June 10th, 2009
Big Mike and I are on the phone going over the fine details of launching our blog site.
A million, zillion people in the universe are launching blog sites everyday, but for us it’s an impossible ordeal. I think Bill Gates built Microsoft in less time than it’s taking us to launch this baby. The only man in the universe more ignorant about computers than Big Mike and me is Milo, the other stooge in this enterprise. Thank God he’s not on this line or we’d be spending needless hours trying to explain this stuff to him.
As it is, Big Mike’s in the middle of yet another labyrinth explanation of the latest chapter in this ongoing clusterfuck, and I have absolutely no clue as to what he’s talking about so I keep ask extraneous questions that take him on tangents.
Then my other phone rings.
Usually, I’d just let it go. But, a.) I’m expecting a call from my buddy Rick, and b.) I think Big Mike could use a break from my endless stupid questions.
So I say: “Hold it right there, Big Feller.” And I take the call.
“Hello,” I say.
Pause. Then an unfamiliar male voice says: “Who just called me?”
There’s an edge of suspicion to his tone. Like somehow I did something wrong, when, in fact, I did nothing wrong. Cause — after all — it was he just who called me!
So I say: “Who are you?”
Man, George Bernard Shaw himself couldn’t come up with a wittier retort.
He mumbles, all indignant like: “Must be the wrong number.” Then, click, he hangs up. No, sorry for taking your time. Or, my bad, I messed up.
I tell Big Mike what happened and for some reason it tickles our collective funny bone. It’s hard to explain why we find this so funny. Perhaps it’s cause the world is so unrelentingly miserable that we have to find ways of entertaining ourselves. But, whatever, we’re going over the exchange again and again, analyzing its every detail, and we can’t stop laughing.
Little do I know, but my younger daughter‘s in the next room. She must have been reading or something, cause she walks out in a huff, like my gales of laughter have interrupted her and she says: “Oh, my god — how can you think that’s funny?”
I ignore her and I tell Big Mike about the time I got a phone call from a lady who heard me say hello. “And then she goes: “Who’s this?”
He’s roaring.
“And I go: `Who’s this? Who are you? You called me….’”
Big Mike stops laughing long enough to say: “How can she possibly think that’s the right response to dialing the wrong number? This can’t be the first time she dialed a wrong number and heard a strange voice on the line. When she did it before, did someone say, `This is Harry, who are you?’”
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha….
“Or, `Well, I’m glad you asked — I’ve been wondering myself. I’m having an identity crisis….’”
Identity crisis! It’s too much.
I’m howling. He’s howling.
My daughter walks past the room. “Are you still talking about that?” she says in disbelief.
I want to call her a hater but I can’t get the words out, I’m laughing so hard.
“Oh, my god,” she says. “You and your friends are so weird….”
June 9th, 2009
I guess I’m just an old rocker. My musical tastes were formed in the late 60s and early 70s. I still listen to the old warhorses –
Dylan, the
Stones,
Janis Joplin, the
Dead,
Cream,
Traffic, the
Doors,
Van Morrison. If I’m driving down the street and hear one of my old favorites on the radio I turn up the volume until the car vibrates.
That said, there is one musician I esteem above all others, a musician whose music still sends a chill up my spine, someone who took the electric guitar to places it’s never been before and created sounds that have been copied but never equaled.
I’m talking about
Jimi Hendrix, genius, guitar god and war hero.
I first became aware of Hendrix in 1967, the year I graduated high school. His first hit, “
Purple Haze,” was all over the radio. The sound was like nothing I had ever heard before – big, bold, discordant, but undeniably different. It was alien to my unsophisticated ears. I just didn’t get it. But, you have to understand, I had not started smoking pot yet.
A year later I was in
Vietnam and I got it. Boy did I get it. The
Vietnamese conflict has been called the
Rock ‘n Roll War. Music was everywhere. It seemed that every soldier had his own cassette player and collection of cassette tapes. I remember my first day in-country. I had just gotten off an airplane along with 200 other new fish and was standing on the tarmac at the
Da Nang air base, listening to a bored 2nd Lieutenant welcoming us to Vietnam. While the 2nd Lt. was droning on about the
noble mission we were about to undertake, I heard music in the background, coming from a collection of raggedy tents just off the runway. It was the
Doors.
This is the end/
This is the end/
my friend
Welcome to Vietnam.
Just like in the good old
USA, there were racial problems among the American soldiers in Vietnam. If you recall, the late 60s were when
King,
Kennedy and
Malcolm were assassinated. There were
riots in the streets of our major cities.
