The Death of Ruby Tire

1963. It's this year that I'm trying to remember, that and the first half of 1964. '63 began with the production of my first play, continued with the death of my father, ended with the assassination of JFK. January of '64 would be my final semester at Morgan. It's this period of time -- January, 1963 through June, 1964 -- that I'm trying to retrieve. This was the last period of my life spent in the town of my birth. I didn't know where I was going, but, believe me, I was most ways there and had been since my early teens. "Dad," I said. (I was fifteen.) "When I graduate high school I'm leaving and not coming back". He scoffed, but I was serious. Joining the Marines was what really got me out of there. Small price to pay. I may have written this someplace before (and I may again):my first week on Parris Island my drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Smith, pulled me aside, got smack up in my face, and bellowed, "What're you doin' in my Marine Corps, turd?" "Sir," I answered, "Sir, because it's safer than being at home, Sir." It was the first but not the last time his utter disdain was unleashed on me.

I give June of '64 as the end date of this memoir because that was my graduation from Morgan, but, really, it was back in May that the end came. Maybe April. Ruby Tire had died a long time ago, only now it was official. Like it's said of a Hollywood career: "It's dead six months before you know it."

Reuben Henry Foreman was his whole name. Ruby Tire was the name of his business, or, as we used to pronounce it in Baltimore, "Rooby Tar". It was a small retreading plant with a tire outlet in front. Ruby, my father, was in business with my Uncle Frank. Ruby ran the shop. Frank was the outside man, hustling and servicing accounts, mostly filling stations and auto dealerships. Uncle Frank's legendary moment came when he was on the train heading for a business trip in Ohio. Instead, Frank got off the train midway when he realized he didn't have his toothbrush, and hopped the next one back to Baltimore. You'd never accuse either my father or my uncle of having heads for business -- titans they were not -- however, the actual demise of the business was done by plotting elegant in its simplicity and oozing with classic machiavellian intent.

There wasn't much to divvy up. The two brothers had a legal agreement stating that if one died the surviving brother and partner would see that his brother's family got their fair share. Except that's not what happened. Shortly after becoming sole proprietor, Frank informed my mother that there would be no more money coming her way. Business was down and not looking up. He barely had enough for his family and none for his brother Ruby's.  My mother appealed to Uncle Will, the patriarch of the Foreman clan. "Blood is thicker than water," he said, meaning Frank was his brother and my mother was merely a sister-in-law. He shrugged her off. "I can't help." Can't help. Won't help. Didn't help. And more!

Yes, there's more, a plot both diabolical and, in its way, brilliant.

Uncle Frank's in-laws were a tribe of first generation bandits, proto typical slum lords, late of Eastern Europe, mini-minded, and troll like, in particular, that angry one who lived under the bridge. The one named Anna had no teeth but wore diamonds the size of jelly beans on damn near every digit. The rings dug into the flesh of her fingers. She sat with her feet planted far apart. Her accent was thick, and it was hard not to look at her gums. I think she spit when she talked, but that might have been some of the other ones, or all of them, the ones about whom all I remember was that they were short. When my father died, they smelled blood in the water, and the following came to pass. My uncle would never have thought of it on his own. The man was a putz but not a thief.

With the exception of the war years in the forties when retreading tires was a bustling industry, Ruby Tire struggled to get by. The advent of a brand new tire for less than the price of a retread drove a stake through the failing heart of the business, yet this same business continued to eke out enough to support two families until my father's death. Those four words are key -- "until my father's death" -- because the day he died -- the body was still warm -- they began answering the phone, "Foreman Tires". A business which formerly served two familiies suddenly brought in barely enough for one, suddenly could no longer pay its debts, suddenly found itself in bankruptcy. So what was the plot? That was it: deliberately drive Ruby Tire into bankruptcy so your slum lord in-laws can buy it dirt cheap at auction then hand the business back to you with no debt attached. Ruby who?

It was even announced in the papers: auction...building plus equipment...such and such time and date. My mother's brother, Milton, a cherished uncle who often visited us from New York, happened to be in Baltimore at the time. He suggested we go watch. I didn't want to do it, felt like I'd be watching my father's funeral all over again, but I did it. I went, and, yes, it was like watching my father's funeral all over again.

