Waiting for a tire rotation in a tire shop. Maintenance: the subtle key to a successful life. Drinking coffee in a Styrofoam cup. An old obese man wearing suspenders plays on his phone. A young woman tells a tire man she can only afford to replace one tire, the worst of the four. Corporate country music plays quietly on a screen. Country music sells only slick and cliche-ridden fantasy anymore. It used to offer gritty reality. I briefly browsed a turkey hunting magazine. Yes, there is such a publication that continues to print paper editions. I’ve been working a new client’s manuscript. He completed it in 1984 and hasn’t touched it since. He’s paying me in silver coin. I met him in a dive bar. He doesn’t do computers or smartphones. I’ve written a lot in tire shops over the years. The old man just got up and used a cane to walk to his huge truck. How he will drive it in his physical condition seems unimaginable to me. I wrote a Christmas story set in a tire shop about a phony writer and homeless woman and her two small children. It was based on a true story where I didn’t help a woman in Lincoln City who badly needed new tires as Christmas approached. In the fictional version, the phony writer finally acts. In the real version, I did nothing. I’m not that kind of person anymore. It occurs to me as I watch the woman pacing around the tire ship on the phone from the moment I entered, that so many Americans are never alone with their own thoughts because they are talking useless shit on the phone. I guess that’s called coping. If you are alone in your head, that might be scary. A multi racial staff here\u2014in Coos Bay. That’s the future of Oregon and the rest of the nation. Many Americans will never accept that. A gray morning. Elmer and I hit the bay beach at 5:30 and the ocean beach at 7:10. Drizzle fell. At the bay beach I talked to Rick, the homeless man living there in a driftwood hut. He is rapidly becoming Gilligan in demeanor and appearance. (More on this story another time.) When I get home, I’ll start work on the fence. One side to go. It will take improvisations and corrections on the fly. In fits and starts my carpentry is improving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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