That’s the opening line of the query letter I wrote to send to literary agents—well it’s what my editor wrote and I slightly tweaked. Pretty good, right?

My aunt and I have been working on her biography for almost a year now. We’ve made it through the first thirty years of her life and so far, it’s really damn good.

Even before my aunt became a nomad and starred in an Oscar-winning movie, her life was captivating. She was born in 1944 in Indiana to a Christian Scientist mother who denied her any modern medical care. She suffered from chronic migraines throughout her life but wasn’t permitted painkillers as a child. Her father walked out on the family while she was an infant, leaving her with a deep longing for a parental bond that she never found. While in high school, her mother moved in with a boyfriend and Charlene stayed behind in their family home, living alone for the duration of her senior year. After high school graduation, Charlene traveled alone by bus from Indiana to South Dakota to locate her father, not telling him she was coming until she was at the bus station before her final stop. When she met her father, she was also introduced to five half-siblings who had no knowledge of her existence until that moment. Including my own father. After living in South Dakota for a few months, her stepmother chased her out and Charlene moved back to Indiana to begin college. During that time, she fell in love, dropped out of school, married a CIA agent, moved to Iran, and gave birth to her second son in a Tehran hospital. While later living in Liberia, the couple experienced marriage trouble. Charlene returned to the United States alone, got a divorce, started a commune, worked as a nanny for an abusive man with post-traumatic stress disorder, became a summer camp counselor, and moved to Colorado for college. And that just brings us to 1974. She hasn’t even become a nomad yet and certainly hasn’t starred in any movies.

This process has been quite a bit different from when I wrote my first book. The biggest difference, is I have a partner. My Aunt Swankie is acting as my research assistant. She has spent most days when she’s not on the road actively cataloging boxes of old journals, letters, and family records for salient life events and sending me relevant documents to form the narrative. Despite being her nephew, Swankie and I never interacted until 2025 when we began working together. Because I didn’t know her until we began this project, I have an objective perspective but am admittedly searching for a familial connection of my own. We communicate every day and our growing relationship has already made this project worth it.

The other difference is that I’m actually trying to find a publisher. The world of writing books is in a weird place. Amazon and other print-on-demand services have made it so you can ignore all these ivory tower New Yorkers who run the book world, and it’s very popular for all us “indie” authors to shit on those people because we’re the artists and they’re the suits. Well, after trying out the self-published route for my memoir, it turns out there may be some perks to getting someone who actually knows what they’re doing to help. So I’m trying to do that with my aunt’s story.

But here’s the thing, agents and publishers have one goal: to sell books. I mean they would love to discover the next To Kill a Mockingbird, they’re not bad people, but they have jobs. And jobs are supposed to pay you money. And to get money, people need to want to buy your books. Which means that even if you have the next To Kill a Mockingbird, it doesn’t help if no one wants to read it. And it’s really, really hard to tell people “hey trust me, you’ve never heard of this author, but he’s like really great. Easily $25 for a new hard cover great. Go ahead just buy it.” So that means, I have to try to convince these people that people want to read (and…sorry…pay for) this book about my aunt. And the easiest way to do that is with statistics.

Which means, if you want to help Swankie’s story get the attention of these book people, there are some things you can do. And I’m sorry, it’s going to sound very self-serving to me. Because they are. There’s really no way around it. Here’s my desperate cry for help:

1. Publishers want to know that an author has a track record of selling books. Which means, it would be really helpful if I sold some copies of my current book Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity. The hardcover, paperback, and ebook are all available on Amazon. And the audiobook is available on Apple. All these links are easily found on csbeaty.com. The magic number is 1,000 copies sold in the first year. I’m a little over 300 after six months in. I have a lot of work to do.

Buy Loser* Book

Link to Audio Book

2. If you don’t want to pay for my book because you’re not sure if it sucks, I don’t blame you. I don’t buy books from authors I’ve never heard of either. So what would be really awesome and FREE is if you request that your local library buys a copy. Hardcover, ebook, and audio book are all available for library purchase. I look at my own public library app every day and it makes me so happy to see when my book is checked out.

3. Another free option: after you read the book, or if you want to lie—I’m cool with lying, then put stars on things! Amazon, Goodreads, Apple podcasts, your library app. Anything! If you can click some stars for Loser* then I’ll take them! Agents and publishers love seeing lots and lots of stars.

   Put stars on Goodreads

   Put stars on Amazon

4. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter for updates on the progress on this book and other fun stuff. If you like something, then like, comment, and do that sort of thing.

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All this feels silly, and I feel silly talking about it, but it’s the language the publishing industry speaks in today’s environment. If funny books about awkward, hormonal high schoolers aren’t your thing—well just do it knowing you’re helping Swankie’s book down the road.

And as a thank you, if anyone sends me an email with a mailing address to alieneagle 51@csbeaty.com, I’ll mail you a free bookplate. If you read the book, the email address will make more sense.

Contact me.

So there’s the shameless request. I feel dirty even saying it. But just to remind us all why I’m doing it, hears a portion of the query letter I wrote that will be sent to literary agents when the time is right. I really think we have something special:

Charlene Swankie was an actress in the 2020 Academy Award-winning Best Picture Nomadland. The film was adapted from a nonfiction book written by journalist Jessica Bruder who befriended my aunt. When Bruder met her, she had adopted the moniker “Swankie” in honor of the surname of her late husband. When the work was later adapted into a movie, screenwriter Chloé Zhao crafted a fictional storyline about a character named “Fern” played by Academy-Award winning actress Frances McDormand. My aunt was cast to play herself as McDormand’s co-star in a film that later won three Academy Awards and two Golden Globes. Zhao took Swankie to the Academy Award ceremony as her plus-one and thanked her by name in her Oscar acceptance speech. This story follows a rags-to-riches convention, but with an ironic ending. Despite her brush with fame, Swankie’s life hasn’t changed much. She still lives in her van and keeps to herself. And she still has many of the same wounds as she did before.

Despite being her nephew, I didn’t grow up with a relationship with Swankie. I first heard her story the same way the rest of the world did when she started appearing on lists of potential Oscar nominations. I felt guilty about this, so I didn’t reach out to her other than accepting a Facebook friend request she had initiated. But when I released my own memoir, Swankie was one of the first people to congratulate me. She said she always wanted to write her own story, so in an attempt to reconcile with my own distance from my family, I asked her if I could write it with her. And she agreed.

I was published in the Journal of Architectural Engineering and I self-published a memoir in December 2025 titled Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity. In the first five months of promoting, the memoir has sold over 300 copies and received positive reviews from Kirkus, BookLife, and Indie Reader. Kirkus Reviews gave the title a “Get It!” designation. Between my aunt and I, we have a combined social media presence of over 4,000 followers.

I believe we have a truly original and marketable concept. The movie Nomadland gripped the film community by providing a stunning glimpse into this neglected society and breaking many Hollywood conventions. But that story was just the beginning. It was a glimpse of the current state of these nomadic people, but it wasn’t an in-depth look at how generations of abandonment can shape someone’s story. This family trauma shaped Swankie, but as her nephew I am discovering how it also shaped me. The movie Nomadland has received renewed interest because of Chloé Zhao’s recent success adapting and directing the film Hamnet, which is evidenced by an uptick in the Nomadland royalties my aunt has recently received.

This book will not only appeal to fans of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, but also: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and We Will Be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson. These works exposed readers to stories that are familiar yet often go untold. They showed us pictures of human resilience with in-depth analysis of character conventions that we recognize but know little about. Our book about my aunt will do the same.

I would love your help to give Swankie’s remarkable story the greatest reach possible.

Thank you.

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The former home of King Minos was carved into the side of a hill and sprawled several stories across several acres of Cretan landscape. You can say it’s labyrinthine. In fact, you’re obligated to say it’s labyrinthine since legend has it that this palace inspired the myth of the labyrinth. When you look at the setup, it’s not hard to imagine a bunch of children being fed to a half-man half-bull minotaur inside its corridors. Paige and I waited at the top of the entrance. We were fourth in line, our anticipation growing as we waited to enter this historic maze.

At least until a small Greek man in a funny hat pulled away from the ticket counter to make an announcement.

“EXCUSE ME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE MONUMEMT IS NOW CLOSED FOR THE REST OF THE DAY DUE TO THE WIND. IT IS TOO DANGEROUS TO ALLOW MORE PEOPLE TO ENTER THE RUIN. PLEASE COME BACK TOMORROW.”

No, no, no, no, no. There was no “come back tomorrow” for us. Tomorrow we would be on a plane to Athens. If we wanted to get lost in a castle allegedly built to hide the offspring of a queen who hid in a wooden cow suit so she could be fucked by a white bull that her husband was supposed to sacrifice to the god Poseidon, we had to do it now.

We took stock of the scene. Our fellow linemates who were also denied entry were thick in their protest. We thought about playing the “we’re on our honeymoon and this is the only thing we came to Crete to see and we fly out tomorrow” card, but at this point the man with the funny hat was giving the same rebuttal without listening to further arguments. The decision was made. The people we watched purchase tickets and enter the ruins ahead of us would be the last admitted for the day. If they were given a concussion from flying debris, so be it, but the rest of us would not be given the opportunity. Our tourism dollars and Greece’s bankrupt economy be damned.