Students were forming revolutionary cells and plotting to overthrow the government. Lines were drawn between the races, the generations and the body politic. It was a time of supreme tension and nobody could say with certainty what the future held.
What was happening in the States was mirrored in Vietnam. It was like a bizarre reflection of what was occurring on the streets back home. Lines were also drawn, political and racial. Black guys hung with black guys, white guys hung with white guys and Latinos kept to themselves. There were actually mini race riots in some of the division base camps like
Chu Lai and Da Nang. We didn’t have these problems in the field because, as infantrymen, we had more pressing concerns, like trying to keep the
Viet Cong and
North Vietnamese Regulars from killing us while at the same time trying to kill them.
It was a different story back in the relative safety of the division camps. The
REMFS (Rear Echelon Motherfuckers) had more time on their hands. And they spent some of that time fomenting racial discord. I’m not saying that all the soldiers were like that, but there were enough of them, both black and white, to create serious and often lethal problems. After all, when you mix young men,
ethnic strife and automatic rifles together, there are bound to be a few…, ah, misunderstandings.
Music played a role in the racial divide. The music you listened to defined who you were. Black guys listened to soul and funk from Motown and Memphis. White guys listened to rock and country. And some poor souls just paid attention to their own demons. There was one musician, however, who crossed all boundaries, someone who both blacks and whites idolized.
That was Jimi Hendrix.
Whenever you saw groups of blacks and white partying together, sitting around bonfires, drinking warm beer and smoking pot, the chances are that the music blaring from cassette machines was played by Jimi Hendrix. There were several reasons for this adoration of Jimi. The first, obviously, was that he was a supernaturally gifted musician. He simply had no equal. His audacious combination of rock riffs, deep understanding of the blues and soulful stylings (he once played guitar in the
Isley Brothers band) spoke to everyone.
Another reason he was loved by the troops was that Jimi had once been a soldier himself. Before becoming Jimi Hendrix, he had been
James Marshall Hendrix, a paratrooper in the
101st Airborne Division. That simple connection made it seem that Jimi was one of us. We felt that he understood us and our terrible plights in ways that British fops like
Jagger,
McCartney and
Clapton never could.
On
Highway 1, near the
South China Sea, there was a hill near the village of
Sai Hyun called
Hendrix Hill. This particular
hill was strewn with huge rocks and boulders. On one of the largest boulders someone had painted, in letters that seemed 10 feet high, the word
Hendrix. The boulder was easily seen from the highway and every time I passed it I couldn’t help but smile. It was our
Hollywood sign.
When Jimi came out with his “
Electric Ladyland” album, there was a song on it that became seared into the mind of practically every soldier who heard it. The song was called “
1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).” There’s a line in that song that’s guaranteed to bring a tear to every Vietnam veteran’s eye. The line is:
Well, it’s too bad/
that our friends/
can’t be with us today
The line evokes memory, pain and loss. It brings back memories of old friends and comrades in arms, young men who died far too young, in a country 10,000 miles from home, often in circumstances too gruesome to relate.
To this day, when I hear that line, I have to stop whatever I’m doing and spend a few moments recalling those who made the supeme sacrifice. Faces and names run through my mind –
Captain David Walsh,
Sweet Jimmy Ingram,
Stony Deel and many others whose names are etched on a
granite wall in
Washington D.C.
I’m going to wrap it up now. I’m going to put on “Electric Ladyland” and try to find some comfort on this rainy day. Jimi had a way of comforting a lot of souls. That’s what heroes do.
June 8th, 2009
Perhaps the thing I miss most about Chicago is the lakefront. A river town like Louisville has a different take on things than does a seaport like Chicago. Here in the River City, people look upon the mighty Ohio as just another street to cross, albeit a deep, brown, mile-wide thoroughfare filled with driftwood, coal barges and a few odd animal carcasses.
If
Kentuckians envision the Ohio River as an avenue out of town, it offers them only two directions – southeast toward
Fort Knox or northeast toward
Cincinnati. Somehow, I doubt many kids lull themselves to sleep with dreams of those two destinations.
Lake Michigan, though, presents a seeming infinity of options. When I was young, I’d look out over the lake and see nothing but
horizon. Any time I pondered that distant line, I couldn’t help but feel anything was possible.
I recall being seven or eight and sitting in the back seat of my
father‘s sun-tanned copper
1960 Chevrolet Impala, the kind with the horizontal wings in the back and a white whoosh denoting a jet trail on either side. We’d be heading east toward the lake on a late Sunday afternoon, mainly because
Ma wanted to get the hell out of the house.
