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Summer 2012
Daly City, California

I am tired of walking the course even if it is the US Open and the scene is full of pageantry and excitement. My right knee is screaming, my forehead is badly sunburned and I have a terrible hangover from being on full throttle since arriving in town on Wednesday afternoon.

So I have planted myself in a seat by one of the TVs in the Hospitality Tent which today (Sunday) has been moved from the Lake Merced Country Club ballroom to the 18th green outside the ballroom. Because I have just finished heavily tipping all the service staff and the bartender for the fine attention to detail they have shown myself and my friends over the last five days – my drink is a triple and everyone is all smiles.

Just a few of us here at the tent now, because it is Championship Sunday with the winner still in doubt – so most folks are on the course.

But I am tired.

In my golden years I have put on quite a bit of extra weight, wore out all the ligaments in my right knee and drink to excess at the drop of a dime. So being tired is a condition that seems to have become my default status in the afternoon.

It is what it is…..

“And you're losing all your highs and lows ain't it funny how the feeling goes away”

Summer 1976
Texas Prison Farm

As a newcomer you really stick out on the Hoe Squad with your gleaming white uniform and pale skin. The old hands have worn and red dirt stained uniforms that reflect the time and wear that mark their years in the field. Faces worn by the Texas sun and spirits broken by the relentless weight of “doing time”.

I am still a revolutionary in my spirit. Neither broken nor repentant, having fought the Law and lost, I resign myself to simply paying the price that the State says I owe. It is a foolish attitude that will not survive the cruelty of the coming years – but I do not know that yet.

It is water that occupies most of my thought process. In the morning we get a water break and after so long in the county jails my body is screaming for water. When the break finally comes, the old man who is too lame to work in the fields anymore will go to the wood wagon being pulled by the tractor and bring us the bucket. It is a single bucket with a dipper. The bucket is filled with ice cold water – the finest beverage your mind can imagine.

You drink by seniority – old hands down to the “new thangs” that have just been dropped into hell like aliens from another planet. It is an old metal dipper that stays cold itself even after your drink is finished; it tastes of decades of well water - the taste of the farm and of the closeness to the land that will mark your entire existence.

Summer 2012

Spent a wonderful evening on the porch with my lady sipping Courvoisier and smoking the old half of what was once a nice Rothschild Maduro before I left it outside for a few days A bit crumbly but nice. I have been trying to adjust the water system in her yard. Several zones are not right yet and the lawn has some sad looking spots. Water will cure it.

Her husband died last year and there are a lot of things need to be serviced, repaired or replaced. It has been cathartic for me. We had been friends for a long time and there was always that spark between us, but now that a year has passed since she became a widow – we have moved to a far different relationship.

Some nights we spend at her beautiful home up on the hillside overlooking the city and sometimes we stay in town at my townhouse with the great view of the mountains at sunset. Not a bad life. We both feel a bit blessed right now, and just a little apprehensive about hoping it doesn’t end. You know the feeling – when things get just a little too perfect you begin to worry that it might go away.

Perhaps not this time.

We both are at an age where the wind is fairly consistent. We are settled, she is retired except for the occasional gig as an expert witness in a civil suit – and I am at the end of a long and fairly successful career. Again, a pretty good fit.

It improves your reputation, I am discovering, when you are accompanied by a beautiful and elegant woman. I have not always had the greatest taste in women so it is strange to be complimented so often when out on the town.

Elegant I suppose is the correct word for her countenance. For an old cowboy, I seem to have stepped a little out of my league.

I rather enjoy the elevated air.

But there is something odd happening to time. It continues to slow down. A recurrent phenomenon that allows me to make good decisions and be patient in all things – but it is worrisome. Scenes from my past keep slipping into the present. Why do scenes from my past slowly roll by in my mind like some old newsreel? Not vague thoughts but detailed and fully fleshed vignettes of both the important and the mundane.

I will grant you that I am the sum total of all the rather unbelievable events that bring me to this keyboard – however, I do not care to relive them.

Yet I do.

Summer 2012
Sierra Mountains

I danced the Ghost Dance last night at sunset - it had been a long time. The moon was large and just visible thru the pine trees and I am feeling a little better, finally getting rested. The water from this remote hot springs seems to help my knees and it certainly helps my soul.

I drove to the closest small town with a grocery store yesterday afternoon and bought 3 fried chicken breasts, 2 small watermelons, a jug of diet cranberry juice and $40.00 in lottery tickets. I try to never forget what the old woman said about buying the lottery - but not much happening on the hillbilly retirement fund scene.

Soaking in the hot springs on a near perfect night high in the mountains with the owls and bats all diving about is a fine way to clear your head. And mine has been awfully thick lately. Sometimes I sleep too long, sometimes not long enough - too many thoughts and too many flashbacks.

Drove back to the city at 1:30 Am, wasting the rent on the cabin, just to sleep in my own bed.

I have a date with The Lady today at 4:00 and not a hell of a lot other commitments pending. We will probably drive up to the Lake and have supper, seems like its going to be a great afternoon.

Not too sure why I find myself writing, but it just feels right. Perhaps the wheels of change are in motion...