I started to panic. I pulled away from the crowd to take stock of the situation. I ventured around the edge of the entrance, looking for some clue to gain admittance while the attendant with the funny hat was distracted by the throngs of visitors detailing how he had just ruined their day. There was a trickle of tourists walking out of a path off to the side. I gestured to Paige, and my bride and I slowly eased closer to the source. We moved stealthily, as to not alert anyone of our covert aims to solve this riddle of entering Knossos during monsoon season. We realized we had found the exit of the ruins, and it was completely unsupervised.

I looked my wife in the eyes, seeing if she was following the same clues as I to solve how we would get inside. She responded with a single word.

“Yup.”

After double checking that the only visible employee was still occupied with mutinous tourists declaring their outrage over the injustice they had been given, Paige and I darted through the back gate. Our goal was to quickly embed ourselves deep enough into the ruins to appear we had always been there. It wasn’t difficult to do. Once we had made entry, the zigs of walkways and zags of corridors disguised any discernible path and made it simple to appear in the middle of a tour that had begun before the hurricane winds forced the closure of the ruin.

We were inside the labyrinth. Now we just had to figure out where we were supposed to go.

We paused to consider our surroundings. We were far from the only ones inside the ruins, but judging from my wife’s hair standing on end, we were certain the staff would soon be in the process of shutting down the attraction. I removed my hat and stuffed it into my back pocket so it wouldn’t blow off, allowing the gusts to blast my bangs into a cow lick. We spotted the man with the funny hat. He was slowly plodding down from his post at the entrance, having sealed it from additional money paying customers, and was starting the process of hurrying up the remaining guests as quickly as possible to the exit. Our afternoon had become a game of Pac-Man.

As Paige inspected a placard with a map, I bent down to pick up a weird seed pod that had blown off a tree and a rock that had chipped off from a wall. I inspected them closely and placed my treasures in my pocket. Satisfied with her research, Paige told me to follow her, but we only took a few steps before I heard a scratchy voice behind me shouting in Greek. I ignored it. The yelling increased. As I looked around, I knew there was no one else these angry Greek commands could be meant for. Shit. It got us.

Wincing from the wind blowing in my face, I turned to see a Greek woman. I mentally prepared to be escorted out of the ruins and charged with trespassing. I decided we could plead ignorance and avoid getting in trouble for breaking and entering, but for the second time in a five-minute span I felt my dreams of experiencing the stomping grounds of the Minotaur vanishing.

She was furious, but I noticed that her pulsing Greek cursing was accentuated with aggressive hand gestures. She kept repeating the same phrase and pointing to the ground. She wasn’t acting like she wanted us to follow her, she just stayed in place, thrusting her index finger downward and spitting venom. Still unsure of what was happening, I got an idea. I slipped my hand into my pocket and dramatically removed the rock, placing it on the ground like an armed robber surrendering his firearm to a police officer with his gun drawn. As soon as the rock was back in the dirt, the angry Greek woman muttered something, turned her back, and walked toward the exit without indicating we were supposed to follow.

I looked at Paige, shrugged, and turned the corner. Once I felt safely out of sight of any pursuers, I found two new rocks and put them in my pocket.

Page and I pushed further in. We found the dolphin room that contained the shittiest looking dolphin pictures I’ve seen in a while, and the big painted columns next to a painting of kids jumping over a bull that shows up in all the tourism photos. You can only see the bull’s ass—the top half has been lost to history from grave robbers or assaults from the wind hurtling seed pods at it for a millennium. We followed a rope-railing to a lower section, but as we turned on to the stairwell our path was blocked by a sterned faced Greek man in a funny hat.

Fuck. I guess this was it.

We slowed, attempting to blend with the other nearby tourists who have been granted legal access and actually paid for a ticket. But it was too late. The Greek man in the funny hat had me.

“I’m sorry sir. But this part is unsafe because of the wind, I cannot allow you to go down these stairs. Please continue down the other path.”

I assured him that was no problem. After all, safety first.

We found an English-speaking tour group and used them as a disguise. The strength in numbers made it more difficult to be split off and eliminated by the museum staff. We kept within earshot of the tour leader—and even learned few fun facts about some peacock-looking things etched into the walls. As we left one of the bathhouses, I asked Paige what we had left to see. She flipped through a guidebook in her backpack with less urgency than before. We were getting lazy. And we paid the price. The man with the funny hat found us.

“I’m sorry sir. But the palace is too dangerous because of the wind. We are asking everyone to leave for your own safety. Would you please follow me to the nearest exit?”

We obeyed. He had us. Our time in the labyrinth was now over.

“I am so sorry, can we give you a free ticket to come back tomorrow?”

I stuck my hand in my pocket and fingered the rocks and seed pod—my trophies from a successful assault on the Minoan palace.

“No thanks, I think we saw everything. Besides, tomorrow we’re leaving Crete.”

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December 12th, 2024

Dear Mr. Beaty,

Your dispatch and the delightful dispatches your children sent to Santa Claus warmed the heart of the aging King of the Literary Daredevils.

Congratulations on your new typewriter! For your whatnot: some years ago I read that Ernest Hemingway banged away on his typewriter while standing up. You may find this scrap of information arresting and elect to follow Hemingway’s lead (or not). Some additional chapter and verse on typewriters: gangsters from the 1930s referred to Thompson submachine guns as “Chicago typewriters.” I concluded my first book “The Kansas City Massacre, Volume II, The Digital Edition” with that delicious scrap of evidence.

My current world-record literary stunt is sending Mr. Gary Sadlemyer (the morning protagonist on KFAB1110 AM) a dispatch every Monday and Friday with ungovernable news from West-West Omaha. Tomorrow (Dec 13), dispatch #43 will be mailed. Two of my West-West Omaha dispatches are attached for your bulging consideration.

Merry Christmas & Much Obliged,

Haywood Fudd

My kids must have trusted me that their Christmas lists were successfully posted to Saint Nick since they never challenged me on the topic, but for good measure, additional lists of demands were penned and placed beneath our synthetic Christmas tree. I tried finding a copy of The Kansas City Massacre, Volume II, The Digital Edition online, but without success. I had a feeling that comment was a gag, but then again, what if it wasn’t? What if this magical work about mobsters and machine guns in the central plains really was out there somewhere? Just waiting for me to find it, be educated on Midwestern crime syndicates, and learn fun facts about fully automatic weapons, as told by a man whose only aim is to bring happiness to those he crosses paths with? That, is something I want to believe in.

And even though the only result the Google search on the topic yielded was a 1975 made-for-TV movie that Fudd undoubtedly had seen, I still choose to believe in this digital sequel, living in a far off-realm of the Internet, that seems attainable yet so distant.

Tis the season to believe after all. Or at least it was when I got this letter.

The letters to KFAB public radio host Gary Saddlemyer were different. I had no doubt Fudd actually wrote those, and sent them, twice a week, just as he said he did. He didn’t need to send me proof, but he did. Twice. Which according to his note, were the 42nd and 43rd letters he had sent Mr. Saddlemyer. I never listened to KFAB and never heard of this morning-talk-show-host, but another Google search suggested that he never made use of Fudd’s news from West-West Omaha. If you place “gary saddlemyer haywood fudd” together in a search engine, the query only retrieves a link to my own website—at least those are the only results that Google thinks I want to see.

But Fudd seemed undeterred by this lack of acclaim or recognition. He kept at it, up until Saddlemyer announced his own retirement after a fifty-year career on morning radio. Fudd wrote him until August 4th, 2025. Another 58 letters in all after the two that he had sent me. Making exactly 100 total.

I know this because in 2025, he sent a spiral-bound compilation of them all as my Christmas present.

And as it turns out, Gary Saddlemyer wasn’t the only public figure Fudd had been writing twice a week, but more on that later.

Exactly 100 letters more on that later.

December 9th, 2024

Dear Mr. Saddlemyer,

The latest news from West-West Omaha:

• Nero Haberkorn, 65, of Avoca, Neb., testifies the first things he’s going to ask the supreme architect is why he allowed the NCAA to pass the name, image, and likeness hooey that’s going to massacre any hope of the Huskers to ever win the national championship.

• Henrietta Cordell, 77, of Ulysses, Neb., wears an apron everywhere including to Sunday school, the five-and-dime, and the funeral parlor.

• Klaus Forrester, 72, who roosts near Plum Creek off of County Road 23, which is a country mile north of Bee, Neb., trumpets he wouldn’t live in a big city for all the gold in Fort Knox but that he’d give his eyeteeth for an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet near his spread.

• Jack Moon, 85, of David, Neb., smells old.

Much obliged,

Haywood Fudd

December 13th, 2024

Dear Mr. Saddlemyer,

The latest news from West-West Omaha:

• Vernon Cripple, 61, of Staplehurst, Neb., is back to saving money to buy a used tank. “Owning a tank is my sole obsession. I can’t get owning a tank out of my system,” testified Vernon who certifies quality used tanks are divine investments. Vernon previously saved for a used tank in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021.