To me, the lakeshore was a wild, exciting pace, picket-fenced by
Gold Coast apartment towers and filled with odd things like countless silvery, staring bodies of washed-up perch and boat tie-down plugs that looked like so many
Easter Island statues. Just south of
Navy Pier,
police marine cruisers and pleasure craft would pull up to the concrete landing as the sun began to set. Boaters would make the three-foot leap from their decks, the cops’ keys and handcuffs jangling, and land with a strange mixture of awkwardness and grace. They’d go in to
Rocky’s, a fried fish shack, and buy a pound of fish and chips or clam strips. I looked at those men the way, I’m sure that some
Portuguese kid looked upon explorers returning from the
New World.
I had my own death-defying adventure some years later, in 1999, when I was a
Coast Guard-licensed sea captain. I piloted a
DUKW, more commonly known as a
Duck, ferrying tourists along the lakeshore, regaling them with information about the lake and the city as well as the occasional funny story. I won’t recount the stories here because they were only funny to visitors from
Iowa or
Kansas who, being on vacation, their pockets filled with pre-crash cash, already were in a giddy mood.
It was a warm and bright May Sunday afternoon. The Duck was filled with adults and kids. The city couldn’t have been prettier. It was only a week and a half after
a Duck had sunk in
Lake Hamilton near
Hot Springs, Arkansas, killing some 13 people, but no distant tragedy could dampen our good feelings. We splashed into the water at the
Burnham Harbor ramp between
Soldier Field and
McCormick Place. The kids screamed in excitement and the adults grinned as broadly as people with pockets full of cash can.
I hadn’t even begun my usual patter when suddenly what sounded like a thousand sirens began shrieking in my ears. Just as suddenly, a half-dozen roaring jets of water began gushing high out of the boat’s emergency bilge pump outlets along the gunwhale. For the briefest of moments – a time that seemed to my adrenaline-amped senses to be endless minutes – I couldn’t figure out what the hell was happening.
I glanced in my rear-view mirror and saw some two dozens faces staring at me in terror. They wanted me, the captain, to make everything right. Gulp.
The craft seemed heavy. I tried to steer but the Duck hardly budged off the straight line. I eased off the gas but the engine still roared, automatically throttling up to run the emergency pumps. I wasn’t confused any longer – we were sinking.
I floored the gas pedal and the Duck inched forward. The jets of water spewed even higher, 25 feet in the air. As long as I kept the pedal to the metal, the emergency pumps would work at full capacity. First one, then several women screamed. They were wearing flip-flops so they knew before anybody else that the floorboards were now flooded. My mind flashed to the horror in Hot Springs.
If the passengers were hoping I’d say something soothing, allay their fears or even make a joke, they would be sorely disappointed. All I could think of was how to get this half-century-old pile of shit back on land.
With the engine thundering, I swung the wheel to the left, virtually willing the tiny rudders to pitch us into a u-turn. A man reached up into the overhead compartment and pulled down a life jacket. I shouted out an order for the rest of the passengers to follow his lead. The Duck moved glacially, describing an excruciatingly broad circle in the harbor. Water began splashing over the gunwhales.
I glanced again in my rear-view and saw the entire assemblage looking at me, pleadingly. I’d never held an audience so rapt. By now, even strollers and fishermen on the shore gaped at us, knowing full well they might be witnessing something that would haunt them.
After what seemed hours, we circled around and hit the ramp hard. The Duck was so heavy with water that we got hung up on the lip of the ramp. No matter, we wouldn’t go down now. I finally spoke into my microphone. “We did it,” I announced, breathlessly. “We’ll be okay now.”
We waited for about 10 minutes so the emergency pumps could empty enough water from the hull to allow us to move again. Then we slowly climbed the ramp and pulled over next to the harbor master‘s house. My rapt audience cheered as if I’d just scored the winning touchdown for the Bears in nearby Soldier Field.
I jumped down from the pilot’s seat, got on my hands and knees and looked under the Duck. I saw a gaping six-inch hole out of which spewed water. It took a good 45 minutes for the hull to empty out. Some of the male passengers hunkered down next to me to conduct their own examinations. They pounded me on the back and shook my hand again and again. Safely off the Duck, the moms rocked their mewling kids in the lawn.
I never loved the lakeshore so much as on that Sunday afternoon.
