the last time
Glenn Campbell, "Witchita Lineman"
Tim Buckley
Joe Brown
Nick Drake, "Things behind..."
Bettye LaVette, "down to zero"
Jimmy Driftwood, Tenn Stud.
Jimmy Driftwood, He had a long...
Guitar Slim, Quicksand
Bo Diddley
ZZ Top, "my head's in Mississippi"
The Waterboys, "on my way..."
Alison Krauss/Robert Plant, gone gone gone
Linda Thompson, "All I see"
Sarah Vaughan
Emmylou Harris, "All my tears"
Merle Haggard/Jimmie Rodgers
The Beatles, "I am the walrus"
Pop Staples
Beach Boys
Dion, "the wanderer"
Elvis, "Suspicion"
Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling..."
John Coltrane "Blue train"
John Lee Hooker: Live
Lightnin Hopkins
Jimi Hendrix
Greg Brown, "China"
Ravi Shankar
Woody Guthrie (anything)
Peterpaulmary, "500 miles"
Carson Arnold, "Morning Dance"
Leo Kottke/Mike Gordon "from spink to correctionville"
Eliades Ochou y el Cuarteto Patria
Barbara Lewis, "Baby, I'm yours"
Solomon Burke, "everybody needs somebody to love"
Don Covay, "seesaw"
Doug Sahm, "At the Crossroads"
Archie Bell & the Drells, "here I go again"
Clarence Carter, "slip away"
Donny Hathaway, "the ghetto"
Betty Wright, "clean up woman"
The Spinners, "i'll be around"
Ben E King, "supernatural thing part 1"
Andrea Echeverri, "baby blues"
Ana Moura, "as vezes"
John Prine,"hello in there"
Chris Issak, "Wicked Game"
B-52s, "rock lobster"
RL Burnside, "It's bad you know"
Berlin, "take my breath away"
Fats Domino
Kim Richey
The Romantics, "what I like about you"
Jefferson Airplane, "turn my life around"
Blondie, "heart of glass"
Iggy Pop
Fine Young Cannibals, "she drives me crazy"
Joshua
Judy Collins, "since you asked"
Dusty Springfield, "no easy way down"
Habib Koite
Donovan, "The Mountain"
Joe Cocker, Feelin’ Alright
Mama’s & the Papa’s, Twelve Thirty
Desmond Dekker, Fu Manchu
John Lennon
Ann-Margaret
Nina Simone
Neil Young
Jimmy Reed
Billie Holiday
Franco, "Celio"
Jesse Thomas
Love
Santana, Soul Sacrifice
Judy Henske
PJ Harvey, "The Mess We're In"
Spacemen, Come Down Easy
13th Floor Elevators
Duke Ellington, “Oclupaca”
John Fahey
The Carter Family, “John Hardy...”
Sandy Bull “Carmina Burana Fantasy”
Jerry Lee Lewis, Deep Elem Blues
Skip James, Hard Time Killin Floor Blues
Charlie Musselwhite, Christo Redemptor
The Pointer Sisters, Fairytale
Sun Ra
Mira Billotte, "as I went out one morning"
Catherine Ribeiro & Alpes
Lou Harrison "for Strings..."
Louis Armstrong
Thelonious Monk
Hole
The Doors, (let your children play)
The Supremes, come see about me
Bob Marley
Toots & the Maytals
Buddy Holly
Johnny Cash/June Carter
Johnny Cash, "Hurt"
Rodney Crowell
Dock Boggs
Roscoe Holcomb
The Delmore Bros., “I’m lonesome without you”
Gato Barbieri
Otis Spann, I got a feeling
Nirvana
Barred Owl (calls)
Canyon Wren (calls)
Hermit Thrush (calls)
Sam Cooke, a change is gonna come
James Brown (4 of his best):
it’s a man’s man’s world
(do the) mashed potato pt. 1
papa don’t take no mess pt. 1
king heroin
Shantel “Bucovina”
U2, New Year’s Day
U2, Desire
Los Lobos, "Mas y Mas"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY THIS WEEK TO PETE SEEGER (MAY 3)
& ON-DECK YOGI BERRA (MAY 12)

FRED JEREMY SELIGSON








CHERRY BLOSSOMS



Just lean against
cherry blossom trunk
to write this



~




Wind, voices
blowing
through
blossoms



~




No bag needed
w/ all these
poetry pockets



~




Doesn't see me sitting
— that's a very big blue,
gold-winged bird



~




White petals
make a stripe
on this dirt road



~




Can't see temple
for the blossoms



~




Somewhere
down there
water's trickling



~




Down there
through pines
azalea pinks



~




Smell's
getting
stronger —
all combined
flowers



~



3 paths
like veins
meeting
your beating
heart



~




Pumpkin bee
can't get around,
nor can I — sits
on arm, "Hey
it's not your flower!"



~




A petal bridge
across

Long ago Jeremy Seligson called Susan at her job, because we had no phone at home in our cabin along the river and said Cid Corman was recommending he visit us since Jeremy had some plan in his head to move to Vermont. It was smack dab in the middle of mud season, and so that visit never did take place, but Susan came home with the message. Jeremy would eventually move to Vermont, and we did meet when Cid came to Bennington College to give a reading. I remember bunches of other friends there that night: Lyle Glazier, Stephen Sandy, David Giannini, Gerard Malanga (had a photography show up at the same time: double your pleasure). After Vermont, I believe Jeremy took off for South Korea, where he stayed in close contact with Cid and Shizumi in Kyoto, and to this day continues a one-man band of modest poetry flavor. A man of deep peace activism. I enjoyed the Spring when he sent to me dozens of cherry petal poems, and on the spot I selected a baker's dozen of the most pungent which I am sharing with you here. Yes, it's springtime whenever I open this little Cherry Blossoms booklet.

