We lived in a house on Martin Lake.
It had a deck, a dock, two outbuildings, and
119 live oak, pine, magnolia, and dogwood trees.
It was on two acres of waterfront property. On a point.
There was a breeze off the water. Sunsets were beautiful.
Brenda kept chickens. I took one of the outbuilding for
a writing studio. Potter called it the Slave Quarters.
Owen lived in the other one when he was home between bands.
I called it Bachelor Hall. One Thanksgiving, Potter had the first line
of a song. "Vagabonds in the Yard." That was Owen and his seine-fishing
buddies drinking whiskey and shucking oysters by a campfire. I have fond memories
of that house. We lived there until Balder graduated from high school and went off to
the Marines, and Owen was on the road with a bluegrass band. What difference
did it make that Brenda and I went tango uniform (tits-up) and had to move
back into a trailer? We had a nice house when we needed it. We were
middle-class. We weren't busted, just reverted to our permanent rank:
yardbird. A beatnik will always scuffle and make do.
Macon's wife, Jennifer, said, "I didn't know you all were
so prosperous." We weren't, as it turns out.
We aren't. We're just hippies.
The hippies were right.
Nixon was wrong.
Bush was Nixon.