June 6th, 2009
I’m at James Park up in Evanston with my my bowling buddies — Cap and Norm — watching Cap’s kid, Miles, playing baseball.
Norm notices there’s a basketball court across the way.
“You got a basketball in your car, Benny?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“I do….”
He looks at me and I look at him. We don’t say a word. But I know what he’s thinking: Yes, we came to watch Miles pitch. But he’s already pitched his maximum three innings. And it’s a lovely spring night. So….
We head over the court. On one end there’s an empty basket. On the other end, a dad’s playing one-on-one with his ten-year-old son. The dad’s pretending he just can’t block his son’s shot. And the son is really excited cause he only needs one more basket to win the game. Meanwhile, over in the parking lot, a group of teenagers are passing a joint and listening to their car radio. I feel like I’ve gone back in time.
I won’t kid you. As much as I love this game, I was never very good at it. I could never dribble with my left hand and I shot the wrong way (two hands, not one). I played strictly Y ball and intramurals. My game never advanced beyond going to the corner and waiting for someone to pass me the ball….
But, in the spring of my senior year — when there was nothing much else to do — I played basketball almost every day. Used to come to this park with my friends and shoot `til the stars came out. I mastered a Chet Walker head fake and taught myself to shoot like Bob Butter Bean Love, with the release behind my head so it’s hard to block. I wore cut-off blue jeans, floppy socks and black All-Stars. We played until it was too dark to see and then we walked to the corner store and drank our soda and ate our chips and talked and talked and talked….
Norm throws me a pass. I haven’t shot in years. Officially, I have retired. Every five or so years I retire.
My first shot falls short. My second comes closer. The third hits the rim. “Damn,” I exclaim.
Norm’s not hitting many either. The thing is — he’s the real deal. Back in the day, he started for Hales Franciscan High School on the south side.
We’re really getting into it. I hit one. Norm hits a couple. I drill three in a row from the corner. “You love that corner, Benny,” he tells me.
We shoot so much we forget about the baseball game. The sun’s gone from the sky. It’s hard to see. My back’s aching — like I pulled a muscle. Norm says his knee’s acting up.
But we keep shooting.
Norm says it’s time to take it out beyond the arc. I say, first guy to hit a three wins a dollar. He shoots and misses. I shoot and miss. He shoots — all net.
“I shoulda known better than to bet with you,” I tell him.
He pockets my dollar and says: “C’mon, Benny — you can’t go without hitting a three….”
So I go beyond the arc and launch a long jumper — all net.
I start dancing and singing: “Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!”
Norm throws me a pass. I fire up another shot. All net.
“I’m Craig Hodges,” I say. “Craig Hodges — the world’s greatest three-point shooter.”
My third shot looks dead on. I raise my arms in triumph. But, no, it rattles out.
I figure it’s time to go. But Norm’s not ready to leave. The pride and joy of Hales Franciscan’s not about to let no YMCA boy beat him.
He goes out beyond the arc and just like that — bam, bam, bam — hits three in a row. His fourth shot bounces out. But bottom line: He hit three and I hit two.
Don’t get it twisted….
“I knew it Norm,” I say. “I knew you weren’t going to walk off the court in second place….”
Norm can’t repress his smile.
“You beat me on my home court,” I tell him.
“Next time, Benny,” he says.
As we walk back to Miles and Cap, I get a feeling that I may have overextended myself. My toes, knees and back are aching. But, man, for a split second — when that second three went in — I almost felt young again….
June 6th, 2009
I worry about the damnedest things. And I’m not even thinking about how I’m fretting these days over the Cubs’ offensive woes.
Living apart from my beloved lovely bride five days of the week is an ordeal. Living without a car in a town that values public transportation about as much as Chicago values honest politicians is almost as bad. Being stuck in the Murray Hill Pike ranch house from Monday through Friday is not quite a prison but it’ll do as a metaphor.
It’s gotten to the point that I’ve begun talking to the cats. No not, baby-talk, goo-goo, daddy-loves-his-little-girl pap. I leave that for The Loved One. Er, I mean, I leave it for her to talk to the cats that way – not that I talk to her like that. My contributions to our colloquys are usually limited to grunts and shrugs.
By talking to the cats, I mean, for instance, that when I finish writing a story I may read it out loud just to hear the sound of it as the female puss, Terra, dozes next to my laptop. My orations never fail to awaken her. She stares at me, probably trying to figure out if I’m barking out a warning or I’m just losing what’s left of my mind. When I finish my recitations, I ask her, “How was that? Pretty good, huh?” To which she responds by licking her nether areas and then drifting back to sleep.