• Mayme Dempsey, 81, of a Abie, Neb., says Omaha should give some strapping consideration to changing its name to Omaha-ha for what she certifies are “prima facie” reasons. Mayme remains a whale of a devotee of Johnny Paycheck who achieved country music repute with his ditties “Take This Job and Shove It” and “I’m the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised).”

• Justus Crawl, 55, of Dorchester, Neb., says it’s not the brutal winters that ruffle his tail feathers, but the number of drivers he encounters on the roads who drive as though they couldn’t hammer a railroad spike into a snowdrift.

• Soothsayer Poe Dansk, 68, of Prague, and Neb., is predicting the world is going out of business next Tuesday between 3:00 and 4:00 PM, but no later than 5:20 PM CST.

• Celeste “Lady Godiva” Feemer, 49, lives outside of Pickrell, Neb., on SW 2nd Road. Lady Godiva’s chock full of pizzazz, oomph, and all that jazz. On Flag Day last year, she blasted through Pickrell on her Harley and the only thing she was wearing was vintage motorcycle goggles.

Much obliged,

Haywood Fudd

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December 9^th, 2024

Dear Mr. Fudd,

If you notice a change in font from previous correspondences, it is due to the use of my Christmas present from my octogenarian distant relative who stumbled upon a beautiful Royal typewriter in pristine condition at a garage sale. At least that’s the story he gave me.

Congratulations on the grandchild and the successful literary assault on the good people of Bliss, Idaho. I trust both events have resulted in unparalleled merry-making by all involved. I enjoyed your Christmas letter, but found the decapitated bull an all too familiar sight. My wife and I once watched the murder of 6 consecutive bulls at the conclusion of the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. My favorite bull was named Gabriela, and the feminine name attributed to him seemed to have really upset the poor fellow. Being murdered didn’t help the situation. When the matador went for the kill shot with his sword, Gabriela thrust herself backward, snapped the sword in half, and charged his assailant. It didn’t end well for either.

I’ve included my children’s letters to Santa since I seem to have misplaced Mr. Kringle’s address and I have some promises to keep regarding posting their annual list of demands. My middle child didn’t bother to write one. She’s kind of like that.

In the name of merriment,

C.S. Beaty

•••

Each time I wrote to Haywood, I added a little flair of my own. I inherited my dad’s stamp collection, which he kept for roughly three years during the mid-90s before losing interest in collecting postage. Not having any other use for the 32 to 34 cent Looney Tunes stamps, I started using them to send my wife postcards. I tried to match the postcard’s theme or location with an appropriate stamp from my dad’s collection, but I was never sure what to do with all the World War II or prominent physicist stamps my dad had assembled. Until I started writing frequent letters to Haywood Fudd.

I found a hipster-stationary store and bought a variety of odd-sized and odd-colored hipster envelopes, but that still felt a bit underwhelming for the treatment Fudd deserved. So, I bought a hot wax seal with the letter “B,” and then a hot wax seal of a bat, and then had a custom hot wax seal of a jackalope made. We were getting there.

But the real joy came from the bonus added content I shoved in each envelope. This same hipster-stationary shop sold collectible Barbie cards from the 1980s, so I selected a few of my favorites to send to Haywood.

Which then led to me keeping every intriguing scrap of paper or other flat item that I could send in a letter. When my mom bought me a very Christian bookmark with some coffee/Bible verse pun, I sent it to Haywood. When I ordered a few jars of root beer-flavored mustard and they came with a “Mustard Gift Guide” from the “Mustard Hall of Fame,” I also mailed that to Haywood. And when I sent Haywood five identical stickers of the University of Nebraska-Omaha mascot Durango the bull, Fudd sent me back a bull sticker with his head chopped off. He did it very carefully.

Early on, Fudd sent me two dollars in each of his letters, but once he learned of my devotion to this correspondence, he scaled back his budget. But on occasion he still burned holes in the paper with an open flame.

When I started regularly writing, I compiled my typewritten unedited essays into a booklet for my family—these were the books I was having made when Mike the Printer first introduced me to Fudd. So when I repeated the task in 2024, I sent a volume to my new pen pal. And in return, Haywood sent me a compilation of his own complete collection of letters to the residents of Bliss, Idaho—gift wrapped and with a Christmas card.

•••

•••

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In my job interview, Guenther asked if I golfed. I told him no. He told me that wouldn’t be a problem—he didn’t golf either—but if I ever wanted to learn, well, it would probably be a good idea. He even said he would have the company pay for golf lessons. During my first week on the job, the US Senior Open was being played at the Omaha Country Club for the first time ever, and my new office excitedly purchased a set of four tickets to the event. As a new member of the sales team, I was granted the opportunity to help fill these tickets, if only I had any idea what one was supposed to do at a golf event that wasn’t even for the normal professional golfers. My co-worker Al had to explain it to me.

“So this is the US Open?”

“No, the Senior Open.”

“What’s the difference?”

“This is for the Senior PGA.”

“The what?”

“The Senior PGA, it’s the older golfers who aren’t in the regular PGA. Well a few of them play in both.”

“You mean like Phil Mickelson?”

“No, no. Like Bernhard Langer.”

“Who?”

“Freddy Couples?”

“Who?”

“God Dammitt. Tom Watson? You ever heard of Tom Fucking Watson?”

“Ummmm…No?”

Al had some serious work to do with me.

●●●

I made the mistake of telling my mom I was trying to get into golf, who—having never learned any of my true interests—latched onto this new pursuit with vigor when it came time to buy me any and all Christmas presents. When I turned 24, my mom instructed Eileen’s Colossal Cookies to make me a golf-themed birthday cookie and when they returned from South Carolina, I was given screen-printed golf balls with the logo of each of the tourist traps my parents had visited. My mom naturally assumed I would be collecting these now. My Christmas present was a cheap range finder, which my mom admitted she didn’t know what it did, but it was the only golf accessory she found that fit her budget. Next, I unwrapped a navy blue golf polo, so I could proudly show off my cup-size like all the other man-boobed golfers who just assumed no one could see their nipples when they wore their polyester-blend polos to the office each and every. Single. Day.

But after buying a hand-me-down pair of clubs from Al at the office, I did have some intention of learning the game. If for anything else so that I could leave the office early—and for days on end—to participate in all the sponsored golf outings. It reminded me of how all the nicotine-addicted coworkers at Pizza Hut got additional smoke breaks while the rest of us were expected to actually work our entire shifts.

As it turns out it probably would have been easier if I just took up smoking.

Al did both things.

He really had life figured out.

He also wore a lot of golf polos to work. And yes, I could always see his nipples.

●●●

I asked an old classmate to teach me how to swing a club. He had been golfing his entire life and even did it competitively in high school, and he didn’t mind all the range balls I was able to expense on my company credit card. At the end of my first lesson, I had not been infected with anything resembling a love for golf.

Tyler never complained about my lack of progress or all the free lessons I was requesting, but I could sense his enthusiasm waning when he started inviting other friends to join us at the driving range. Without his undivided attention, I asked a guy from church who had an obligation to God to say yes every time someone asked for his help, and the two of us rendezvoused at the same driving range where Tyler had done his best efforts with me.

Michael and I only had one lesson, but I did make sure to show him the new golf pullover my work gave me. He was really impressed. It was high quality and only showed my nipples if you got close.

●●●

I was starting to make contact with the ball—most of the time—well, some of the time—and Tyler gave me a crash course on chipping and putting. But I had yet to play an actual round of golf. Our office participated in a weekly golf league for the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers, and after our installation manager was given a year-long ban due to the time he missed a shot and swung his club above his head and down into the putting green lumberjack-style—we were having trouble filling the required four players each week. I decided my time had come.

Al was against the idea.

Which hurt my feelings.

Which Al didn’t care about.

Despite being a beer league for engineers, people took the ASHRAE golf league pretty seriously. When I ran into an old engineering professor at the driving range, I made a comment about how I had never seen him there. He told me he selected which range he practiced at based on the velocity of the wind flow on that given day. He said, “you know it’s that whole engineering thing, you can never really turn it off.”

Engineers are kind of like that.

Every golfer at the ASHRAE league had a handicap based off their league performance to date. Since I had never golfed in that league, or any league, or in any form—my score wouldn’t be counted that first round and would instead be used to establish my handicap.

After missing the ball entirely on my first tee-shot, I regrouped and made contact on my second swing, hooking it and watching it bounce off the cart path and into a tree line. I hit it again and this time the ball ended up in a tree. Not near a tree. In a tree. About three-feet up, gently nestled in the branches of a pine as if it were the egg in a bird’s nest. I tried swinging my club like a baseball bat at the waist high target, which just made the ball land at my feet after the club head caught the pine needles and shook the entire tree.

The rest of the round went much the same.