The auction took place in an alley that ran beside the building. The auctioneer was above the crowd, but I don't remember what he stood on -- a box? the roof of a station wagon? the bed of a truck? Uncle Frank wasn't there, but three of his brothers-in-law were. Their suits were drab and disheveled, their bellies big, their faces pasty like dumplings. Breakfast was still on their ties. Other than a smattering of on-lookers, me and Uncle Milton, the three brothers-in-law were it.

The auctioneer got the pack's attention. He described the building and its contents, instructed us that the sale would be for the entire package which had been appraised at $3,000. That sum, paltry even by the standards of the day, is where the man began the auction. "Do I hear thirty five hundred dollars, three five zero zero?" What the man heard was nothing. I'd like to say all that was heard was a Tasty Cake wrapper scuttling down the alley in a dandy breeze. Nice image. Except it wasn't true. What was true was the silence. Not one word. Not one sound. There were always people on the street. Traffic must have been passing by. I just don't remember any sound at all. Uncle Milton leaned into me and asked, "Do you want it?" Did I want it? It never  occurred to me that I could want it. "I'll give you the money," said Milton.

I'd have the money to buy the business and fire my uncle -- a favorite fantasy at the time.

"Three thousand dollars," barked one of the brothers-in-law.

"Do you want it?" asked Milton.

"I have three thousand. Do I hear four? Do I hear thirty five hundred?"

"Three thousand," repeated Frank's in-law.

"I have three thousand, three thousand dollars,"cried the auctioneer. "Three thousand going once."

"Do you want it?"

"Three thousand going twice."

"Do you want it?"

I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want. What I didn't want was to remain in Baltimore one day longer than necessary. What I didn't want was to be a slave to a business, any business, but certainly not the tire business.

My uncle nudged me. I choked on my words.

When I was small my father literally dandled me on his knee as he sang, "How y'gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree...?" I hadn't yet seen "Paree" but I'd seen enough.

"Do you want it?"

"Three thousand three times..."

My father worked there six days a week from six to six. Was I going to simply roll over and let that man's hard work go? Ingrate! Down the toilet! The conscience of a Hitler!

I couldn't get a word out.

"Sold!"

My heart took a hit.

The troll wearing the baggiest suit stepped forward and counted three thousand cash into the auctioneer's hand.

Foreman Tires opened the next day. That June I graduated from Morgan. Soon I was gone.

Memory Loss, or Huh?

I have a friend who's a very funny guy. We went to different high schools but still knew each other well. We were Jewish kids in Baltimore, circa the mid fifties, and every Jewish kid knew every other Jewish kid, plus the fact that we were, for a time, pledged to the same college fraternity. I didn't get "brotherhood". He did. He wound up in the Peace Corps. I wound up reading poetry in smoky coffeehouses, and, of course, we drifted apart. We rarely see each other and never talk on the phone, but every so often we exchange e-mails, and he's one of those people I know I could joke around with instantly no matter how long it had been. OK. So we're both the same age, and recently got to swapping details on memory loss. I confessed that sometimes my brain seems to be minus sixteen minutes like Nixon's secret tape. Another thing: I access google in order to look something up, then I forget what I wanted to look up. Happens a lot. Very frustrating. But, soldier on. Another friend of mine, long gone, used to say was that his father's best advice was, "It's a good life if you don't weaken." My first friend, the Jewish kid from Baltimore -- you know who you are, Kenny -- said that nowadays when someone asks him what restaurant he ate in or what movie he just saw or where he's going on his vacation, when anyone asks him such things, he says, "How soon do you need to know?"

This was too good not to pass on.

Hold the fort, amigo!

Old friends. Nothin' like 'em.

