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Jul. 2nd, 2002 03:28 pmOk Ok so i am not the best person in the world. I know I have let you down in the past, and I am sure I will let you down again. That is my nature. among other things of course. But it is my nature that attracts people to me. I suppose I need to grow my skin thick like the callouses on my hands. But even the callouses peel from time to time (because my skin is so unhealthy from the scurvy and the rickets and all) leaving bright pink raw spots that make me wince when I am swinging a ratchet. Make me grimace when i belay a line. so I suppose a thick skin isn't much better. But. You would think. Think that you wouldn't get bitchy with a guy after you have been together for only a day after six months. and he is trying to do something good for you. All nice like, You know. Like he cares or something.
And they are doing something to Capt. Jack Ogg's place down by ther water. My favorite house in all of warren. Except my childhood home, but the parade of RISD professors that have lived there since the family moved out have inexorably destroyed the stark shaker interior of my youth with wall to wall and putting a TV where out living room used to be. You are only supposed to go into that room for xmas, and when you are showing guests slides of the family vacation to the grand canyon. You know? And it still burns me up that my family lived there for twenty three years, and the previous owners lived in the place for one hundred and seven years before us. And freaking David Macauly lives there for like two years, and now everyone in the town STILL refers to it as "the Macauly house" Grrr. My pop did more for the town of warren than that stuck up dude ever did. Of course he has since moved out of town, leaving me to tarnish the family name by drinking beer on the roof of my tenement, in my kimono, waving a BB gun at the pigeons. I was really just up there to shoot those damn pigeons. And That was like four years ago. Maybe more. And it was like only three or four times. I was crazy at the time. and I really didn't think anybody in my neighborhood looks up. And now everytime I come home from the ship I gotta hear about it from the preservationists and hoity toity hoi poli that warren seems to manufacture in the back rooms of antique stors that are fronts for cocaine money laundering and NAMBLA white slave trades. I much prefer the fish markets, the docks, and, of course, capt. Jack Ogg's house.
It really wasn't his house. It was originally capt. Charles Collins' house. I am supposing before he got married and built the bigg'un next door. Or maybe it was his home after his wife was bitchy to him over nothing when she saw him after he was out a'sea for long periods of time. But I didn't know capt. Charles collins. I just knew Capt. Jack. He was a nautical junk man and a scrimshanderer. And a drunk. And he plied those trades out of that little shack down there on water street in the seventies. Of course my mother forbade me to make the quarter-mile trek out to visit with him. She didn't tell me it was because of that flask he was always pulling on, but I assumed that was what it was. Mother never seemed to like the alcohol much. Even when her father would sit in his greasy easy chair in the corner of the room, intensly focused on john wayne movies, viceroys and the fifth of whiskey warming between his legs on family occasions. It wasn't like he was bothering anybody, not at least until he tried to talk; and he only tried to talk when he called nana to get him another bottle. And then of course when he said "grace". (Oh I uphold the family holiday tradition well. Natch.) And so now that i think back I have to wonder if capt. jack didn't have a rep as a petter-ass for some reason. I don't remember anything more intimate going on in that shack than me handing him a tool, or even a new bottle. His gout. Couldn't get around much in them days. And christ, if she was trying to shield me from hooch, she should have forbade me from seeing my pop. Driving around town aimlessly in the summer night, with a 40 of colt 45 between my legs, freezing my four yearold thighs. My father used to tell me that if the police ever pulled us over, that i had to tell them that it was my beer. And go ahead and drink some. He knew i always like the taste of beer. It's in the genes. I don't think mother ever knew about all the times down at Marzlik's bar, when my pop would tell me to hide under the pool table until the fighting stopped, and i got to see him smashing chairs across people's backs just like I would see on The Dukes of Hazard years later.
My mother never shielded me from anything but honesty.
And I used to sit for hours at this old salt's knee, listening to stories from the New Bedford Whale fisheries while I watched those stout hands pricking and etching giant hunks of ivory into sooty works of art, that he sold to folks on their way to newport for just enough to keep him in whiskey and ivory and coal for the benjamin franklin stove that we huddled around. When I escaped my life in winter.
