Elusive Memories

A particular night, maybe ten years ago, Steven Ellis, Brian, Ken Warren, and me were sitting around a table at Joe Naproa's house. This was a lot of fire-power and the conversation fairly sparkled. A barrel of monkeys. There was something going on in the other room, family stuff, maybe someone had died. I can count, probably on both hands (I'm lucky that way, the fact that there are so many), specific times when the conversation itself became a character. Joe was standing in the doorway, mediating between worlds. We had levitated the table, at that point, and were deconstructing string theory. You had to have been there. Another time, in Colorado, I remember with frightening detail. Point is the way memory screws around. I'm pretty sure what happened today got me much further away and it's all fiction. Next thing you know you're deep into the syllabus of a course you never intended to teach. I was there, at Janitor College, when avoirdupois meant something. Wait. I'm confused. Avocado? What were we talking about? I have trouble, keeping track. Early onset of something. I'll fly away. Those basement blues again. A bit of summer funk, hot and sweaty in the heat and humidity. I go back to town, where I can read in the AC and stream updates of the soccer finals. Tough loss. Reading "Way's Packet Directory, 1848-1994" an excellent record of all the boats on the Ohio, a bit dry, because it's just codified information about the physical boat. Still, interesting. I know them much better now. The information about each boat is quite complete, from when she went on the ways until she burned to the waterline. Many hulls were used multiple times. I found the perfect book for throwing at blue-tailed skinks. A library sale hard bound, encased in library plastic so it's easy to clean, far too technical and totally uninteresting. It's a small book, 5x8 and maybe three-quarters of an inch thick. I keep a rubber band wrapped around it, so it doesn't flutter. The bane of book-tossing is flutter. If you're mad, and trying to make a point, flutter looks silly. I took a box of books to The Goodwill, books that ended up here that I don't want found with my body. Missed the fucker. Boat building was big business, and there were big yards in Cincy and Pittsburg, but anyone could build one anywhere, as long as there was high water once a year, so you could get the damned thing afloat. Then you just built a house on top of it, lots of bedrooms. I could build one of these, it's not rocket science, all I need is a half-model of the hull. I am not now, and have never been a naval architect, too much math involved. I have an idea about what floats, sticks and paper boats. Any sawmill, on a creek, could build a boat, and there were designers, who traveled around. The Captains, more than fifty% of them, owned their own boats, had them built at Portsmouth or Maysville, and plied a certain trade. Forging plows, something concrete. God, I hard-stop myself. I'm way too involved, clearly, I should recuse me from whatever hearings.