Morgan & Muhammad Ali

My life seems to have divided itself into two major periods: before Morgan and after Morgan, and then there was everything in between. Those years shaped me as much as any others. Morgan was there when no other school would touch me. I don't blame the ones who turned me down. Anybody judging me at that time would have labelled me a bad bet. But Morgan said yes, and I had the good sense to stay there. Did I ever feel out of place? You'd think I would, right? But, nope, wait, possibly once: the first time I crossed the quad when classes were changing. Suddenly, Negroes were everywhere, 360 degrees of Negroes, wall to wall Negroes, and not a one of me.  In trying to retrieve the feelings I had then the one that seems most appropriate is bemusement. I remember smiling to myself and thinking, so that's what it's like. Then I went to class, and I don't recall ever feeling isolated at all. OK, maybe when I went out for the wrestling team. And surely when I took Judy Brown to the Lyric Theatre to see Dick Gregory, and we were the only white folks in the audience. One of the jokes he told was that it was easy to stop smoking cigarettes because it was easy to put down anything white. Judy and I laughed along with everyone else, something I'd never do today. Couldn't everybody tell I was a fellow of good will? Apparently not, but I didn't yet notice it. I would only come to realize it years later, what Wordsworth meant when he said poetry was emotion recollected in tranquility. The single time somebody told me point blank that I was racist she was a good friend, a coed, very bright, future prom queen, named Jackie. We took some classes together. German was one of them. Ali was still calling himself Cassius Clay when he fought Sonny Liston for the title. Liston was a brooding, murderous looking beast who had in fact served time for murder. Clay was a loudmouthed upstart. Most white fans wanted Liston to pulverize Clay. You got it. I was one of them which is what I told Jackie when she asked me who I was for? She told me the only reason I wanted Liston was because I was a racist. I, of course, ranted against this assertion. We stood in front of the language arts building and swapped arguments. For God's sake, I was a student at Morgan! What racist? We were laughing but each of us was serious. I was dumbfounded. She was dogged. Jackie wouldn't back down, and I kept peppering her with examples of my lack of racism. It was never a heated argument. We parted friends, however, for many years now I have thought a lot about what she said. It was a cold day. I remember that, too.

I don't remember when -- I think it was way after I graduated Morgan -- but I finally got it. Now, don't be smug from the vantage point of contemporary time and place. We're talking a half century's difference. I hadn't yet grasped the subtler versions of racism. I knew big things. I knew my parents sent me to school the first day that Negro students were allowed in white schools. My brother and I braved the gauntlet of screaming racists that lined both sides of the sidewalk. It was a goddamn lynch mob! It was a terrifying time, every step, one hundred yards.  A gauntlet of rabid goyim (That's what we said then). Jesus Christ, don't let them figure out I'm Jewish! Still, my brother and I made the door before bottles began flying. If we'd been Black, we'd have been dead. This was not the kind of racism Jackie talked about. It was the kind that programs us to be unaware, to accept versions of the story without question, to call down judgment, the kind of thing that seeps  into your brain while you sleep. Sonny Liston was a white man's Negro, a man who fit the stereotype --- surly, mumbly, shambling, and very dark. Cassius Clay was an uppity colored guy. Light skin. Big mouth. That damn fool was a whole lot of terrible things -- loud, opinionated, in your face, disrespectful, taunting -- everything any sensible man would hate, right? And so I hated him without understanding how programmed I'd been, not by my family, just by growing up in Baltimore and breathing the air. For the record, I came to regard Muhamud Ali as a bonafide American hero. He literally put his money where his mouth was. He was forced to give up the way he earned a living. He was stripped of his title. He literally risked five years in prison. Still, he stayed true to his principles in the face of extraordinary hatred. "No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger," he said. How many of us have the fortitude to walk that walk? And do we know if that strength will be there when we need it? Is that what it means to have faith?

I met the man. It was during the period of time in which he was stripped of his title. I was teaching in West Virginia when he came to the campus to speak. Even without his title Ali was already a legend. Bundini Brown, his longtime friend and bodyguard, was with him. "Hold me back! Hold me back!" the champ yelled when he saw me coming to shake his hand. Muhammad Ali lunged forward as if to grab me. Bundini held him back. Another bodyguard held onto him from the other side. "Hold me back! Hold me back!" It only took me a second to figure out he was kidding, but I tell you true: in that one second my life passed before my eyes. The era of behemoth athletes was still a long way away, but when we shook hands my hand disappeared within his. Ali was the biggest man I had ever seen. He crackled with unbridled energy, like he existed within a force field of his own making. But there was an edge to him, a sense of unpredictability and danger. My life has afforded me many opportunities to meet and work with high end personalities, and that includes a president of the United States (smack inside the White House, too), but to this day I have never met anyone -- movie star, politician, or athlete -- who could electrify a room like that man could.

There is a story about a conversation a father once had with his son. The son came to his father and asked what sport he should play. He was trying to choose between playing football or boxing. "Football," his father said, "Because boxers don't play."