In order to keep play moving, there was a maximum score allowed on each hole. Something like seven strokes above par. I was mercy-ruled every single hole and at the end of the round was assigned the maximum allowable handicap. That was the only time I participated in the ASHRAE golf league. I never asked to play again, but I also knew Al would never allow it.

●●●

But I had yet to give up hope. After our Vice President Guenther couldn’t attend the Master’s Golf Tournament due to the untimely death of his mother, he let me take his ticket to escort a couple of customers. I had never watched a golf tournament in my life, on tv or in person, and here I was at Augusta National sitting in the same grandstand as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and yucking it up with a VP of an engineering firm.

“Hey Chris, check it out. There’s Tom Watson.”

“Ohh yeah, how cool is that. I totally know who Tom Watson is.”

I kept getting invited to fancy-ass golf tournaments. I not only went to the Master’s a second time, I also took customers to the PGA Championship and the US Open. The real one. Not the one for old people. I could talk about golf, even if I couldn’t play golf. And for Christmas that year, my mom bought me a series of golf lessons. By the end of these private sessions I knew what a proper swing felt like, and when I aimed my ball at the driving range, well, it went in that general direction.

I was so thrilled that I accepted an invitation from a customer to go golfing. I told him about my lessons and as we drove back to the clubhouse after the round, he tried to encourage me in my new hobby.

“Chris, that’s great that you’re going to start taking lessons soon. I think you’ll really get a lot out of those. That will help your game a lot.”

Fuck it. Golf is stupid. I don’t like looking at man-boobs enough to be a golfer anyways.

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November 9^th, 2024

Dear Mr. Fudd,

I was excited to see your latest correspondence. I know your time is precious as you attempt to bless this world with your beautiful words at an unprecedented scale this holiday season. I wish you much success in this endeavor. I hope the residents of Bliss, Idaho or wherever else your messages end up are as grateful as I am for your poetry.

I have some bad news, the bonsai tree stand in the Hobby Lobby parking lot appears to have migrated south for the winter. But don’t despair. I have an update.

The bonsai tree road stand is operated by a man from Houston that goes by the name of “Thunder Kim.” If you’d like to call him, his number is 832-687-7676—he made sure I had it in case I needed any assistance after I purchased a bonsai tree of my own.

I don’t believe Thunder is his real name, he is very Japanese. He imports all of his bonsai trees from Japan to Houston, and then drives them up to Omaha. I asked him why Omaha? To which he laughed, smiled, and nodded in the manner that Japanese people do who do not have a strong command of the English language.

The ages of his bonsai trees ranged from four years to 26 years old. For each year of age that the Japanese juniper had, Thunder charged an additional $10. It felt like a fair deal, and he gave me complimentary care instructions. I made sure to pick up a copy for yourself. I hope you find them helpful, but this is the extent of my bonsai tree knowledge. If you have further questions, I’m sure Thunder wouldn’t mind if you gave him a call.

Much obliged,

C.S. Beaty

•••

While traveling in non-English speaking countries, I love taking photos of poorly translated English instructions. As someone who spent his first year of fatherhood trying to parent in a foreign language, I’m empathetic to the struggle, but seriously. Bad translations are the best.

Just consider the gondola I rode in Guam that could have said, “please remain seated and do not throw anything outside,” but instead chose to instruct me, “Do not change Seat and Dump outside, please.”

Or the sign in the lobby of a Peruvian hotel that read,

Let’s do that your permanency is agreeable and pleasant TAKE CARE YOUR PERSONAL OBJECTS the hotel don’t know responsibility for losses or steal due that we are in public areas. The management

•••

With a subpar translation, the message isn’t just lost, it becomes an entirely new thing. The challenge of piecing together the meaning of the original text becomes its own activity, and as long as the stakes aren’t too high, the act provides an amusing game. Or at least a funny photo.

I learned a lot about bonsai trees when I finally met Thunder Kim the bonsai tree man, but not how to take care of one. Thunder gave me multiple sets of instructions and sold three small vials of “green green liquid plant food,” but the more helpful Thunder Kim tried to be, the less I knew what to do with my new four-year-old Japanese Juniper. Even the cheat sheet that he insisted I take a photo of left me puzzled:

1.) It is good to fully soak the tree in water for the first time. 2 times in the first week only.

2.) Plant food- Mix the plant food with one gallon of water and water 2 times a week.

3.) Rain water- When it’s raining outside. Rainwater is ok to let the tree absorb the rainwater. No more than 2 times a week.

4.) Sun- No sun or very little sun is ok. Is it is ok with a 24 hour light. Normal conditions are ok as well, such as air condition, heater, and animals.

I tried following Thunder’s instructions as best I could. But I couldn’t really understand how to rectify all of those things I wasn’t supposed to do more than two times a week. It kind of seemed like everything was “ok.” This ought to be easy.

I took the tree out to our patio a few times each week. I let it out when it was raining. I took pictures and showed it off to my friends. Things were looking great for my little tree, until I started comparing the current color of the tree to the color from my first photos. The second my four-year-old Japanese Juniper came into my house, it started its gradual death.

It turns out those things are pretty damn hard to take care of. I must not have read the instructions carefully enough.

•••

Frankly, I thought the bonsai tree would last a lot longer and provide a lot more material for Haywood Fudd letters than it did. I imagined it as some ongoing saga, some new hobby I could periodically update Fudd on with all my new bonsai tree knowledge and experiences. But I never really cared about bonsai trees in the first place, and the death of my own tree certainly indicated that. I was always more interested in Thunder Kim, the bonsai tree stand man. It turns out I wasn’t the only one.

Shortly after purchasing and murdering my Japanese Juniper, the Omaha World Herald newspaper ran a story about “the Omaha bonsai guy.” Apparently he had quite the social media following. People seemed more intrigued in him than the art of bonsai trees. Well, most people. Everyone but Noah Lenser, who responded to a Facebook post asking, “where is the bonsai tree guy parked today?” with the specific location of “up your ass.”

Not helpful Noah.

But other than Noah, people loved this “bonsai guy” and his mysterious full-size van filled to the brim with potted plants. Full-sized vans tend to get a bad reputation given the improper conduct people seem to do in full-sized vans, but now we all had a usage of the vehicle we could get behind. Thunder Kim’s small business was so popular that the Omaha World Herald re-ran the story in its Best of 2025 year-end recap.

But like the dead stump I now use for decor in my basement, my interest in bonsai trees atrophied. It was just as well. Fudd had also seemed to move on to new topics. His next letter to me was his own recap of the year in the form of a Christmas card.

The message, albeit odd, made complete sense to me.

•••

Dear Yuletide You,

If there are burn marks on this jolly dispatch, consider the scribbling source. Consider this too: mailing Christmas cards is teetering on the cheerless precipice of extinction. Some velvety synonyms for extinction include kaput, pfft, defunct, belly up, and doomed.

Everyone is jim-dandy. Sing it: Jim Dandy to the rescue... Jim Dandy to the rescue.

Our granddaughter made her majestic appearance on November 7. She’s also beautiful and breathtakingly perfect. Watching her sleep and listening to her make muffled cooing noises while she’s nuzzled in our arms is pure bliss.

In April, a sinful tornado with oodles of scabby intentions and credentials mauled our town. While others judiciously sheltered in basements, I fortified myself with a beaker of general anesthesia and charged outside to do battle with this swirling tempest. With the wind and rain horse-whipping me, I shook my fist at the man-eating cyclone while baptizing it with a bona fide and virtuous cussing.

Our travels caused us to mosey like insubordinate tumbleweeds and to sideswipe into some of you in 2024. Boosting to get back on the road, we are reposing in Palm Springs during Christmas week with cousin Hunky Gordy where we’ll zigzag through the hidey-holes and haunts of old blue eyes. We return from Palm Springs for four days before bulging to San Antonio where Mrs. Fudd will conduct high-stakes business and I’ll serve as an impromptu tour guide at the Shrine of Texas while stashing myself inside my deteriorating gorilla suit.

We visited a couple of potential sanctuaries in 2024 where we were considering relocating. City ambassadors of two of these cozy communities extended invitations to Mrs. Fudd but not to me. During meetings with these emissaries I couldn’t resist the immaculate temptation to puff on an ill-bred cigar, wear knockoff Elvis sunglasses, sport a sleeveless threadbare T-shirt with a fading picture of Farrah Fawcett emblazoned on it, while randomly issuing strangled grunts of muddling questions and blurry testimonials.

In the ladylike town of Bliss, Idaho (population 300), a disheveled cluster of glassy-eyed, hidebound literary adrenaline junkies anointed me to once again chaperone them to literary Shangri-La. What this de-facto hooey means: I remain The King of the Literary Daredevils. Mrs. Fudd isn’t ohh so amused.

Merry Christmas and Much Obliged,

Haywood Fudd

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October 16th, 2024

Dear Mr. Fudd,

It’s getting colder, which means that I am in the midst of the thankless job of gradually ripping out all of the plants in my wife’s garden and placing them in our garbage bin. It’s about a two-month process since I refused to purchase those large brown paper sacks, so I can only properly dispose of one garbage bin of garden at a time. I could probably start the process earlier in the year since my wife inevitably loses interest in said garden around mid-June, which annually coincides with when there are vegetables that require something to make use of. Some people use vegetables, we let them sit on our counter for the duration of the summer and leak vegetable goo down the kitchen drawers and onto the hardwood floor. It’s an odd hobby, but it seems to make my wife happy. Me, not so much.

