No Show

Of course the phone company doesn't show. At five I went down to tell B. We drank lemon seltzer and talked about books for an hour. He, naturally, knows everything about English history and assumed that I did too. He was actually a little shocked at this hole in my education. I'll read up on it this winter. It's not a subject that ever interested me before this latest Richard III book, now I think I would find it interesting. Also, I want to reread Guy Davenport's fiction. And Basho's winter haiku. Another day, and still no phone; I'll have to go to town again, to call them. I'm getting pissed. 'End Of The Line Blues." I read a book about hunting man-eating tigers in India, 1920's - 30's, and found it quite interesting, some of the named tigers killed hundreds of people. Hundreds of people. We can identify a particular animal by the pug print. The two fictions I got from the library fail to interest me, so I read an old book (1949) on word origins. I'd been studying the word 'gerrymandering' because it's much in the news locally, as I'm sure it is everywhere. Criminal, to put it mildly: the group in power arranges boundaries so that they stay in power. Fuck your republic or whatever democracy, it's where you draw the lines. Elbridge Gerry, when he was governor of Massachusetts, around 1800, created a voting district that looked like a salamander; no, he said a 'Gerrymander'. He was elected vice-president in 1812. Cory, from the pub, is getting married Saturday, and he wants me to be there; the service and the reception are at the lodge, in the State Forest, which is only a few miles, as the crow flies, from my house. A bit more difficult to navigate by road. Looking at the Forest Service map, there are three ways I can get there. Coming home, I decide, I'll come the long way around. The short way, Mackletree, then Route 125, is seven miles; the long way around, out Upper Twin, then back down Route 125, a mile or two longer. Overland, on the newly reopened back road, which is a great drive (though it takes forever, if time is a consideration) switch-backing through the hollows of Sunshine Ridge, you can easily get lost. I think I can attend the wedding, have a free meal, maybe abscond with a meal in my pocket and have a couple of drinks on someone else's tab. I just need to get home safely. You'd think I was a nut, the way I plan my retreat. Lamp Black Road, Jesus, I remember everything now. They opened the road up because some rich people needed to haul some logs out. Making money, paying dues. Still no phone so I go back into town to call the company. I talked to a lady, Becky, in Texas, and she was texting the dispatcher in Ohio and I was on hold for quite a while. She's hesitant to tell me that the repair has been rescheduled for the 13th, which means I will have been without service for 20 days. She has no idea why and is extremely apologetic, promises to get my bill canceled for the month. She also promises to try and get them out here sooner. She advises me to get a satellite dish. Stopped at the pub for a beer and two of my readers were there, they were glad to see I was alive, and recommended that I get a dish. There seems to be a consensus. If I dropped my phone, and dropped my AOL account, it would be a wash, everyone says my service would be better, and that I would avoid these depressions where I have dark thoughts about what I'd like to do to the local Frontier company boss. I'm on the phone for 27 minutes, which is a trial for me. I don't do phones that well, except for a couple of close people, and the filler music was awful. Becky is married, has a couple of teenage kids; her husband is in the oil business, and they like Texas. She was appalled at my phone service, I explained about being at the-end-of-the-line, and how I was used to it. Came back home the long way around, because I'd rather be behind a school bus than meet one coming the other way on winding back roads. It took me just over an hour to take three commas out of that last sentence. When I'm writing, I use commas to mark a phrase, but often the thought goes on and a comma is no longer needed; but I put one there, in the act of thinking, because I don't know where I'm going. I did get behind a school bus, so I pulled into the creek at the first ford to let it get a couple of miles down the road. I was sitting on my hood, rolling a smoke, when a park ranger stopped to see if I was ok. Yes, I told him, just fine. Ginseng season opened September 1st, and we talked about that. There's a buyer that sets up at the west end of town, in the parking lot of the Bridge Street Carry-Out. There's a fair amount of money involved, and it's all cash. Ginseng is the truffle of mid-America. You can still earn a living digging roots around here, if you don't require much of a living. I don't sell ginseng, but I do dig the occasional plant, dry the mandrake-like tuber, and chop it into a pint of whiskey, age that for a couple of years and take a sip as required. I use it as an anodyne against whatever ails me. I need to harvest a couple of roots this year, to put into the rotation, and I know exactly where they are. The bank side of the driveway is terrain I know very well, and ginseng is a lovely little plant, those distinctive red berries, the seeds, that you never noticed before, become neon. Seriously.