My Mountain

Well, it's not exactly mine -- it's mortgaged -- but the name on the deed is mine and has been for the past three decades now, plus the fact that it begins at the foundation of our house in the northern Catskills and rises gently to its peak a couple of thousand feet later, more. I'm somewhere on that mountain all the time, so, for all intents and purposes, it's mine. If I don't want you to find me you won't. My rough estimate is that I've climbed my mountain in the neighborhood of six thousand times, probably more, not always six thousand to the top but always some place on its slopes. I know my mountain well. Often, when I'm not on it, I make believe I am, and, when I am on it, I pinch myself and feel grateful, not always but often. There is constant discovery, always something seen that wasn't seen before, and, when that something catches my attention, I can stop and stare and allow it to sink in. Where is there new growth? What are the colors? Breathe in the scent. Has an animal been here? A turkey? A white tail? What's that in the dirt? A scratch? A track? Is the grass pressed down? In this space of time I am only what I am and nothing more. I would come here if there were a tragedy in my life. I would come here to keep from losing my mind. Some other mountain really doesn't interest me. I've never had the desire to climb the seven highest. I've never even had the desire to climb all the peaks in the Catskills. What I want is to know my mountain well, to take on its delight and its wonder. For a mountain to come to life you must be there. I've watched it grow dark, and I've watched it grow light, always enthralled, always entranced, always with my senses at their peak. I am alive, and at any instant something miraculous might happen! That bear? You know, the one who's out there but you've never seen him, seen sign but not him? You still might. But, you won't know until the bear shows himself, and, if he shows himself, he doesn't know you're there, which is exactly where you'd need to be.

Foreman's Birthday 12-23-1940

Sometime in the 50’s, probably around the time I failed high school for the 3^rd time, my father said to me, “Son, one of these days you’re going to find yourself, and, when you do, you’re going to be awfully disappointed.” I think he was joking. But the facts were it didn’t seem as if I’d ever get through school, and I was floundering around like a three legged pig in a cess pool.  Eventually I did graduate but not before doing penance in summer school where I was the only Jew on a gentile campus in a foreign neighborhood. I took to wearing a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes folded into the short sleeve of a white t-shirt in an attempt to pass. This cigarette/t-shirt mode belonged to gentile guys who went to vocational school, sported ducktail haircuts, and lived in dangerous neighborhoods, places like Pig Town, where only a few years earlier pigs still ran through the streets to the slaughterhouse, or Sparrows Point where the steel mills stood. At that time in Baltimore, Maryland, a Jewish kid wouldn’t have been caught dead in anything but an oxford button down shirt, preferably blue but white would do. If I had worn that get-up to summer school, along with the khaki trousers, weejun loafers, and argyle socks that defined the rest of the uniform, I might as well have hung a sign on my back that screamed: “You’re right. I did it. I killed Him.”

The previous paragraph is in darkened italics because I don't know what to do with it. Memoir is much on my mind these days, today especially as it's my birthday, so obviously that's where the paragraph belongs. Beginning? Somewhere in there? Or nowhere at all? More importantly, if you were cruising through a bookstore skimming first paragraphs, would you go on to the second? OK. Try this.

In January of 1963 all things seemed possible. Kennedy was still alive. So was my father. Civil Rights were simmering, but Black Power was not yet a battle cry. “We Shall Overcome” was our anthem. Those of us who sang it did so with our arms around each other and rocked gently. Alcatraz closed down, and Martin Luther King wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail. Sam Cooke sang, “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Dylan wrote, “Blowin’ In The Wind”. At the time, I was a student at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, an all Black school, where I was the only white male. I had been born and raised here in a city as southern as any other, yet Morgan’s student body could not be classified as radical, nor could I. Those kids were there to get a piece of the American pie, as was I. The coeds wore pillbox hats a la Jackie Kennedy, kid gloves, and carried proper purses. The men wore sport coats and ties, wool sweaters, and carried very professional looking briefcases. I continued to carry my books tucked under my arm, Hardy Boy’s style. Students spoke of “Martin” and “Malcolm” as if they were familiars, and early in 1963 came the time Morgan joined the movement and proper students risked jail time in order to integrate a whites only movie theatre just off campus, a theatre that was, coincidentally, owned by the father of a friend of mine, wealthy Jews who lived in the Golden Ghetto of North West Baltimore. My family lived on the northernmost fringe of that ghetto, not rich but certainly Jewish.