Last year I attempted to plant my own herbs to capture some of the thrill my wife seems to enjoy with witnessing the gradual birth and death of an object, so I bought a lemon verbena plant. I don’t know what one does with lemon verbena, but I heard about it in a book once. It’s a plant that smells like lemon. I know what you’re thinking, “you’re just talking about lemons.” I’m not. Lemon verbena, it’s like lemons, but without the lemons. Gradually the plant lost its lemon scent, which I felt was odd, but I was new to gardening. I attempted to make a syrup out of the enormous plant, but it tasted awful and took forever. While I was in the process, my mother came by the house and informed me that I was in fact, not making a syrup out of lemon verbena, but a common garden weed. How was I supposed to know? I had taken good care of the weed though, I was rather proud of it.

Much obliged,

C.S. Beaty

•••

My daily trips to the mailbox were now met with greater anticipation. My boss had taught me how to send for autographs through the mail about a year ago, but I had run low on B-list celebrities willing to sign a hockey puck. Since my growing autograph election had stunted its growth, checking the mail had also grown less exciting.

Until now.

It was still early phases in our relationship. The first few dates had gone well, but now Fudd and I were getting to know what each of us was like when we didn’t feel the need to impress one another. When we didn’t get all glammed up before a night on the town. We were inching toward the wearing sweatpants and farting in front of one another phase of any meaningful partnership, but it was still exciting. Now that we were six letters in and things felt serious, I started bragging about my new pen pal with the people I cared about. It was about time they knew who this special person in my life was.

I started with my wife.

“This has got to be the weirdest thing to happen to you this year.”

I think she understood.

I went back to our matchmaker, Mike the Printer, and told him about Fudd and I. He was thrilled the two of us had hit it off. I emailed him scanned copies of our correspondence thus far, and nine minutes later, Mike the Printer sent me a response.

“Thanks, I think this is going to be the best reading ever.”

•••

Fudd’s letters corresponded with a creative, albeit somewhat lonely phase of my life. After adopting three kids, every single meaningful relationship I had prior had been impacted. I lost friends. I felt estranged from the people who supported me before becoming a dad, meanwhile trying to become a dad to a three-year-old, five-year-old, and eight-year-old who didn’t speak the same language I did and had never had a meaningful relationship of their own. No one in our new family knew what this thing was supposed to look like or what to do with one another.

There were only a few constants between the before and after of this abrupt life transition, but one was my boss. He had always been in my corner, even if it meant giving me life advice that was counter to what he probably should have said as my employer. He taught me life was short. Working hard was often overrated. Professional ambition is often a fool’s errand. And life gets better when you learn to care less and enjoy it more.

He loved it when I told him about Haywood Fudd:

“My two thoughts:

1) this man needs NO psychedelic drugs and

2) this is what self actualization must look like. Best proof of reincarnation I have seen.”

•••

When Haywood’s next letter arrived in the mail, I was smitten.

•••

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October 8^th, 2024

Dear Mr. Fudd,

I’m sorry to report that I’ve yet to make it out to the bonsai tree stand out on Dodge Street. I was in the process at one point, but was distracted at a stoplight when a black convertible pulled up in the lane next to mine. The driver wore a shirt that looked like he was headed to a meeting with his bowling team, and the make of the car was one of those middle-of-the-road manufacturers that communicates, “hey I own a convertible but not a nice one.” He seemed to settle for what his budget allowed after his bowling dues were paid in full.

The rear-view mirror had an air freshener dangling from it advertising “Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax.” Now I am familiar with sex, and with wax, but I’ve never considered combining the two of them the way that Mr. Zog apparently had. I remain unclear as to the proper application of the product, and the air freshener was lacking in additional detail. Perhaps it is a bowling alley product, or something used for the removal of pubic hairs, or something meant for the assembling of scented candles—hence why they would diversify their product lines into the tangential market of air fresheners.

The bowling shirt sped away as soon as the light turned, at a speed inappropriate for the Millard North school zone we had both found ourselves in. His Nebraska license plate stated “SHOWME.” Again, the lack of detail was troublesome to me. Someone who purchased sex wax in the quantity that deems him worthy of a complimentary air freshener is not someone that I think would be discreet about what he wants shown toward him, but again, this driver proved the exception. Perhaps he’s from Missouri, or a fan of the movie Jerry Maguire.

Much obliged,

C.S. Beaty

I was still feeling my way around the type of correspondence I wanted to have with Haywood Fudd. When he was at his best, Fudd was painting elaborate nonsense scenes depicting bizarre characters whose mannerisms forced the reader to respond, “how does someone come up with this?” Like an alternate reality game, Haywood blended the real world with the strange corners of his imagination and thrust them upon the unsuspecting postal customer without any context. This blending of the absurd with the ordinary gave Fudd his charm. Even if some people, like one of the commenters on Kmart 29’s Reddit thread, “didn’t care much being toyed with.”

That wasn’t really the way I wrote.

After trying some gag in my first letter about the character “Pepsi” and an imaginary fight I had with him concerning a Ferris wheel, I felt the same way I felt when I was tricked into accidentally accepting a part time job at a temporary tax preparation storefront inside the Conestoga Mall which required me to dress up as Uncle Sam and pass out flyers for tax preparation services: stupid. What Fudd did with such mastery and gusto did not come naturally to me. So, I crafted one rule for my letters to Fudd from here on out: always tell the truth.

Needing material, I started seeing the world differently. I looked for the absurd in the ordinary while I walked my dog and drove to the library. I took notes in a pocket sized journal and realized that the more minute the description the more ludicrous the situation felt. As my brain constantly vivisected “why do I think this is funny and how would I describe it to Haywood,” I felt, joy? Happy? Excited? I realized I loved being toyed with. I loved being in on the joke, making something into a joke, and being the butt of the joke. And I didn’t really care if anyone else found my own observational ramblings on life funny, because I thought they were funny. I realized if I was amused, it mattered less if others were. And going through life looking for things that amuse you wasn’t a bad way to spend a day.

And Fudd kept writing me back, so he must have thought it was kind of funny too. Or maybe he just needed another excuse to write down his own absurd observations on life, even if his observations bent reality.

●●●

Last summer, after eight months of alternating letters with Fudd, my family took shelter from the rain in a Galveston, Texas surf shop. We spent longer inside than we would have liked due to the downpour and lack of transportation available, but we made friends with the surf shop owner who happened to also be from Nebraska. To wait out the rain, I browsed this surf shop’s inventory more thoroughly than I had ever browsed any other surf shop’s inventory before. As one might imagine a surf shop in Texas run by an expatriate Nebraskan would, they had ample, newly released, “Gulf of America” swag. It made my heart hurt. But then I saw a cardboard endcap displaying rows and rows of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax. I had never bothered to Google the product. It was funnier to me without that knowledge of what it actually was. I guess it’s for surfboards or something. Part of me was sad for having the joke and the mysteries spoiled, but then again, I would have never noticed the Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax air freshener in the first place had I not been looking for something trivial to brighten my afternoon drive that I could write to Haywood Fudd about.

So I started looking for the next thing to write to Haywood Fudd about. The world was full of them.

October 12^th, 2024

Dear Mr. Beaty,

The following is the latest news from West-West Omaha:

· Lyle Wheeler, 70, who lives West of cedar Bluffs, Neb., on County Road X, is a devotee of folk music. His all-time favorite folk song is “Sweet Betsey from Pike.” He’ll sing it upon request, two period Lyle testified he believes he sung the Diddy over 600 times period the first part of the tune goes like this:

Oh, don’t you remember

Sweet Betsey from Pike?

She crossed the wide mountains

With her lover Ike

And one yoke of oxen

And big yeller dog

A tall Shanghai rooster

And one spotted hog

Doodle-ang-fall, di-id-all

Do-lang-fall, did-ay

Doodle-ang-fall, di-id-all

Do-lang-fall, did-ay

· Chet Earp, 70, of Snyder, Neb., disconnected his doorbell. Chet disconnected his doorbell after a door-to-door window salesman rang at last Wednesday. Chet isn’t saying when he’s going to reconnect the doorbell. Depending on the brakes, Chet disconnects and reconnects his doorbell three or four times a year. Chet is blissfully unaware if he’s related to Wyatt Earp, the famous Old West Lawman.

· Faye Ratcliff, 66, of Shickley, Neb., was knocked for a loop when some pranksters put an eight-foot tall cement Sasquatch in her rose garden, but she reports she’s gotten used to the cement Sasquatch. She’s going to spray paint it like pink.

· Conrad Haskell, 64, of Arlington, Neb., colossally wants to move where the action is. Conrad’s wife, Sabrina, wholeheartedly agrees. “Arlington is so quiet on Saturday nights that you can hear Sunday morning coming,” testified Sabrina, 61, who is an acclaimed former go-go dancer from Butte, Montana.

