iBrick is the coolest

The Heidi girl. She was walking my dogs. She was trying to sneak into the Command Center. She was a pain in my ass. But she made good huckleberry roly-poly.

Then she showed up at the Garage like this:

What I thought she was going to say: “You’re Johnny Dodge, the fast finisher, the Lancelot of Punk City. My father just beat the hell out of me, and that’s not even the worst of it. He weighs 225 pounds and I weigh 135. GO DO YOUR THING.”

What she really said: ‘I fell off the porch. No biggie.”

I didn’t see her for a week after that. The dogs were definitely missing her. She had one question for me: “Did you kill him? Nobody’s seen him since I saw you last. Johnny Dodge.”

‘Wrong number,” I said. I had checked up. He was in a hospital in Elmer NJ. Some broken bones, two arms, two legs, signs of a brick crushing a cheekbone, nothing life threatening. He was slightly delirious. Kept telling doctors and nurses he was moving to Wyoming. “All I know,” I told Heidi. I shrugged.

When she lowered the boom, with her little bruised healing face. “Time you got back to work,” she said, “Fast Finisher.”

“No way,” I said. And I meant it.

Pigs Fly

SHE photoshopped this. Now she’s walking my dogs,

I’m the pig. Get that out of the way up front. P is for pig. P is also for punk, paranoid, and pugilistic.

But I let her in. She’s the girl that was staring at me in the flea market. Turns out she’s a neighbor. She says. Never knew I had neighbors. I have two dogs. She knew their names, Jack and Brillo. She’s plumper than her picture. She has a camera. Concerning. Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer. She snapped me at the laundromat.

It’s a fallacy that you can just disappear. There’s always laundry.

Jack is the wire-haired dachshund. Brillo is the Airedale. He ate a soap-filled steel wool pad as a puppy. He foamed at the mouth, then excreted steel wool in his stool. Airedales are invincible.

She knew their names though. They loved her. Trust your dogs. I think I believe that. I tried to end her interest in me. Showed her how old I am. Something else I got at the flea market:

I also showed her when and how I listen to it.

She said, “That’s cool.” Name of Heidi. Really? Bent shoulders, terrible posture, millennial pooch, I could swear she said “youse,” and yet she was somehow charming. Then she locked up the dog walking job. She said, “Everyone says you’re not Sam Dealey but a stone killer named Johnny Dodge. They say you are invulnerable, like Superman or somebody. Is that true?”

How she got this picture. 

I showed her my scars. Mistake. I was drunk. And then she insinuated herself into my life.

Beep

Feeling paranoid. The Command Center goes beep. Somebody sent me this. No idea who.

No Deerheads at the Flea Market

Went to the flea market. There was a woman there, staring at me. No, not Alice. Young enough to be my daughter. Pretty and plump.  Dark-haired. I avoided her. I’m good at that. Mr. Invisible.

But I found an old record.

Imagine it playing.

Then listen. Life can be sweet. If you let it.

Never heard of her or them before.

Just so you know what I mean by Barrens

People tend to visualize this when they think of a country gas station.

Not the way it is, at least not here in the Barrens, where rack and ruin is taken for granted. What I found for cheap when I came here years ago, seeking privacy and a low profile.

This is Johnny’s Last Chance Garage

There was no living space in the garage. Why I had to shell out some scarce cash for living space that could be hauled in.

Quite homey inside though, don’t you think?

I fixed it up some and made other improvements around the place. It’s possible I will die here. Then the Barrens will reassert control, as they always do.

After me, the green-luge. Tired of hearing bureaucrats talk to me about "green." I live with the damn color every day. Dying here is no big deal. Lots of people have.

But I still have a keyboard and maybe a few more things to say as I watch sunrises and sunsets wheel overhead.

Beep

Added a sound system in the Command Center. There’s a flea market not that far away, where I think I can pick up some old vinyl for, as they say, a song.

Maybe I’ll the share the good stuff. If I find any.

Satellite Office

Oh. Didn’t I tell you about the Command Center?

Once I got the trailer set up with a bed, a bureau, a fridge, and a hot plate, there wasn’t much room for my Last Chance Office. There was an old Plymouth out back that wasn’t going anywhere, which gave me an idea. I dug a shaft down through the trunk floor and shoveled backward to clear out a room-sized space underground. Some timber framing and cheap paneling and indoor/outdoor carpeting did the trick. Wired the electrical service through the Plymouth and set up a swell Command Center to provide access to the Internet.

The keyboard is an old Commodore unit. Very sturdy.

The communication part was surprisingly easy. More odds and ends...

The tires are spares for the truck.

I did set up an email just in case any old friends were still alive. Otherwise I just did what others do, poke around in the weird world made of millennial bits and bytes. Not much fun maybe, but informative.

Learned some things I’ll maybe talk about later.