Which paragraph would coax you into reading more? This is not a trick question. It doesn't need an answer.

So, my birthday. If I were an octopus I couldn't wrap my arms around the fact that it's been sixty years since my Bar Mitzvah. Three score years! Do the math. I've already lived more years than I'm going to live. There's the math for you! (I can hear Lewis Black angrily yelling those last four words.) "There's the math for you!" I feel I should have something wise to say at this juncture, something profound, maybe even poetic. Really, I'm just glad to still be here. I'm not yet finished growing into myself.

A story.

Years ago, I mean, years ago, I sold my first screenplay to a man named Jennings Lang, a major great white shark of that era. That script, "The Hunting of Pink Mountain Tinney", never got made but it did get me a three picture deal, and thus began my career in this business. At some point after the deal was made Jennings and I were having lunch ("doing" lunch, I know), and I thought he was complementing me on the action sequences, and the man got me feeling like I was a big time screenwriter. I said something to that effect -- some dumb shit brag about my ability to do action -- something to that effect -- and when I shut up Jennings said to me, "I didn't buy your script for the action sequences. I bought it for the love story."

Some lessons y'gotta keep on learning.

Morgan: Why I Went There In The First Place, And Why I Never Went Any Place Else

I had never planned to stay there. I certainly had never planned to go there. After all, only colored people went there. But I was white. And it was in the south. The fifties were only yesterday. My Uncle Frank cringed when he heard their music. "Goddamn jungle..." he'd mutter. OK, since I had never planned to go there, and I had never planned to stay there, what was I doing there? In the Spring of 1962, Morgan State College, Baltimore, Maryland, had a student body of  2,600 students, all but two of them -- a nun and one eccentric co-ed -- Black. For a Jewish boy coming of age in this era there were three non-negotiables: circumcision, Bar Mitzvah, and a college diploma, preferably in law, medicine, or orthodontia. These three were existential imperatives. The Hebrew trifecta. Without them a male child did not exist as a Jew.

 I should have had my college diploma in 1962 having graduated high school in 1958. though I tripled my degree of difficulty by flunking out three times. I got an A in English, a C in philosophy, and an F in everything else, including ROTC and phys. ed., rebelling against authority being one of my strong suits. Given this, reasons still remaining murky, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Once on Parris Island my Drill Instructor bellowed in my face, "Why do you want to be in my Marine Corps, maggot?" "Sir, because it's safer than being at home, sir!" The words just came blurting out. Home life had been precarious to say the least. My DI's expression was one of utter disdain. "Get outta my sight, maggot!"  he sneered.

I trained as a combat engineer, and now once again walked civilian streets with few skills except how to break down an M1 rifle and put it back together again at night, blindfolded, in the sand. This is not a skill easily transferred to civilian purposes. What now? I thought about going back on active duty, but authority -- remember that one? -- still not my strong suit. What else? Drug store clerk? Produce manager at the A & P? Custodian at the local country club? Jews didn't do these jobs!

A neighbor, a white woman, worked in the Dean's office at Morgan and suggested I give it some thought. Dean Whiting, Dean of Students, was a reasonable man. Call him. I did, and without any memorable thoughts on a hot June day found myself crossing the quad to the administration building. It's bright white Grecian columns blinded me. I remember squinting to see and the feeling of my legs climbing the steps. Once inside the coolness of the interior settled around me. Summer school had not yet started. The halls were empty. I was probably wearing desert boots so my crepe soles made no sound. Neither did anything else. The quiet of an empty warehouse. Where was the dean's office? OK, there it is. Straighten up. Let's do this.

