Matty's Place and Other Stories (eBook)

Tales of the 1970's

Michael Sullivan (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
160 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6550-6 (ISBN)

Infos

These four 1970s stories, set in Minnesota and San Francisco, weave themes of youth culture, romance, and crime. Characters navigate murder, drug abuse, and heroism. 'Matty's Place' stands out, depicting a hippie haven influenced by unsavory mentors and hidden wisdom.

Michael Sullivan is a retired PhD psychologist. He has memories and tales of imagination that take place at a certain time, the 1970's, and place, mostly Minnesota, yet are human stories with universal appeal.

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Matty's Place"e; captures a 1970s hippie haven where Matty, mentored by drug dealers Richard and Daniel, is quietly helped by Roger. After a bust, they seek each other in London. "e;Don Ogden, called Dong"e; follows a discharged soldier recovering in Dinkytown, gaining followers with his insights. In "e;Lenny,"e; friends navigate troubled pasts and new beginnings in 1970s San Francisco. "e;Bordertown"e; depicts a revival in a small hamlet, led by a tavern's new ownership and a local philosopher's call for a mayor, ending with the tavern's destruction but the town's enduring spirit.

Textauszug

Don Ogden, Called Dong

Chapter One:
Don Ogden—Called Dong

Dong: The deep resonant sound of a bell; in Chinese it means understanding; in slang it means penis.

His hair hung up, his hair hung down

He looked amok, like a schmuck

Goll darn it Don Ogden called Dong

Tell us why you are wearing a frown

You’re just here from out of town

And from the looks of you, and all you’ve shown

It won’t be long before you’re gone

With your frown, out of town

It got worse before it got better,

He was such a muss. He caused a fuss.

We were called to witness. To just look down,

We asked. He said, “My name is Dong.”

“Where am I?” he asked, we said

“Upon the sidewalk in Dinkytown.”

What? Where? The little shopping area and funneling point for students to enter the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis East Bank campus. You wouldn’t have thought at first sight or scent, but Dong, or The Dong, as he was sometimes called, became the object of legend. A fame and a tale not commensurate with his surface attributes: his appearance, bearing, disposition, eating habits, and ancestry tell the story of a man from anywhere, lost, starving, snarling, broken, and unwholesome. He’s about one third Irish, one third African, and the other third Jewish. How do you get thirds out of two parents? He was a child of anomaly. Over six foot, long and lanky, pigeon toed and with a permanent sneer upon his lips, he certainly was a singular dude. With an enormous black halo of hair, twisty moustaches that hung below his chin, and clothing too large—possibly due to malnutrition and lack of food. He had a rather French musketeer look about him, sans the musket and sword, of course.

And the intercessors of the transformation to come? We were Alex and Frank and Marta and Steph. We were best friends, unaligned romantically. Our individual and occasional dalliances occurred outside the boundaries of our unwritten covenant. Within our close comradeship, we felt safety, a kind of haven. We called ourselves the compost crew. Why compost crew? Mostly because, as we looked around we saw all the stinking rot in wars, politics, destruction of the earth, inequality, you know, basically the whole playing card. So. We were devoting our lives toward a soft landing for the last days, the way of the aerobic process of converting organic materials through natural decomposition. We were hedging our bets; if we could outlast the fiery inferno, we would watch the whole shit show melt into the Earth while staying all the while sitting atop our Mount Olympus, or Ivory Tower, succored by our friendship. Yeah, we were not optimists, or revolutionaries. Mostly we just sat in our catbird seats and offered commentary. Pessimistic Nihilists unite!

Frank and Steph were the unelected leaders of the troupe. They had a thing together in the past, the dark, murky, forgotten past. They knew each other’s secrets like an old married couple. They also disagreed about a lot of things but had figured out how to get along. Their experience in relationship problem solving became the paradigm for the foursome. They also modeled exogenous Eros, which ironically helped cement the endogenous bonding. Adventuring and mistakes and heartbreak lay outside the circle, while comfort and understanding and calm listening lay within it. Alex and Frank would joke between themselves about “Getting our rocks off.” But they kept the crudity to a minimum while polling Marta and Steph about their current romances. Marta and Steph did not rely on the boys’ opinions about their dates, except where it concerned the devious ploys and stratagems employed by young men for scoring. Lots of fun was had sitting in a circle with a bottle of wine, tearing into each other’s love lives.

