Q: Did you and Brenda talk about what you wanted to do, when you were courting?
A: Yes. She didn’t want to be a housewife, like her mother, and I didn’t want to be a wage-slave for a corporation. A middle-class consumer, like my father.
We thought we could do better, by wanting less out of the system.
We thought we could defeat the system by living off the grid.
By not buying into the American dream as advertised on television.
The picket fence, the new car, the house full of appliances.
Q: Your dream was even more impractical.
To live creative,
engaged lives. That’s not possible in a
society like
You think you’ll opt for genteel poverty but you are forced into a poverty that lacks gentility, a grinding, or wearing poverty, that gradually saps your resolve, by sapping your strength.
It wears you down. Grinds you down.
A: We’re still here. As John Hartford said about the earthquakes
in
Q: It’s hard to maintain an alternative style of life.
The system punishes you for not obeying it.
You’re the last one hired and the first one fired.
You are underpaid and overworked.
Did you know that?
A: No. We were naïve.
Q: Well, you both got college degrees. That helped. Over the course of a working life.
A: It did. And we were smart, and willing to work.
That helped.
Q: But you weren’t team players. You were too independent for your own good. You were uppity.
A: We survived. I’m a writer.
Brenda is not a housewife. She works at a job. Her co-workers respect her.
Our kids are both making a living playing music.
They love us. They don’t hate us. They aren’t ashamed of us. They don’t despise our values. They embrace our values. They are instilling our values in their kids.
The grandchildren love us.
Q: Everything’s great. You have nothing to worry about.
A: That’s true.
I even have enough money to finish writing Three-Ring Circus before I have to find a job.
Maybe the
economic stimulus program will kick in and the employment situation will
improve.
Last job I buffed up my reputation. Redeemed myself.
Not everyone can do what I can do.
Q: Did either of you know it would be this hard, or take this long, for you to make it, as a writer?
A: I didn’t.
Brenda had faith in me.
Q: Was she wrong?
A: It’s beginning to look like I was too optimistic.
I was too ambitious.
I tried to do too much.
Q: But you succeeded.
A: Not so’s anyone would notice.
Q: You didn’t quit, sell out, or turn bitter.
A: I don’t have a pot to piss in.
Q: But you have your stack.
A: Cold Comfort Farm.
That and 25¢ will buy me a cup of coffee.
Although not a cup of Starbucks coffee.
What’s a cup of Starbucks coffee now?
Q: I don’t know. $3.00?
A: I make coffee at home.
I use Winn Dixie Breakfast Blend. American roast, drip grind.
Vacuum packed. $2.69 a pound.
Q: I see.
With whole milk.
A: Yes. The milk’s not cheap.
But it’s my only luxury, since I quit drinking.
Café au lait.
Q: Balzac spent a lot of money on coffee.
A: Yes. I drink coffee like Balzac.