Laconia Picture Tour

As requested by my hobo buddy Junk Master McGee in S.F. here are some pics to tug at your heart...
I missed these moments of clear cold in New England. Something about it stirs my poet's heart like '40s Swing.
You think S.F. is where poets go, but that was in 1952, when poetry was on paper. I didn't feel anything on the South West Coast. I'm dead to concrete. I didn't know I missed having numb fingers until I had numb fingers.
Just walking around here made poetry spring to mind everywhere. Everything seems to be worth talking about. Kids skating on a frozen lake. Using a shoe for a hockey puck. Every moment seems sigh-worthy. Two golden retrievers looking for their master. Snow banks against a fence. No sign of birds. Ice. To me at least this is winter. When I was in L.A. or S.F. it seemed the poet part of me was dead, supplanted by a desire to swim all year round and wear $200 jeans. This is part of the reason I wanted to come to New England for this winter, to resurrect that poet and see what he has to say for himself.


This is some kind of granite planter box behind the library. I thought it was a fireplace and I suppose it could be used for that.



The tracks leading to new vistas...a sign says this is an active track but I haven't seen a train. The depot is a bar called the Black Cat.


This is the Library where Courtney works...

The town square and congregational church in downtown Laconia. Could be 1890.



Bird house near Library. Empty.

Opechee Bay north of Laconia. Frozen solid for ice fishing and hockey.

Chief Sachem, the mascot of Laconia school district. This was carved with a chainsaw.
Irresistible slice of pepperoni pizza. Fresh and hot. I give it high marks for delivery. The oil was bright red denoting excellent grade beef. The crust was chewy and tasty. $2. And I think they made it in 4 minutes so that's speedy and good.


Laconia has one of the highest pizza place:person ratio. There are at least 11 places to buy a pizza.


Here's R. Rooms...an old victorian. You can rent that little watchtower for $85. It's big enough for a couch.

The Spa, with $3 six packs of 18 ounce PBRs, and Happy Jacks tabacco shop.


A long shot of the house on Church Street. You can see El Conquistador on the left there hidden from the police...I live in the back carriage house. It looks like a barn (was a barn) but it is connected by an unheated corridor. Laconia has many big houses that are now boarding houses. Lots of11 bedroom houses. It's odd. We think R Rooms was an old brothel.

The tracks again...



You gotta click on this one to see the squirrel jumping. There are at least 3 squirrels in this picture. Can you spot them all?
The winter here is not like the arctic. People and animals lead normal lives. There were four squirrels chasing each other around. I think they were getting freaky too...making baby squirrels. I guess if you want to get freaky you got to jump from one branch to the other. Take risks.


I noticed there are like 5 different American Flags in these random pictures. Like I couldn't go ten feet without seeing an American Flag. I just randomly took these pictures and only now do I see that the flags are in the background everywhere. There's some essay in that but I'm not going to write it now. I've got an orange to eat. Maybe it's the simple fact that I live in America and New Hampshire folks like to remind everyone where they are. Like, during any given argument a man might be able to say, "Da ya know wha' cahntry ya in?" and turn and point. "'merica!"

sleeping with snakes redux

Some genius suggested I place this link here...again...I don't know why. Promote it here when you are already reading better material for free? I guess if you want to be materialistic then go bid on the book, but I've already said I'm selling these books to any reader who wants one and I'll personalize it. I can't really blame you if you'd rather buy some whiskey.
What can you afford? It costs me $5. I think $12 is reasonable. If you drive a newer car then call it $15. If you just want to donate to my life and have no intention of reading the story then call it $50. In fact, no, I don't want your pity money.
There's no need to go through eBay. Just email me. lostinspace@gmail.com.
I've sent two out so far and one of them was nearly destroyed in transit. No word on the other one. If yours is destroyed or vanishes I'll replace it for free...unless I don't have any more in which case you are out of luck.
I was horrified to find that my original listing said "Brand new FIRST ADDITION"
Ugh. no wonder no one bought it.

Note to self: no listing stuff on ebay when drunk.

Ebay listing
For sale is 1 brand new FIRST EDITION paperback copy of Sleeping with Snakes: Notes from the Los Angeles Underbelly.
This anthology of stories by Los Angeles based authors was compiled by anthologist Ron Sievers.
The stories, confessions, essays and anecdotes cover many mature topics.

The seller is a contributor in the book and will personally sign the title page if the buyer requests it.

Many of these authors have not been published anywhere else so this would be the first edition of their first publication. A personalized copy of this book will be as rare as an empty seat on the Express 333 bus from Venice to the Staples Center.

The famous Los Angeles drunk/writer Charles Bukowski is also a contributor but the seller is not going to sign his name since Bukowski is dead and that would be rude.