Or, say the male, Boutros, decides to emerge from whatever hiding place he’s chosen for the morning. As he pads by, I might say, “Well, hello Big Man! How are you? Where’ve you been? Do you want to hear me read my piece as well?”
He merely keeps an eye on me as he digs into the litter box, does his business, and then goes back into seclusion.
Now I know how The Loved One feels when she tries to start a conversation with me.
Anyway, it wouldn’t be a shock for anyone to hear that one or both members of a couple in a long-distance relationship have dallied about in infidelities. Not that I’ve even considered sowing a single stray oat. Heaven forbid! Why, I’m an honorable man and I have too much love and respect for my partner-for-life to break our trust. Besides, I’m 53 years old with a bad heart and an enlarged prostate. Women aren’t exactly clawing at each other to get at me these days.
As for The Loved One’s adherence to our bond, I believe that she’s remaining pure in south central Indiana. Now that doesn’t sound like a hotbed of flaming desire but she is, after all, still quite a hot number and there are probably more than a few randy cougar-hunters prowling around the environs of Indiana U. But marriage is nothing if it doesn’t include trust.
Does The Loved One react to her own doubts in kind? Maybe not. She seemed awfully curious about someone I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
I told the story of
Tammy, who considers herself, like me, as good or better an ex than a spouse.
“So,” The Loved One asked, trying to sound casual, “is she pretty?”
Shrug.
“Do you see her over at Dick’s Pizza often?”
Grunt.
“You two are pretty friendly, huh?”
Shrug and grunt.
Finally, she cut to the chase. “Well, do you like her?”
Now honey, I said, don’t be silly. There’s nothing going on. Besides, if I was trying to hide something from you, would I write about her in a public blog?
This seemed to mollify her. I’d hate to think of her tossing and turning in her sublet apartment wondering if I’m in the throes of passion with another but, then again, it’s nice to know this old gasbag can still ignite a spark of jealousy. Not that I’d go out of my way to do so.
For instance, after I won this week’s Trivia contest at Dick’s, Icepick Mark (so-called because the Icepick is his cocktail of choice) offered me a ride home. I was feeling lazy so I took him up on it despite the common knowledge that he feels an evening is wasted if he hasn’t indulged in at least a half dozen of his favorite refreshments.
I got in, tightened my seatbelt, grasped the oh-shit handle above the door for dear life and off we went. As we lurched out of the parking lot, Icepick Mark began telling me some convoluted tale that I’d have difficulty following under normal circumstances. His narration, though, now was competing for space in my mind with images of me flying through his windshield like a bald bullet.
To top it off, Icepick Mark was heading in the wrong direction. I hoped to interrupt him the next time he paused for air, but his tale ran non-stop. Finally, about a mile down the road, I said, “Pardon me, Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Um, where are we going?”
“Well, it would seem logical that we’re heading toward your house.”
“Yes, that’s true. Only my house is in the other direction.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Hmm. I’m guessing I’m right on this point.”
“Well, the last time I took you home, you had me drop you off at an apartment behind the shopping center.”
“I’ve never lived behind the shopping center.”
“Oh yeah. I remember distinctly.”
“Be that as it may, I live in the other direction.”
“Okay,” he said, as if indulging me in a whim. “But I distinctly remember dropping you off there. You must have a girlfriend there.”
To which I responded, Ha ha.
“No, really. You’ve got something going on over there. I know it.”
With that, Icepick Mark executed a breathtaking u-turn and drove me home. As I exited his pickup truck and thanked him for the ride (and my lucky stars for my safe arrival), Icepick Mark iterated, “You’ve got a girlfriend over there. I know I dropped you off there.”
I shrugged and grunted.
Now I’m worried. What if The Loved One happens to come with me to Dick’s one day and Icepick Mark, lubed with his favorite refreshment, decides to tell the tale of my girlfriend who lives in an apartment behind the shopping center? I’ll deny it, of course, because I’m innocent. No matter, though, philanderers always claim they’re innocent as well.
Sheesh. The damnedest things.
June 5th, 2009
… But yes, I think it can be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.
from “Highway 61 Revisited,” Bob Dylan, 1965
Here’s the third and final installment of Jon Randolph‘s series of pix taken along US Route 61 following the Mississippi River, from 1976 through 1985.