Wish I had someone to share
these blossoms with ...
well, how about you?

BERKSHIRE DAY






As to a few days ago — a good time was had by all. We were up and out of here (dark woods and river) at 4:30 AM for the Berkshires. Over the Mohawk Trail. I knew we'd come back through Hawley, it's quiet little villa along its own woodlands in the evening. At the book sale we had to be in a line already forming from the night before! so no matter we were there at daybreak we were still back aways in line. Book dealers bring boxes the night before and leave them as their place in line. Others rent motel rooms for a quick first-step. We drive through the night. The tickets handed out by 7:30 and still not that many were there. A friend of ours had a basketball and that's all I had to hear bouncing around since we were at a school and the hoops had two good nets. One hoop, though, looked like Shaq had done a jam on it. Bad tilt. My friend didn't seem to miss much despite the tilt. I invited over a few other middle-aged guys who hadn't touched a basketball in 40 years and tossed them soft passes and before you know it they were feeling a little younger and hitting a few at close range. That killed one hour. Susan sat in the sun enjoying herself. The sale wouldn't start until 10 in the morning but by then we all had our tickets and the sale would be a 3 hour workout for us and we fetched a half-dozen boxes of books. After that we bicycled the campus edges of college town. A few guys playing a good game of tennis.

In the afternoon we knew we had been saving up a full year of no junk food so we could hit Pedrins Dairy Bar, the very place I went to with my family every weekend through the summer of my childhood. Hotspot early 1960s. I still think it's the best, or one of the best, fish n chips or clam roll or milkshake with fries hangout in all the Berkshires. Susan and I ordered then put down the tailgate on the truck and ate up on the tailgate. Legs swinging. All that was missing was Pacific Ocean. That's all.

Junk now in us we headed deeper into old Adams town and we tooled all my old bicycle haunts on the way to the cemetery where yearly we go to plant more flowers at my parents graves (mom not yet in there) and clean out their etched names in stone of grit and lichen. We do it with a plastic knife from the dairy bar. Mount Greylock happens to look terrific from this location so we took off our socks and boots (sandals Susan) and lay in the sun right near the graves. I believe I fell asleep for a few minutes sinking a bit down into the labyrinth of father.

Next stop was to head back into Adams and check out the place...what a misery watching a once vital town shutting down store by store and the sidewalks virtually empty. I remember crazy soda jerk joints, a red bold facade Woolworths, bowling alley upstairs, pool hall, cops walking the beat (now one young cop on bicycle), kids kids kids everywhere. Shiny oil smell hardware stores. The train passing right through the heart of Main Street. A RR worker standing outside the caboose always giving us a wave. Vanished. I hadn't been in Miss Adams Diner in 45 years and never have taken Susan in, so we went in for coffee and pie. Susan had the coffee and I had tea. The waitress was new in town (1985) from Texas and never heard of my father's lumberyard right behind her diner just about, or my great grandfather's great log yard. There was an old lady with puffy white hair in for shepherd's pie at 4 in the afternoon and I have a sneaky feeling she knew about that lumber place. It's funny, on the way out to the cemetery I saw this same woman out in her backyard hanging laundry and I said to Susan: "See that old woman, she's probably the age of my mother and has probably never left town. Hanging wash." An hour later she's right behind me in a booth listening. Small town.

The Texan blond was going all hog wild about the old Polish Church (what I called it as a kid because that's what it was). It turns out they have gorgeous stained glass in the church and it's another place I haven't been inside for almost a half century...I suggested to Susan we climb on our bikes and head out to see the church. We get there at just the hour for mass and a vigil because It seems the church is being closed down. There's a rift down the center of town between those who want to close down all but one Catholic church in town for lack of funding etc., and keep the one center-piece church on the main street as all-purpose church. The heartbreak is what to do with this magnificent Polish church. The interior (we knocked on the door and got inside) is stunning glass work, and the 'marble' columns. I got up to them inches from my eyes and I swore they were marble, so has every architect who has visited. Not so. Wood. And since the church was built in 1905 it's a good bet all the wood for the building, and these sterling, scalloped marble columns, came from my family's lumberyard. Now I wish my father was alive to talk to me. There's a custodian in the church working hard to keep the church open and vital and he asked us to sign a petition and we did gladly. He also did a double take when he asked my name. Suddenly we were flooded with familiarity of a known goodness once in this town. He was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1965. I was in 1970. He went. I went elsewhere. Almost 40 years later we're talking. Trying to save a church built by people long gone. The craftsmanship eternal.

Ah, so we got on the bikes and rode out the dusk by going up to the old baseball field (Russell Field) where I once hit a line drive through short stop and brought in a winning run. Same baseball diamond they flooded every winter and we ice-skated for hours under floodlights. I'd stay so late skating with my middle brother Scotty that he'd be crying from the cold by the time we hiked back home. Not a big hike now as I look around from the field over the old buildings and up a few side hill streets, but a barren and frigid Sahara Desert to an 8 year old, in the cold dark of 20 degrees. Susan and I swing by it all on dirt bikes taking the uphill to the golf course and around an old neighborhood I always loved because there is this miniature sort of Lombard Street (San Francisco) that comes down from the golf course to the library and into the center of town all over again. Full circles are all about a small town. All the steeples, built by Italians and French and Irish and always the Polish.