Sandusky

"It's okay, the man said. All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us.
How do you know?
I just know."

-- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

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In an old book store in the old downtown area of Sandusky, OH, I found The Road for cheap, along with a book on experimental theatre (with crazy photos), a pocketbook of Zen meditations, and--the real cookery--a frail, gray, snippety volume of Pioneer Superstitions: Old-Timey Signs and Sayings, by Ferne Shelton, published in 1969. Thought I'd share some of the gems:

- Sign of Rain: "If rocks and walls appear to sweat."
- "If cats work busily scratching themselves...windstorm."
- Curing a Baby's "Thrash": A person who never saw his father (due to death or otherwise) may blow into the baby's mouth three times and cure the condition."
- Of Pigs: "Bad luck to pull a pig's tail. Bad luck to feed sweet milk to pigs. Bad luck to kill hogs 'in the DARK of the moon.'"
- About Dogs: "A good dog will do better if named after a 'bad' man."
- "If she rode on a mule, she was sure to become an old maid."
- "If seven hornets sting a man at the same time, he will die."
- On New Year's Eve: "Cows kneel down and talk."
- "To find a hole in a stocking, expect to get a letter that day."
- Bad luck: "To drop, or fall over, a broom."
- Good luck for a New Year: "Wear red garters."
- Watch out for a man... "If he does not make friends with a dog. If he looks hard into his cup before he drinks. If he has 'squinty' eyes."
-Bad omens: "Bad luck to kill a redbird, bluebird, or a mockingbird."

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Bought a movie, Phone Call from a Stranger, which has been one of my old faves, though I've not seen it in years. Also bought The Copulatin' Blues and Mae's new release, Singularity.

This, along with some tech-savvy buys: a new network card, a stack of blank CDs, headphones, speakers, and--perhaps most important--an LED book light. I need this last, a private light for reading on the road. The darkness falls on our van sometimes, and these are the moments when good writing is better than tired, paltry conversation. Pop culture rots in the air these nights, I turn fetal in a stubborn van seat firm and unfeeling as wood, and with my hands fondling pages I drift off the highway, glad not to be driving, glad not to be talking.

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I was back in Sandusky yesterday, and it had not forgotten me. The place looks different in the fall, in the sun, smaller somehow, like the blue house on North 7th St., Dickinson, ND, where I cut my mom's daisies down with a stick, thinking them Nazis and Russians. Sandusky, quaint and fresh, on the shore, the north shore...nowhere near Kentucky.

Been as depressed and pent-up, steaming, on the grand funk railroad ever since leaving that port city. Thinking about jobs past, a life past. It was a hedged, secluded life. Mornings were gray and turned bronze. Deliciously cold nights made friends with wine. Hugs and inside jokes. Carpet stains, ruby nights, free art. I was happy to feel and see these things as they happened, and I am now on the happy side of bitter to recall them, like slender portraits hanging in a museum

(shoes dangling from each other on the wires, the feet of invisible children standing in air)

with little plates beside each, describing the whos and wheres, the hos and whores, the homes and more.

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Saw Blindness, too, and liked it, dammit. They done the book but good.