Flooring...

Who said two homeless guys can't do good work?
We had to work our rent off by replacing the flooring in the upstairs bathroom. It had a hole in it for 20 years and suddenly Mary thinks the world will end if we don't fix it in 3 hours. Those nine tiles took us 4 hours. But then she hangs out and bothers us for two hours. Then we have to haggle over what it is worth. What a nightmare! Just imagine that scene with the couch cover and multiply the insanity by 100. Sean did most of the work. I just griped about life...
I wish I'd stayed in bed...



Here's mary's bathroom that I did alone. She kept saying, "What you need to do is..." and I said, "If you know what I need to do then you should do it. Here. Take the scissors. I'm gonna go beat off in my bed."
That shut her up.

Here's Mary's cat, Garfield. No, he doesn't eat lasagna. He's got some kind of hip problem.

Laconia Comic

I don't know if this will be readable...

but maybe if you click on it so it becomes a picture alone and then hit "control+" to magnify it
then it becomes more readable....
I had to cut it in half and then scan it and then paste it into paint and then shrink it so now it's a mess.



Maybe I'll put both sections here so they might be bigger and more readable. Yeah, these are way more clear. Click on them and then hit control+ to enlarge or Control- to shrink. If only stick figures were considered good art! If there is an illustrator out there who wants to collaborate on a graphic novel then contact me. It'll be Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb.

Got a call from an old friend...we used to be real close

It's important to keep moving. Even though living at the group home has given me some perspective it has also led to some bad habits, such as blogging in a stream of consciousness, unpublishable, rambling, hateful manner. I apologize. I don't apologize for the excessive drinking, but I'd classify that as a bad habit.

It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. That's what AC/DC says. And it's hard to know where you are in the climb. So you just keep climbing. Bruce Springsteen keeps playing because he believes his best work is ahead of him. That's what I have to believe. The best work, the best years, the best ideas are somewhere down the road. I'd even settle for good work. I've had a few jobs and at some point it feels like, no, that was it, that was as good as it's gonna get.

As a deckhand the major test was lassoing a davit on the deck with a 3.5 inch line...while the boat was moving. That's a big line. I guess it's the same size, maybe a little bigger, than a gasoline hose. It's big. I could barely get my hands around it and then as we bumped up against the dock I would toss the line OVER the bulwark aiming for the davit. IF we were close and moving slow I could just drop it on, but sometimes the boat moved and I had to throw it. And...as soon as the line hooked the davit I had to lash it around a davit on the supply vessel...and this had to be done in no longer than 5 seconds because if I lassoed the dock and then we bounced off the deck and I didn't get the line around the davit on the ship in time then we would just drift away because the captain could only do so much to get us close without destroying the dock. But the worst was if I just managed to get the davit on the ship lashed and it tightened with me nearby because those 4 inch lines stretched almost half of their length and became as small as a garden hose with the potential force, so I was told, to cut me in half.
So one morning after perhaps 30 hours of shoveling concrete dust and navigating and cooking and washing dishes and cleaning the heads I was on the deck, no shirt, fingers bleeding, the sun just coming and I picked up that line and lassoed the dock at like 20 feet. I mean, I heaved the line high and long and it flipped perfectly and fell over the davit. I lashed the boat on and then ran to get the bow line. (you do the stern first as we had bow thrusters)
The captain got on the intercom and said, "nice shot, Snap." they call all deckhands "Snap" because, "When they food, the deckhan' be on the plate like snap. when they work, the deckhan' be gone like snap." said the bearded Chief Engineer from Florida with a snap of his fingers.
That was as good as it got...
And it's impossible to know if I was right because I left. The tree planting job, for instance. That peaked out at the very end but I don't think I'd do that again. This esoteric approach to work does cause problems with employ-ability and job skills. I never did master the art of being a deck hand. I just got to the point where I knew what to expect, routinely, and was able to get some work done. Basic training lasts 6 weeks. I was basically in basic training for 6 months with a new drill sergeant every two weeks. I suppose it would've gotten easier or else I would've moved up in job titles. Maybe I'm afraid of that, of getting sucked into climbing a ladder. I like starting out on the first few rungs and that gives me enough exposure to the rest of the ladder to know the captain earned that job with time and application. There are no short cuts to being a captain.
I've seen ads for linesman jobs. That's a respectable trade with high skills from start to finish. There is literally no dimension of linesman jobs that is easy and there are unlimited applications. But you have to survive the first five years...which isn't a guarantee. Still, for a rugged man with good concentration I would recommend the linesman job. In my next life I think I will be a linesman and I will read western novellas and play the fiddle to my sweetheart.