Much obliged,

Haywood Fudd

King of the Literary Daredevils

PO Box 345

Elkhorn, Nebraska 68022

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October 1^st, 2024

Dear Mr. Fudd,

I read your “Strange Letter,” how is Pepsi nowadays? It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but we never really got along, at least not since the Ferris wheel incident. It’s funny how something so trivial can leave such a big impact on a relationship.

I was excited to get your letter, but I had a false alarm earlier in the week. I received a handwritten letter in perfect cursive and eagerly tore open the long form horizontal envelope expecting a correspondence from yourself. Instead, it was a letter handwritten by Walter Graves inviting me to attend a Jehovah’s Witness Bible study. He didn’t give me any details on said Bible study, but encouraged me to visit the Jehovah’s Witness website for further details. I elected not to, but I get the sense that Mr. Graves may feel the need for a friend, his address is below if you care to provide him one:

Walter Graves

14811 Paul Plaza

Omaha, NE 68154

Send Pepsi my best, and tell him I’m sorry. Maybe that’ll get the bastard to admit he was wrong.

Much obliged,

C.S. Beaty

•••

Haywood Fudd is a pen name, but to the recipients of his letters the nature of his quest is a mystery. Since I had the benefit of Mike the Printer, I knew the author of my letter was an actual person. Others weren’t so lucky.

The only internet record of Fudd is a Reddit thread titled “r/ARG-Strange Letter” started by someone who received a message from Haywood mailed to his home. In his letter, Fudd described how his friend nicknamed “Pepsi” called him “to ask how long I thought it would take to roast a hot-dog by holding it right above bubbling, snarling, red hot lava.” He told Pepsi, “depending on the breaks, two minutes plus or minus.”

I know little of Reddit. And I knew nothing about the letters “ARG.” But thanks to my buddy Mike the Printer, I did have some secret knowledge that made all of the Haywood Fudd internet conspiracy theories I had just gained access to ohh so much fun.

“I got a weird letter in the mail about a month ago addressed to me in my current address. Thought it might be an ARG, but it’s personally addressed to me and hand signed in sharpie. Any thoughts?”1

-Kmart 29

And let the games begin.

An ARG is an “alternate reality game.” If you’ve never heard of those then you probably had a girlfriend in high school. According to my own internet research, an ARG is an elaborate stunt that blends the digital and physical world and never admits to being a game. It consists of a series of esoteric puzzles that can only be solved by utilizing the full power of Mountain Dew-fueled online message boards. An ARG may look something like: noticing there are certain letters on the back of a Nine Inch Nails tour T-shirt that are mysteriously capitalized, entering those letters into a web browser, placing the results into a program that measures the frequency of a sound wave, putting those results into a program that generates a given dial tone, corresponding the dial tone to a series of GPS coordinates that locate every pay phone in North America, sending a representative to each of those pay phones at an appointed time determined by a string of code buried within the inner flap of a milk carton, and then answering the payphones when they ring in order to learn how to unlock an Easter egg in the Halo 4 video game.

And after Kmart 29 got his letter from Haywood Fudd, something like this seemed more likely to him than just a guy writing a letter because he thought it was funny.

Man the internet is great.

“What a bizarre letter. I want to say it is some sort of strange ARG, but it could easily be the ramblings of some random guy. I couldn’t find much searching the name Haywood Fudd online, besides a YouTube channel with literally nothing on it and an inquiry about how much a pack of unopened Evel Knievel beer is worth… If it is an ARG, your best bet might be to try and figure out what PBS show about volcanoes aired around December 31st 2022, since the letter was apparently typed up on New Year’s Day of this year, and Mr. Fudd claimed he watched a show about volcanoes ‘last night.’ Perhaps that volcano show has some sort of clue?”2

Kmart 29 said he would give that a shot.

Lacking the temerity to mount a full blown alternative reality quest of my own, I instead waited patiently for the mail to arrive.

•••

October 4^th, 2024

Dear Mr. Beaty,

Thank you for your dispatch dated October 1. October 1 is one of my top five days in the Julian calendar.

Regarding your request that I scribble a letter to the Jehovah’s Witness, one Mr. Graves, I propose you address this matter in your own outré literary modus operandi. I’m currently stitched up and conducting another world record literary stunt and have no time to spend tweaking a bedeviled Jehovah’s Witness.

Thank you for the bookmark. I will, as is my wont, put it through the paces.

Know this: Gillespie’s hobby is wrestling empty pizza boxes. When Gillespie and his Mrs. are through eating the pizza, Gillespie drags the empty, greasy pizza box out of his front yard and goes full on berserk on it. It’s a sight to behold.

One of Gillespie’s favorite wrestling moves is to stand on the railing of his front stoop, leap high into the air, and to come down on top of the empty pizza box with a giant elbow smash. Another Gillespie’s favorite moves is putting an empty pizza box in between his legs and strangling and squeezing the pizza box until it’s flatter than a German potato pancake. When he’s really amped up, Gillespie takes a metal folding chair and proceeds to beat the empty pizza box to cardboard pulp.

I inquired why Gillespie wrestles empty boxes. “It’s nuanced. Used pizza boxes and I have a history,” he testified in response.

Gillespie wrestled with 714 pizza boxes over the past 17 years, his record being 712- 2. I attempted to interrogate him about his two losses. “I don’t want to talk about it. It bamboozles me why people are interested in knowing how I lost to two pizza boxes instead of asking about my 712 wins,” tooted an aggrieved Gillespie.

Gillespie’s bowling average is 178. His bowling average goal for 2025: 210.

Much obliged,

Haywood Fudd

King of the Literary Daredevils

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Dear Mr. Fudd,

I’ve always wanted a pen pal. My brother had one once, it was an old neighbor girl who moved to Minnesota. I heard stories of this family growing up and had to pretend that I knew them and cared about them when we visited on summer vacations, but no one ever wrote me a letter. I think it was my parents’ idea to have them write one another, maybe to help spark a romance or to alleviate the pains of the hot girl from across the street from moving away. Jason told me they only sent a couple of letters, but that was more than I ever got.

There’s a roadside Bonsai tree stand that I drive by off of Dodge St. I always see an older Asian guy setting up racks and racks of Bonsai trees on makeshift plywood shelving. It’s kind of like the guy who sells sweet corn from the back of a pickup, but instead it’s Bonsai trees. He never has any customers.

I wonder how one gets into the roadside Bonsai business? I never realized how little I know about the entire industry. Are there Bonsai tree farms? What’s a Bonsai tree go for? I think I might buy one, but I don’t actually want to take care of anything living. Maybe he sells maintenance plans. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Much obliged,

-C.S. Beaty

•••

When I started writing routinely, I did so without a plan. I wanted to write down the things on my mind, that was about it. I bought a typewriter so the impulse to edit would be removed from the creative process, and after about a year-and-a-half, I had written enough essays to fill a book. Not necessarily a good book, but enough words and pages to bind them all together and write a title on the spine. So for the Christmas of 2023, that’s what I did.

I had yet to decide the means of sharing my writing with the world, so I started smaller. I printed and bound about ten copies of my essays and distributed them to a select few friends and family. The response was mostly positive, like a polite positive. I think everyone understood the effort and care I had put into my writing, but whether it was something more than that—more marketable than that—none of us knew. But I kept writing.

I wrote enough to print a follow-up volume for Christmas 2024, and when I went to chat with Mike The Printer about my latest project, he told me about a fan I didn’t know I had.

I wasn’t the first person to compile my esoteric ramblings into a Christmas present for friends and family, and the similarities between my writing and one of Mike’s other best customers were too coincidental to not bring to my attention. He told me he held back a copy of one of my books and passed it along to this mystery man. And this man approved. This man who I never met, went by the pen name Haywood Fudd.

There is little to no internet trail for Haywood Fudd. In an age of algorithms and curated digital news feeds, Fudd’s chosen medium is entirely analog and anachronistic. He probably puts in as much work as any ass-shaking, disgusting-food-eating, Tik Tok starlet—but he’s not doing the work for the clicks. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s funny and it brings him joy. And it brings others joy. Or so I assume, I’ve never asked him.

Fudd calls himself “The King of Literary Daredevils.” If you read his work, you’ll learn he’s a big fan of Evel Knievel. Most people haven’t read all his work through. Most people don’t get that opportunity. Most people only get a single letter. Written and addressed just to them. A letter from a man they’ve never met, but who thinks it would be funny to send them a letter.

The first stunt I heard of was Fudd’s 2023 assault on the good people of Bliss, Idaho. Somehow, inexplicably, Fudd had located a directory of the name and address of all 226 residents of this small rural town. And sent them all an original letter. Only one person wrote him back—George Freeman—and he dedicated his compilation of letters to him. The same compilation that Mike The Printer was in the process of assembling when he told me about Mr. Fudd.