“Mailboxes,” Keeler, Wisconsin
“Three Gents,” Mississippi
“Eagle,” Davenport, Iowa
“Edsel,” Burlington, Iowa
“Hat,” Mississippi
“Wait,” Minnesota
Good old Jon Randolph – as we speak, he’s sitting back in a fishing boat on a crystal clear Canadian lake, keeping an eye on his line for action, pulling his cap low against the morning glare, perhaps even enjoying a cool libation. That’s the life. We have only one thing to say – get the hell back to work, you bum!
Randolph Street, featuring the work of Chicago’s premier photojournalist, appears here every Friday. The Third City brings you the best in writing, opinion, memoir and other gibberish every day. Keep an eye open for the move to our very own website – swear to god, it’s coming soon!
June 4th, 2009
I’ve run my own small business – make that a very small business – for about 15 years. I’m not saying I run it well, I’m just saying I run it. I’ve made good money, decent money and chump change. I’ve seen good times and bad times, but I’ve never seen times as bad as these.
The way the economy is going you have to wonder if Karl Marx wasn’t right after all. Like hunter-gatherer societies, barter economies and the colonial system, maybe true capitalism’s time has passed. Maybe it’s time for a new economic system to emerge, something that still rewards individual initiative but takes into consideration the immense disparity in the distribution of our planet’s natural resources.
Why should a few nations, blessed with an abundance of natural resources, prosper while other nations, blessed with an abundance of sand, rocks, snakes and AK-47s, teeter on the brink of collapse. It doesn’t seem fair. It’s a small world, dangerous and very crowded. Such obvious disparities in wealth serve only to inflame the have-nots. New chickens are hatching every day and they’ll all be needing a place to roost.
Whoa! I’m getting in over my head here. My world view is basically limited to what I can see out of my window. If I try to go beyond that I generally get a headache and have to retire to my couch with a cold Blatz and the remote control.
I was just reading an editorial about about the bankruptcy of General Motors. The writer opined that GM was too big to fail. What kind of bullshit is that! Too big to fail! The dinosaurs failed. The Roman Empire failed. The Soviet Union failed. Everything eventually fails. Do people think GM is going to last as long as the pyramids? Let GM succeed or fail on its own merits. I’ve got no sympathy for a company that foisted a monstrosity like the Hummer on an unsuspecting public. I mean, who the hell needs to drive a military assault vehicle on the streets of Chicago? Might as well outfit a Sherman tank with baby seats and a roof rack and call it a family sedan.
My concern is not with the GMs, AIGs and big banks of the world. I’m concerned about the little guy. My sympathies lie with the auto worker not the auto company. My heart goes out to the bank teller not the greedy bank honchos who helped cause this economic meltdown. While the fat MBA-festooned bastards are grudgingly accepting the blame, they are not suffering any of the consequences. At the end of the day, they will retire to their gated communities, while the unemployed autoworker and bank teller will be lucky to hang on to their split-levels and bungalows.
Swear to God, if it wasn’t for those unreasonable statutes that deprive a man of his liberty for committing even the most righteous of murders, I’d go and…
Ah, never mind. Where was I? Oh, yeah. As I was saying, as a small business owner, I rely on a lot of other small business owners to help me provide my advertising services. Several of my clients are small businesses, too, and it breaks my heart, not to mention my wallet, to see them struggling to stay afloat and, and many cases, drowning.
Small businesses are dropping like flies. I’ve seen mom and pop print shops go out of business. I seen advertising specialty suppliers, the people that provide coffee mugs, ball caps and ink pens with logos on them, go under. I’ve listened to the sad stories of print makers, rubber stamp manufacturers and silk screeners. I’ve commiserated with photographers who had to close their studios and designers who wonder where they’ll get the money to update their computer equipment. I’ve listened to people who have worked hard and honorably all their lives wonder if they’ll ever be able to retire.
I listen and listen and listen, and all I can do is quote the great
Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On?”
In my very first posting on this blog site, I promised that I would never lie to the American people. Although I’ve fudged on that promise a few times, I’ll be completely honest now. I’m suffering, too. My business is going through the same problems that other small business are dealing with – budgets slashed or eliminated, lack of credit, longer payment terms and clients defaulting on invoices.
I don’t now how much longer I can or want to keep it going. If things don’t pick up in the next six months I’ll have to make some tough decisions. As it is, I’m probably going to have to get a night job, something to help make ends meet. The only problem is that half the people in the country are looking for night jobs to help make ends meet. As W.C. Fields said, “It’s a tough old world, you’re lucky to get out of it alive.”
Anybody wanna start a riot?
