death

friday firesmith – the zombie

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“I want to be a cocaine dealer,” Greg said. It’s not that I asked Greg what he wanted to be when he grew up, but we were both in our twenties, and we were both working as kitchen help at Shoney’s. I had my doubts about Greg’s ideas towards career change, but I didn’t say anything to him.

The next day he didn’t show up for work. I did not attribute his disappearance to his new life as a wealthy drug dealer who was living on the beach with supermodels.

Greg did buy some cocaine, and he sold cocaine, so yeah, somehow he got his toe in the door, but he started doing more cocaine than he sold, and then he started doing crack.

He was behind on rent, bills, and he started stealing from his roommates so they kicked him out. Greg set his bed up in the yard and slept there for a few days. It was surreal to see a man in a bed in a yard but that was how it happened. Then it rained hard one day, and Greg started living under the overpass at Exit 16.

Greg would haunt the people he once knew, but he would steal anything he could. And ex-girlfriend named Susan let him stay in her parents garage, and it wasn’t a bad set up. He had a cot and access to hot and cold water, and a bathroom. Someone called Susan’s mother the next day and asked her if she was having a yard sale, and Greg had taken Susan’s mom’s belongings and was selling them in the front yard. They got there before any of the good jewelry was sold but they lost a toaster over and some smaller stuff.

So Greg was officially not living anywhere after that. None of us had anything to do with him, and he drifted away. He would come back to Valdosta, and I would see him at one of the Exits, but until I saw Susan at the Y one day, and told her I had seen him, I didn’t think twice about it. Susan sent me with her husband, Jim, who hated me and Greg both to look for Greg. We didn’t find him, but a man who will go out looking for his wife’s ex boyfriend to help him get off drugs is a damn hero in my book. That was ten years ago.

So yesterday I thought I saw Greg. No. I am sure it was him. He was at Exit 16, just like he always was.

But a few years ago his bones were found in a wooded area near I-75 and returned to his parents. Id-ed via dental.

I’m not sure what to do with this one.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – in memory of curt

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Fire is the way I remember people. It’s a way of feeling warmth again, of seeing light again, and of reminding myself every fire goes out. With everything that is going on these days, it’s hard to take time to stop and look back at loss. There’s so much of it and once you reach a certain age there’s more people missing from your life than those who remain.

Curt was my best friend from the third grade on. He and I stopped speaking back in 2002 when he got involved in serious drugs. We were in our forties at that time, and playing Russian Roulette with chemicals was getting to be dangerous. He pulled a gun on his brother in law, his son disarmed him and they fought him, and a deputy arrived. Curt attacked the deputy and wound up in jail. He called me to bail him out and I wouldn’t. His wife called me and asked me to give her time to serve papers and get rid of the guns.

Someone called me in 2013 to tell me Curt had lung cancer. When I went to see him it was already in the later stages. In January of 2014, Curt died with a cigarette in his hand.

The man was an excellent guitar player. He played twelve string and six string, sang some, but I remember when he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was good. He was good with people, effortlessly, they seemed to know there was some sort of magic surrounding Curt, and I was the one who women came to in order to meet him. We dated sisters at one point when we were roommates, and one night he suggested we switch women and both girls agreed to it. Their mother had a fit. It didn’t stop us, nothing ever could, until Curt got connected with the wrong woman and the wrong drugs.

Curt was a good chess player, taught his oldest son to be even better at chess than he was, or for that matter, even better than me. At one point I was really good, but that second generation Curt raised was awesome. Curt knew how to hunt, fish, and even play golf. But we both started smoking early in life and eventually, that killed him.

I still remember being outside. It was cold as hell, and I had gotten a good fire started. I sent Curt a photo of the fire and a few minutes later his nephew called me. Curt was dead. The funeral was good, inasmuch as one can be, and a lot of people I hadn’t seen in decades arrived to see him off. We buried Curt beside his mother in a small cemetery next to a small church. The road to the church was paved now, and that was a shock to me.

It’s been a dozen years now. His oldest son has a son, and I hope he becomes a guitar player and learns chess. It hurts in a way that I cannot put to words Curt won’t know this kid. And worse, the child will not know Curt.

Let’s take a break this week from what’s going on outside in the world, and remember the people we’ve loved, and lost, but will never forget.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – The death of america (as we know it)

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Trump’s plan to take by force the territory of a NATO country is the third rail of his presidency. As of yet, nothing he’s done seems to shake the MAGA folk from believing the truth that this is a person who has no business running a hot dog stand much less a country.

The invasion of Greenland will end the world as we know it.

If you thought tariffs were a stupid idea, just wait until we’re cut off from buying or selling anything from Europe, or anything that has to pass through Europe to get here.

We’re going to lose every base we have in Europe, including those in Germany we fly wounded troops from Iraq to when needed. How are we going to supply the men and women in uniform without NATO’s help? How are we going to respond quickly if Iran invades Iraq, which they can do now that America is cut off from the Middle East?

If Trump attacks NATO, an organization we helped build and maintain for over seven decades, who will trust us after that?

Putin will have no force on earth to restrain his dream of a Greater Russia. With a NATO blockade of the Suez canal oil coming from the Middle East could be cut off easily, and there is nothing America could do to get it back. Without the bases in Europe, America is an island in the Atlantic with nowhere to land planes.

It gets much worse, and it gets there quickly.

Iran can take Iraq in less than a week setting up a Shia Superstate. China can take Taiwan and become the Pacific Superpower dictating trade and movement of ships without interference from America at war with their former closest friends. Taiwan is the biggest and most important producer of computer chips on earth, and a war with NATO hands them to China.

The Middle East goes hard over to Islamic Extremists, who have long yearned to be rid of American influence. India will be forced to become closer to Russia or China, simply because after attacking NATO, America will lose the trust of everyone on earth.

Go through your house and toss out everything not made in America. Your jeans, appliances, your car, your dishes, your flooring, your computers, and you’re going to find that Trump doesn’t produce anything but conflict and strife.

We cannot wake up one day, elect a leader who is both sane and knowledgeable, and hope the world as a whole trusts us again.

Unless we rise up against the end of America as we know it, and we do it soon, everything we have ever known will simply wither and disappear, leaving us with nothing but memories if the way things once were, and landfills full of red hats.

Take Care,

Mike