I was hurt by this. As a person who has bled over a typewriter and felt a mediocre reception, many times, it seemed a travesty that someone would devote so much creativity and effort to an ingenious stunt of this sort and only have a single admirer as a result. I set out to change that.

Eight days after writing that first letter, I received a reply. My first reply.

September 25th, 2024

Dear Mr. Beaty,

Thank you for your September 17 dispatch. I received it while lathered in a thick and luscious coat of e’lan.

Regarding pen pals, I was once contacted by a lady doing hard time in Missouri in 2004 or 2005. She offered to send me body pictures for as I recall $10. I sometimes wonder about her in the wee, wee hours of the night.

Bonsai trees. I would be most appreciative of any information you uncover on these trees. I have this perfect place for a small cops of these trees so long as they don’t require daily watering during the blistering summers.

Know this: I may wanted man on the Googlers. Fire up the Googler and search on Haywood Fudd. You’ll see a link to “strange letter.” The purpose of this paragraph is for you to know exactly who you’re dealing with—the undisputed king of the literary daredevils. As of this epistle, I have written over 1000 letters to perfect strangers. I’m on a literary mission.

If you can think of nothing else this Thanksgiving to be thankful for, I beseech you to get down on bended knee and thank the supreme architect for gravity. Without just the exact amount of gravity, mankind would be doomed. Doomed! Gravity is that crucial.

Much obliged,

-Haywood Fudd

King of the Literary Daredevils

P.S. As is it my want. My raison d’etat, I reply to dispatches with two $1.00 bills.

P.P.S. Kawasaki let the good times roll.

Kawasaki let the good times roll.

Get a board and you’re gonna say, “let the good times roll.”

So I wrote him back, and he wrote me back. And a year-and-a-half and over 50 exchanges later, we’re still at it.

Introducing a new As Told By C.S. Beaty production: Letters to Haywood Fudd.

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What Just Happened?

After the final dismissal bell rang, it was a long walk back to the band room.

My last class was English, which was a nice way to end things. I looked forward to those discussions even though I had little in the tank at 3:36 p.m. Mr. G.’s classroom was on the opposite end of the school from where I parked my red Isuzu pickup. The truck was a hand-me-down: handed down from a previous owner to my oldest brother, who then handed it down to my next oldest brother, who then handed it down to me. It had a manual transmission, no power steering, a different shade of red on each panel, and a threaded pipe welded to the tailgate where the original bumper had fallen off. I should have been embarrassed by this automobile forced on me by my parents, but I loved it. It was completely unlike all the starter cars my friends had been gifted, and it gave me an easy way to stand out from the masses—from my classmates whose personalities would melt together if left exposed to the high school environment for too long. It was nice to be forced to be a little different.

Like the rest of the kids in marching band, I had been at Grand Island Senior High before the sun had burned off the morning dew. The parking lot outside the band room was adjacent to the soggy grass fields where we soaked through tennis shoes while practicing marching drills. They always watered the lawn right before we showed up, which once led to our band director halting rehearsal and demanding the athletic director come outside to see what we had to put up with. I’m not sure it helped much. Marching band wasn’t exactly a priority at our school. I learned to pack a change of socks and stashed the soggy ones next to my winter coat in the back of the band room. Throughout all four years of high school, I never once bothered to learn where my locker was. Piling my things on top of these filing cabinets served my purposes just fine. No one messed with the drummers’ stuff piled in the back. The only kids who went into the band room were band kids, and the drummers were not to be fucked with. At least not to be fucked with by other band kids. Outside the walls of the band room we were prey, but within them we were lions.

Noah Woods and I walked side by side for the first half of the route until he exited the main doors to track down his car. Noah was one of my closest friends and probably the only person I didn’t try to prove myself to. I was pretty sure I hadn’t turned Noah into a Christian yet, but I was working on it. He had been to our church’s youth group a few times and even agreed to go on the church’s spring break trip to Denver with me. I was making progress and was determined to convert him—but frankly his lack of interest in his eternal damnation was starting to piss me off.

Noah and I had been friends since middle school when we bonded over watching sports and Quentin Tarantino movies. It was at Noah’s house where I finally finished watching Kill Bill: Volume 1. My mom let me rent it from Blockbuster several years earlier after I told her it was one of my older brother’s favorite films, but she insisted on watching it with me and powered down the DVD player when the opening scene centered around a male nurse selling Uma Thurman’s comatose body for sex to a trucker named “Buck who likes to fuck.” From all my mom’s years working at a hospital, this must have hit a little too close to home. Or maybe it was because I was thirteen at the time.

I passed the mural of our school logo painted over a concrete brick wall—a pair of luscious palm trees in front of a gorgeous sunset, beckoning us to a place far away from the corn fields of central Nebraska. Because of our nonsensical city name of Grand Island, our school and our town as a whole had an island motif forced on it. We were the Islanders, which only made slightly more sense than the Vikings at the nearby Grand Island Northwest High School. I suppose one school liked ships and the other liked where the ships docked, neither of which really fit with the landlocked scenery outside our high school windows. We gave our respective schools more appropriate nicknames: the Islanders would say the Vikings went to “Cow Pie High,” whereas the Vikings returned the favor by calling our school “Drive-by High.” Neither school’s administration accepted these write-in ballots for naming rights, but the monikers fit.

The “purple island” was ahead—a plywood mountain covered in carpet where the anime club kids played Magic: The Gathering. I considered making a pit stop at the nearby snack shack named Hula’s. Hula’s was run by the Special Education students and sold gallon-sized chocolate shakes for $1. Sometimes my mom would buy me a Hula’s punch card, which the workers with Down syndrome often forgot to punch. I probably should have told someone. I started going to Hula’s less and less after childhood obesity concerns reduced the serving sizes available in public schools. These changes devastated Hula’s business, and the impact was felt. I not only lost an easy 1200 calorie snack at the end of my day, but the lack of customers also made it harder to eavesdrop on the conversations of hot girls. I greatly missed the casual mentions about how “shaving your pubes if you’re a girl makes total sense, but I wouldn’t want my boyfriend to do it.”

Anxiety is my motor. In addition to saving the souls of my friends from eternal damnation, the toils of the day ended with a list of homework to be completed, activities to show up for, and work shifts to cover. And the doomsday clock on my time at high school was ticking. Where was I going to go to college? What was I going to study? How was I going to pay for it? Those questions dragged on my subconscious like seaweed building on a tow line. I felt I would get to those to-do items—eventually­— but there were others I wasn’t so sure of. As the youngest of four kids, I knew the patterns. I had seen it play out three times ahead of me in the lives of my older siblings. You were supposed to leave high school with a stable of lifelong friends and an established love life. Granted, that’s not exactly how it played out for my sister or either of my two older brothers, but that was how it was supposed to work. I needed to make friends who could be my groomsmen on the day I married my high school sweetheart— but for some reason we were all just kind of shitty to each other.

I entered the main corridor where all five of the school wings met in a central spillway. Any hopes of catching up with my friends would have to be put on hold, as the halls were now deafening with Islanders fleeing from captivity. During my high school orientation, I was taught to hold up my hand with fingers splayed to get a rough idea of the layout of Senior High’s floorplan. The 500 wing was the thumb, the 400 wing the index finger, and so on. I was now in the center of the palm, along with two-thirds of the school body, half-way to the ring finger where I could exit the fingernail to reach my pickup.

I took the long route to avoid seeing Mike Beckton. Mike is my best friend. And I hate him. We did everything together, which meant his car was parked next to mine from early morning drumline practice. I wasn’t mad at Mike, I never really was, but we were overexposed. There was a constant comparison between us in the eyes of the Grand Island Senior High social elites. I was smarter than Mike and arguably better at drums—but that didn’t translate to popularity. Mike unfairly compensated for his faults by being confident. I never knew if Mike felt like we were competing. He never acted like it when we hung out. But then again, neither did I.

Mike and I even dressed the same, the only difference being that the taco seasoning body odor smell of my black drumline hoodie was mixed with the sulfur of gun smoke. I was on the trapshooting team. Mike played soccer. We both owned black studded belts purchased from the recently opened Hot Topic at the Conestoga Mall and had grown our hair to shoulder length to the chagrin of our parents. Our t-shirts were carefully selected from the undersized options of esoteric bands. Some of my shirts fit better than others—I never knew what size to wear since my body was constantly going back and forth from pudgy to skinny based on the timing of growth spurts. Mike and I both wore skateboard shoes despite the fact that neither of us knew how to skateboard. He usually chose DC as his brand of choice, though I had worn Vans ever since my older brother bought a pair. I never got into wearing girl jeans like Mike, though. I tried a pair on once with him at American Eagle. He bought them. I didn’t. But I did make the mistake of telling Alexa Whitney my girl jeans size and successfully made her hate herself.