Dean Whiting wore a sport coat, tie, and really gentle smile. His office was full of books. I felt at ease in a way I never feel in a room without books. I don't trust you unless there's a stack of books on the floor beside your chair, preferably, each one about something else. I can't remember the details of our conversation but the upshot of it was that he allowed me to enroll in two courses for summer school, both English, I'm sure. The idea was that if I did well he would consider me a provisional student meaning I'd be allowed to enroll in a regular semester for four courses, twelve credits. We'd go on from there, see where we're at, what we'd do. Well, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to ace those courses, all six of them, because, of course, since Morgan was a colored school it was an easy school. I'd score good grades then transfer to a good school, a white school. That was the plan. However, when the time came for me to transfer -- I had scored five A's and one B -- something had changed. I didn't consider myself politicized (I doubt I even thought about it), but Rosa Parks had refused to stand up, Negro college students from North Carolina had refused to leave a white lunch counter, and Malcolm was called Malcolm on campus even though most of the Morgan community did not want a separatist nation. Martin Luther King was Martin. Most students at Morgan were working towards a piece of the American pie, and the faculty, all of whom had attended schools like Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, and Yale, returned to the community and dedicated themselves to help their folks do just that. The campus was vibrant in ways I had never before experienced. Black Power hadn't yet appeared but it was on its way. Stokely was making himself known. Black Power, when it finally surfaced, made perfect sense.

The true magic of it all was Morgan's faculty. Encyclopedic knowledge delivered with the passion of a preacher. The profs were hungry to do it, and the students were hungry to get it. It seemed every lecture was a Ted Talk. I was beginning to know things, and the more I knew the more I wanted to know, the more I did know, those delightful subtleties that come with rigorous, creative thought. I read James Baldwin's "Another Country" and understood it. Morgan was not an ideological campus -- it was an intellectual and creative one -- still, I read slave narratives, was introduced to characters like Marcus Garvey, writers like Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, Charles Chestnutt-- the entire Harlem Renaissance -- James Weldon Johnson's brilliant, "God's Trombones", and Chaucer's tales; the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley and that of Emily Dickenson; Richard Wright, Bigger Thomas, Hawthorne, Hester Prynne; the art of Romare Beardon; the frescoes of Giotto; the music of Scott Joplin with a whisper of John Cage. The point is: I learned twice as much as I would have at a "good" school.

The point is: I stayed, grew, and graduated.

Graduate school at Yale was next.

A Fulbright was awarded.

I did just fine.

Me 'n' Huck

"Reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated," said Huck Finn (or something like it) as he watched his own funeral from the rafters of the church. Well, all week long the neurologist repeated I'd had a stroke, a "hemorrhagic event" she called it (nothing at all like an academy award or a Bar Mitzvah), so all week long I dreaded the idea that Depends were in my near future. However, when the hospital finally did a blood work up (a little thing they'd neglected) it turned out that I had an unchecked urinary tract infection that seeped into my bloodstream and caused septicemia, blood poisoning. This displays the same symptoms as a stroke but a stroke it ain't. Keep your Depends. I'm outta here. And one day later I was.

I'm home now in the place I love most in this world, getting stronger every day and feeling like my old self. Something I learned this week: one can become old very quickly, overnight, my friends.One way to stave this off is to drink tons of water. Must stay hydrated. For years my kids have been telling me to drink more water, that coffee and beer wouldn't cut it. OK., kids, so now I'm a believer. Here comes the corny part: I feel like I've been given a gift. I could have died but I didn't. Instead, I learned that toughing it out in the old ways worked well enough when I was younger, but if I'm going to live long and heartily as the tough, old bastard I'd like to think I am, I'm going to have to change my ways. Suddenly, staying alive and healthy has become more important to me than another cinnamon roll. Discipline, a concept that had become quaint, is required. There's nothing cute about a crotchety old man. Come on, ref, lemme go another round and let's see what I can do! What's more important about another Baby Ruth bar that eclipses the love I have for family and friends? Yes. There. I said it. Love. I didn't mind being irresponsible when I could get away with it. Can't no more. Whenever I do shuck this mortal coil, I want it to be after a long, loving run. Nothing is more important than the people in my life. This week has shown me that. Nothing.

So now it's August, and I'm thrilled to be here. 'Til mid-October there's no place on earth more beautiful. Still warm and temperate, but now you see the occasional maple leaf turned copper-red in the grass, and there is a crispness in the air, a hint of Fall. Jamie and I picked wild blueberries yesterday. The trees are chock full of apples, a boon year for them. A large bough from our crab apple tree in the back came down in a wind storm. I never like to lose part of a tree, but this branch is filled with apples. Every evening a young buck in velvet comes to feed from it. My kids are fine. Dear friends have come through. Jamie is seeing to it that I drink more water.

Hang in there, buddy, I got a bet on ya! Here's the clincher: other people do, too.