RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 609 ('moneybags go home') “Hold it up, pal, stop right there." That   was all I heard and all I really had to – the guy was a  sailor of some sort a stevedore  maybe or a deck-hand all cocked  up and rippled with muscle and  bravado – and what he had just just then mistakenly assumed was  that I was someone he should be chasing down for taking something from the deck of   the ship – which  of course I  had but could never  tell him or  let on about – so I  turned and simply said back, as quickly as I kept moving,  ‘It’s  for Ed Trenery and he wanted  it  brought down to him right away– you’ll have to take it up  with him,'  which was some form  of the truth in the fact that, yes, there really was an Ed Trenery  down  on the wharf but he was in no way concerned with me, nor what was in my hands. It apparently worked as an  excuse or at least forestalled  any further pursuit, at that  instant, of me

RUDIMENTS, pt. 608 (camptown races, doo dah, doo dah) I might have tried twenty different things, but I kept getting stuck on one. The one that I stayed with was mostly in line with George Washington's farewell address : 'Keep away from foreign entanglements.' It was as good as anything else I'd ever heard. - And up there, it sure was easy - seeing as how I'd blown in from another land entirely : The hide-bound attainment of the isle of the Manhattoes. Where everyone wanted a piece of you, or at least wished to sleep with you. I'd never been exposed to that before (I was really a sheltered soul) and found it exhilarating to see in action. Everyone in NY was always underway with something - an angle, a copious alliance to some underhanded deal or connection. Besides envelopes of counterfeit hundreds, I'd been asked to run guns, and steal groceries to work in a theft/delivery ring, which was m

RUDIMENTS, pt. 607 (ain't nature grand!') I always liked walking; I never had a problem with a good walk.There was a writer once, I forget the rest about it, who titled his book about the game of golf - 'A Good Walk, Spoiled.' That was always pretty simple to understand, whatever the heck else golf was about. He hit it pretty good. Just a bundle of funny- pants guys jabbering away while they hit a little ball, they hoped, into a cup. Total. Something there is about golf anyway - it's just like a dumb sport for business people; as if they needed this imaginary open space and particular form of ritual, with everything neutralized, so they could bluster and bloviate over their silly-ass business stuff. It's always the same, even out in the middle of nowhere. Just west of Towanda, where the big Sylvania factory used to be (for light bulbs, etc., manufacture), sure enough there was the whole sheban