And now the shingles have all been torn off. I fear they are thinking about clapboards. They probably want to make it "sunny". The bastids. Can't appreciate the must of the sea. The must of a seamen. Yeh.
And they are doing something to Capt. Jack Ogg's place down by ther water. My favorite house in all of warren. Except my childhood home, but the parade of RISD professors that have lived there since the family moved out have inexorably destroyed the stark shaker interior of my youth with wall to wall and putting a TV where out living room used to be. You are only supposed to go into that room for xmas, and when you are showing guests slides of the family vacation to the grand canyon. You know? And it still burns me up that my family lived there for twenty three years, and the previous owners lived in the place for one hundred and seven years before us. And freaking David Macauly lives there for like two years, and now everyone in the town STILL refers to it as "the Macauly house" Grrr. My pop did more for the town of warren than that stuck up dude ever did. Of course he has since moved out of town, leaving me to tarnish the family name by drinking beer on the roof of my tenement, in my kimono, waving a BB gun at the pigeons. I was really just up there to shoot those damn pigeons. And That was like four years ago. Maybe more. And it was like only three or four times. I was crazy at the time. and I really didn't think anybody in my neighborhood looks up. And now everytime I come home from the ship I gotta hear about it from the preservationists and hoity toity hoi poli that warren seems to manufacture in the back rooms of antique stors that are fronts for cocaine money laundering and NAMBLA white slave trades. I much prefer the fish markets, the docks, and, of course, capt. Jack Ogg's house.
It really wasn't his house. It was originally capt. Charles Collins' house. I am supposing before he got married and built the bigg'un next door. Or maybe it was his home after his wife was bitchy to him over nothing when she saw him after he was out a'sea for long periods of time. But I didn't know capt. Charles collins. I just knew Capt. Jack. He was a nautical junk man and a scrimshanderer. And a drunk. And he plied those trades out of that little shack down there on water street in the seventies. Of course my mother forbade me to make the quarter-mile trek out to visit with him. She didn't tell me it was because of that flask he was always pulling on, but I assumed that was what it was. Mother never seemed to like the alcohol much. Even when her father would sit in his greasy easy chair in the corner of the room, intensly focused on john wayne movies, viceroys and the fifth of whiskey warming between his legs on family occasions. It wasn't like he was bothering anybody, not at least until he tried to talk; and he only tried to talk when he called nana to get him another bottle. And then of course when he said "grace". (Oh I uphold the family holiday tradition well. Natch.) And so now that i think back I have to wonder if capt. jack didn't have a rep as a petter-ass for some reason. I don't remember anything more intimate going on in that shack than me handing him a tool, or even a new bottle. His gout. Couldn't get around much in them days. And christ, if she was trying to shield me from hooch, she should have forbade me from seeing my pop. Driving around town aimlessly in the summer night, with a 40 of colt 45 between my legs, freezing my four yearold thighs. My father used to tell me that if the police ever pulled us over, that i had to tell them that it was my beer. And go ahead and drink some. He knew i always like the taste of beer. It's in the genes. I don't think mother ever knew about all the times down at Marzlik's bar, when my pop would tell me to hide under the pool table until the fighting stopped, and i got to see him smashing chairs across people's backs just like I would see on The Dukes of Hazard years later.
My mother never shielded me from anything but honesty.
And I used to sit for hours at this old salt's knee, listening to stories from the New Bedford Whale fisheries while I watched those stout hands pricking and etching giant hunks of ivory into sooty works of art, that he sold to folks on their way to newport for just enough to keep him in whiskey and ivory and coal for the benjamin franklin stove that we huddled around. When I escaped my life in winter.
And now the shingles have all been torn off. I fear they are thinking about clapboards. They probably want to make it "sunny". The bastids. Can't appreciate the must of the sea. The must of a seamen. Yeh.
