Q: I bet Martin Luther King was surprised by how it ended.
A: Not really.
He predicted it.
Q: Tomorrow’s Martin Luther King Day.
A holiday.
Brenda is off.
The library is closed. The post office is closed.
A: In Atlanta, I had to do a poster for Martin Luther King Day.
Q: Why?
A: I did it the year before.
They put a commendation in your file so when you change managers, your new manager can find out you did that, and make you do it for him.
Once you do it you always have to do it.
Q: In the service I did the Christmas display around the orderly room one year.
Then I got transferred.
I thought, At least I won’t have to do the Christmas display anymore.
But somehow my new commanding officer knew about it.
A: That’s how they do it.
I was on the Diversity Council at Lucent Technologies.
Q: Why?
A: I had been on the Diversity Council at IBM.
Q: Didn’t you go to Ethnic Heritage Day as a Florida cracker. In bib overalls and brogans. A feedsack shirt.
Wasn’t your ethnic dish collard greens and cornbread, with pot liquor on the side.
A: Yes.
I wasn’t ashamed to be a Florida cracker.
Q: That was your first mistake.
A: Yes.
They didn’t have a dress code.
But they had a dress code.
Q: You were supposed to be ashamed to be a Florida cracker.
A: Yes.
And a man.
A swinging dick.
When I integrated the women’s bathroom I announced, “I like to piss in the boy’s urinal so my dick doesn’t drag in the water. It’s lower, you see.”
Q: I bet that went over like a turd in the punchbowl.
A: What were they throwing off the Tallahatchee Bridge?
A baby.
What are they doing up on the hill when they do the boogie?
It’s a PTA meeting.
The Harper Valley PTA.
They were Peyton Place hypocrites.
I called Delray Beach Peyton Place East.
The burghers denied me a booth at The Delray Affair.
They didn’t like what I had to say in Screed.
About the burghers.
Q: That’s like the booth at Oktoberfest selling genuine Made-in-America cowboy hats. Made in China.
A: Are you our custodian? Do you have a secret life?
Q: Not anymore you didn’t.
Your cover was blown.
You were busted.
A: I outed myself.
The truth will out.
Q: Didn’t you have a tent like that? For your booth?
A: The Downtown Improvement Board (DIB) stole it.
I quit doing Oktoberfest.
I was cutting back personal appearances.
Live events.
Trade shows and street fairs.
Q: I notice you weren’t invited to booksALIVE 2012!
A: I don’t have new product to sell.
Q: You published Cracker Jack: A Catalog last year.
A 50-page, 8½ x 11” artist’s book, with 31 color pictures.
A: I gave most of them away.
I held a few back to send out as writing samples.
Q: Let’s change the subject.
A: Good idea.
Q: You’re retired. You can watch Oprah.
A: There was a Far Side cartoon, “Charlie Parker in Hell,” he’s in a listening booth listening to pop radio.
It’s being piped in, like an enhanced interrogation technique.
Q: That’s the way I felt about the hi-fi wars in the barracks, the shitkickers and the urban music.
A: Quiet wasn’t a choice. Solitude wasn’t a choice.
The mental hospital was that way.
Prison, I imagine.
In Pagan Babies the woman said the worst part of jail was having to listen to Urkel on the monitors overhead.
The laff-track.
Q: I think of Earl Wilson patronizing Bird and Diz when he gave them some sort of Downbeat award. On television.
A: “You boys.”
Q: Earl Wilson was in Beach Blanket Bingo.
He played a gossip columnist.
A: Brilliant.
