Old Folks threw his field pack in the
family car, your father's Oldsmobile, and took off on a day trip.
He had
been trained to disassemble--that means not tell the truth--and to catapult the propaganda
like a siege engine, for the untruth to sink in, in his line of work.
You
know: like President Bush. Only the opposite.
Whatever President Bush said,
chances are the opposite was true.
Think of Robert Kincaid, in The Bridges
of Madison County, going off to photograph things for National Geographic.
Do you know how hard a gig like that is to get? You have to look like Clint Eastwood.
Maybe, maybe Old Folks looked like Chris Cooper, in Adaptation, when Meryl
Streep wrote in her notebook, "Delusions of grandeur."
Ha ha, and
persecution mania.
He loved those three-day weekends, with Brenda.
And he loved having the house to himself again, to write.
And part of writing
was research.
And part of research was travel.
In Bukowski Never
Did This, Old Folks was an adventure travel correspondent--Go Somewhere Else--for
outdoor magazines, an ecotourism specialist--Stay Home--and a hospitality industry
report writer and folk art critic--Never Trust a Red Roe Fart, It Gives You the Green
Apple Quickstep--who drove along the Redneck Riviera as a roving correspondent for
the L. A. (Lower Alabama) Free Press covering gopher races, rattlesnake roundups,
goat ropings, Possum Day in Wausau, a Worm Gruntin' Festival in Sopchoppy, Oysters
in Apalachicola, Blue Crabs in Panacea, Shrimp in Carrabelle, Shiteaters in Mexico
Beach.
The Covered Pedestrian Bridges of South Walton County.