Steph is from a family of politicians, not the elected kind but the behind-the-scenes fundraisers and political operatives and the ones appointed to positions within departments. She is Nordic blonde, and fit, about five seven. Marta’s father owned a small grocery store and Marta took shifts where she basically ran the store in her father’s absence. Marta is of mixed parentage, Tex-Mex dad and Anglo mom. More rounded, dark coloring and attractive, about five four. Sometimes she can be too serious. Very caring. Frank was currently living off savings. Frank is mostly White with some African American mixed in. Kind of a taffy coloring with straight black hair. Mother and father separated, mother is a high school teacher, father has had so many different jobs that Frank has lost track. Frank is about six feet tall. Thin but muscular. Quiet and thoughtful. Thinks before he speaks. Alex was out of school temporarily and working full-time at a commodities depot. Needs about two semesters of credits to graduate with a B.A. Alex has Greek and Middle Eastern ancestry. He has black hair and eyes and is about five six. He is slumpy, but comfortably so. Immigrant family runs a restaurant. Still close to his family, at least calls them once per week. He cracks jokes and keeps things light. They were all twenty years old, or soon to be, or just leaving twenty. All either actively engaged or languishing in their pursuit of an education at the University of Minnesota. The current world was a pain, their pasts forgettable and their futures unknown.

I think it was Steph who first espied this dude and brought us all around to view his authentic strangeness. From a distance, he appeared to have grown the most stupendous Afro. His hair stood out in every direction at least twelve inches. The incredible knots in his hair created such a lock that not a strand dared fall to his shoulders. Steph saw him languishing on the sidewalk one evening, and when he was still there the next morning Steph rallied the rest of us and proposed a rescue operation. Steph would take charge and we could help as we wanted, but it meant bringing him into our shared quarters. He was so passive, so needy, so alone, so stinky.

He became a something before he became a somebody, and that something was something we could do something for. Besides talking, action entered our realm. First things first: We got him standing and brought him into the corner café to feed him. He grunted and indicated acceptance of a meal of chicken and rice, but upon presentation he opted to eat only the rice. Fine. First success. We took him to our little two-bedroom apartment, and he got dumped into the bathtub. Clothes were washed in the sink and dried on the windowsill. Frank donated the heretofore-absent underpants. Second step accomplished: removal of the outer crust, more levels to come. Next was the rat’s nest of his hair.

This was more of an extended project. Weeks? Strand by strand, knots were undone. Marta said, “I’m envisioning a journey, a little cutting here, a little cutting there. Finally, into the deeper jungle the shearing expedition will arrive. Eventually a scalp will be espied, and a richness of effluvium sensed. Then it will be time for deep cleaning and the removal of all resistance to the brush. So, let’s dive in and get started.” Along the way, through grunts and murmurs, through screams and mild panics, while working on his head we got this story out of him . . .

His hair had acquired this unique configuration during his hallucinated flight after being brought back from overseas and dumped outside an army base with little money and nowhere to go. After some adventures and a lot of walking, he got a long ride and was dumped off where we found him. During this fog of time, he never had occasion to groom himself. His naturally kinky hair took it upon itself to intertwine into impossible knots, not dissimilar to the process going on in his brain. His hair eventually encased bits and pieces from his months on the road and assumed the structure of a solid mass. So unforgiving had it become that he could no longer lay his head flat and so took his sleep sitting up. After this initial ordeal, we left him resting on the floor with hair all about him, leaning on the couch.

The four Composters put their heads together, with Steph doing most of the talking and the rest of us considering. “We still got lots of work to do on that head of his and that’s just his hair. If we really want to help him, we need to also work from the bottom up. Let’s have a kind of group project of getting this guy on his feet. Okay, we heard some of his story but let’s hear more details. I know it’s a big ask, but that means inviting him to stay.”

Alex said, “He might be making it all up.”

But Steph disagreed. “Just look at him, he’s been through hell, let’s just try to do him some good and quit the judgments, okay?”

Frank added, “He did come straight with his name; it’s Don Ogden and the Dong tag is something somebody somewhere put on him and he used to care but things have changed, he says. So, it’s a little bit, but I think he can be straight with us.”

And the consensus was – let’s give it a chance. We can officially be good-deed-doers. And with Steph doing most of the heavy lifting, it wasn’t too much of a lift. We did have to rearrange our apartment. The living room, or den, you know the room next to the kitchen where we mostly all hang out, listen to music,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.7.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-6550-6 / 9798350965506