Homecrafts sold herbs and spices, coffees and teas, home beer- and wine-making equipment and supplies.

I was hired to run the beer- and wine-making side, because, although Nancy and Maria, who ran the shop, knew as much about it as I did, most of the customers were men, who wanted to talk about their brewing problems with another man.

A stuck fermentation is very personal.

Most of our customers did things at home, themselves, with fresh ingredients, don't you see. They didn't want processed food, with additives. They wanted natural foods, organic foods, if possible.

That's what Brenda and I liked. And Larry and Hazel. And our hippie friends.

Support local culture--make your own yogurt.

Sprout your own sprouts.

Bake your own bread.

John Ehle and Rosemary Harris, who had a financial interest in the shop, let us stay in their mansion in Winston-Salem, while they were in New York, John revising The Changing of the Guard and Rosie starring in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire off-off Broadway.

Larry and Hazel loaned us the money to have Owen born in Baptist Hospital.

Once Owen was born, Burley and Marilyn Athan helped us find a house to live in out in the country, across the Yadkin River, in Courtney, and helped us furnish it.

My job paid $375 a month, gross.

We couldn't afford to live on that. I quit Homecrafts and found a job as an electrician's helper, working industrial construction.

Larry and Hazel visited us in Winston-Salem. Brenda fried fish and made Cole slaw. Owen refused the breast and she got mastitis. She had to get a breast pump, or bicycle horn. But she got better, and, after the cabbage was out of her system, he did nurse.

Members of the La Leche League helped Brenda through this crisis.

Doctors weren't much help. They thought she should feed him formula.

At Homecrafts, we got green coffee beans, in burlap bags, roasted them, ground them, and sold drip coffee pots and paper filters to make the coffee with, a pot at a time.

I bought their house blend, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, American roast, ground the roasted beans at home in an electric Braun grinder, drip grind, and used a Melitta filter basket and filter over a replacement Pyrex coffee pot to make coffee in. I broke the pot.

Now I use Eight O'Clock coffee, American roast, drip grind, but I have an automatic coffeemaker , a KitchenAid, with an unbleached No. 4 Melitta filter.

I make eight cups at a time. Four measures of coffee.

I can drink eight cups of coffee before it gets muddy.

Usually I make two eight-cup pots in the morning and drink them while I am writing.

I put cold milk in the coffee. That way I can drink it faster.

We raised rabbits in Courntey. For food.

I killed them and Brenda cleaned them and cooked them.

I made a dung pile out of the rabbit droppings underneath the cage. They made a lot of fertilizer.

A small rabbit would have a large liver. The liver, sautéed, was delicious.

The rabbit, fried, was good to eat, too, but I got tired of killing them and Brenda got tired of cleaning them.

One of the cookbooks we sold at Homecrafts was Herter's Bull Cook, for hunters and fishermen who wanted to clean and cook their own game and fish.

I believe Jeff Potter sells this cookbook at Out Your Backdoor, or has a link to where you can buy it.

He's into bicycles, canoes, cross-country skiing, hunting, fishing, trapping. Olympic Swedish female skiers who dip Copenhagen snuff.

Or maybe I bought the cookbook through the mail from Herter's. We used to get their catalog. I had a Gokey bag I bought from Herter's. A musette bag rather than a knapsack.

Q: I wouldn't mind kissing a girl who dipped Copenhagen, but I wouldn't want her to give me a blow job.

A: No. Back before I quit dipping Copenhagen I gave myself a blow job, and it stung.

Like getting cayenne pepper on your dick.