I was almost out of the school. I passed the bench where I drank a pint of chocolate milk from a vending machine each morning and rounded the corner into the fine arts section of Grand Island Senior High. The band room was adjacent to the choir rooms, which meant I had to dodge the awkward theater and show choir losers before joining my fellow band geeks. However, there was one member of the show choir I never minded seeing. In fact, it was my favorite part of this route each late afternoon. Right before pounding through the crash bars of the band room door and presenting myself to my fellow musicians like Kramer entering Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment—I smiled and said “oh hi” to Jackie Wilkerson. Seeing her blonde hair and bright eyes was the highlight of this walk. Maybe the highlight of my entire day. I always wanted to say something more to Jackie, but then again, she never said much more to me. But we were both there. Each afternoon. For that One. Brief. Moment.

The exchange was always over fast. Too fast. She knew she couldn’t enter the band room, and I knew I wasn’t allowed to fraternize with the choir kids not that either of us wanted to. Capulets and Montagues don’t mix.

But we both seemed to like seeing each other.

There she was. Her feet shuffled a bit to slow down her pace. She gave her customary smile and greeting—and I returned the favor with a smile and fake surprise of my own. But as I pulled away to exit the hall, something broke the pattern. Jackie paused. She hesitated for just a moment.

And Jackie Wilkerson kissed me square on the cheek.

I stood in the corridor frozen in place, but Jackie kept moving. When I thawed, I looked over my shoulder to locate my favorite soprano. All I could see was her blonde ponytail fading into a crowd of highschoolers like a shark fin sinking back into the ocean.

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation

As the Incans expanded their empire, several indigenous groups fled to the islands of Lake Titicaca to avoid conquer. While the Incans were good at climbing mountains, they were shit at swimming. So, like the second Avatar movie, which is just a water version of the first Avatar movie, a group of castaways sought a liquid sanctuary. They isolated themselves from foes, but also from everything else. They cared for their families and looked out for their friends. They became self-sustaining and culturally incestuous by adapting their way of life to their new surroundings. And for centuries, little changed.

Incredibly, these islanders still exist. Even when the Incans were no longer a threat, they decided to stay put. After the Incans came Fernando Pizarro, who planted the Spanish flag in conquest and taught savages to become proper Catholics. After Spanish rule came Simón Bolívar, who reclaimed South America so it could be ruled by oligarchs. After oligarchs came drug lords, socialists, corrupt corporations, and more oligarchs. As the outside world shifted and civilizations crumbled, the residents of Lake Titicaca sold fish and stayed out of trouble.

Commercial fishing and environmental hardships have made it harder to sustain a family with a net and a boat, so today most of the islanders make money from tourism. My wife told me about these people while she was planning a trip to Peru. She’s a high school Spanish teacher and each year someone in her department gets to take a group of students to a Spanish-speaking country. Her turn was coming up, and she had heard great things about the two-day excursion to visit these island people. Because my wife is popular with the students at her high school, she had no problem filling the trip with enough bodies to earn a free ticket for both her and me. So, in the summer of 2024, the two of us joined thirty other students and chaperones to see these islands for ourselves.

Lake Titicaca has over a hundred man-made floating islands crafted out of reeds. As they grow, the roots of the reeds naturally intertwine underwater, and using primitive handsaws, the islanders cut out cubes of these roots and lash them together. The blocks are left to sit for about a week so the living roots can weave the parcels together and form a floating mass. Dried reeds are thrown on top to form a matted surface, and then the island is move-in ready.

Stepping foot on one of these floaters feels like you’re walking on a waterbed. A single island is a few hundred square feet and home to a handful of households consisting of families and close friends. Scant solar panels provide the most basic of electricity, but there is no indoor plumbing. Only outdoor. In a lake. There seemed to be little privacy, but despite spending several hours meeting numerous families, I never saw anyone pooping outside. They figured out how to make it work. People are good at adapting to their surroundings.

We were given a presentation on floating island life by the president of Isla Pato Corazón. The various islands rotate hosting visitors so the lucrative tourist dollars can be spread throughout the communities. Most residents spend their days creating items to sell, like elaborate tapestries or miniatures of the elegant boats crafted from the same reeds their homes are built upon. From collecting duck eggs to waiting for a motorboat to take kids to school, the mundane tasks necessary in any culture are shaped by their environment. Including romance.

In rural Nebraska, teenagers drive to a secluded cornfield to make out in the front seat of a Toyota Camry, but in the floating islands they use a “bota romantica.” Just large enough for two full-grown adults and bedded with loose reeds, these sex rafts are shared between islanders for when the need arises. It takes some advance planning, but if a couple wants alone time away from curious eyes and attentive ears, one of these woven canoes can be checked out and discreetly piloted into the thick cover of the growing reeds so the two can get freaky.

I taught the canoeing merit badge during a summer job at a Boy Scout camp, so I am very familiar with what maneuvers would be difficult to perform in a boat. Having sex is one of them.

I bought a miniature bota romantica as a souvenir. I sent my wife a postcard of the full-size sex raft as a memento of our trip.

…

I was impressed but not surprised that these islanders figured out a fix for this intimacy problem. As the foggy sex car scene in Titanic vividly demonstrates, adolescent resourcefulness knows no bounds when the need for some fondling arises. But the problem I always found more confounding wasn’t what to do once you’re horny, but rather: how do you find the woman willing to be the skipper on your boner boat in the first place?

In addition to the floating islands, Lake Titicaca has forty-two “natural islands.” After leaving the floating island of Isla Pato Corazón, we boarded a ferry for a two-hour trip to see how island life differed on one of these permanent sites. Our tour guide grew up on one of these natural islands and told us how things worked where he was from. His native language was Aymara, an indigenous language spoken by the first water settlers. Not all the islands speak Aymara, and our tour guide’s Spanish was rudimentary enough that he and I could converse without confusing one another. He told us about mermaids and fishing, but his best story was how he asked his wife out on a date.

When his grandfather was a lad, it was tradition to take a flute to a particular beach and play a beautiful melody. If a young lady was impressed­ (or turned on) by the flute playing, she approached the flautist. They started chatting, and if things clicked, they got married. Over generations the art of flute playing was lost. Technology changed and kids no longer had an interest in learning skills where a digital alternative was available. Just as email and MSN Messenger replaced sonnets and letter writing, listening to woodwind music couldn’t compete with the sensual beats available through radio signals. But despite the progress of the industrial age, a dude still needs to figure out how to get a date. And conveniently, instead of learning the flute, now you can just buy a boom box.

When our tour guide came of age, he left his island and voyaged to the far-off shores of the mainland. Fighting back the demons of congested traffic and avoiding the sirens of knockoff Nike apparel sold on a street corner, our hero exchanged his life savings of disposable income to purchase a portable CD player from a home electronics store. Like John Cusack in Say Anything, the eligible bachelor picked the most stirring serenade from his music collection and returned to the beach of his grandfather to blast the love song in the vicinity of the island’s young hotties.

I asked our guide what he played to meet his wife. It was an easy question.

“Enrique Iglesias. Claro.”

…

But different rules have evolved on different islands. To an outsider, a culture’s customs can sound arbitrary and absurd—but to those within, the rituals seem completely natural. Habitual. Instinctual. The place you live defines what you consider normal, and it isn’t until you look from a distance that you can see how strange those “normal” practices might be.

And on the island of Taquile, everything centers around knitting a hat.

Taquile is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is recognized as having some of the best knitting on the planet. Once you understand the stakes, it’s easy to understand why. As soon as his son is born, a father is required to knit him a hat. The hat is floppy with frills on the edge resembling doilies, and the kid has to wear the thing everywhere he goes. This mark of childhood follows him through his awkward teenage years, and before he can shed this embarrassing bonnet and call himself a man, he must prove himself. And that means knitting himself a new hat.

And unless he wants to be a total loser, he better do a damn good job.

To transition from childhood to adulthood, the young man knits a long cap with a red bottom, white top, and a multi-colored pom-pom. This particular design means you’re single, and if you are ready to mingle, that pom-pom gets flipped to the side like the tassel on a graduation cap.

So, let’s say you finished your hat, and you think you did a pretty good job. How do you get the girls to notice you?

If the knitting is nice and tight, there won’t be a lot of floppiness. The hat will stand nice and stiff on top of the young man’s head. If a young woman sees his erect cap sticking above the other boys’ flaccid hats, she knows the bachelor took the task seriously. He’s probably the kind of guy who would take a relationship seriously as well. If you want to know who the shitty boys are, they’re probably the ones with the shitty hats. If a hat catches her eye, the young lady will approach the young man and let him know she appreciates his knitting. So far, so good.

Meeting your girlfriend’s parents is nerve wracking. It can take a while to build trust and earn their approval, but in Taquile the process is streamlined. When the girl brings the boy to meet her parents, the dad plucks the hat from the lad’s head and fills it with water. And they wait. For two minutes. If the hat holds without any serious leakage, the couple has their blessing. But if he did a shitty job and knitted some loosely crocheted hipster beanie, then the whole thing is off.

In the words of my guide: “The parents, they will hate this boy.”

A leaky hat is almost impossible to overcome, but in every culture a daughter’s tears hold a special power over even the sternest of parents. If the girl really loves the boy despite his lazy character and lack of attention to detail, she can appeal the ruling by begging her folks for a second chance. But he can only get one. That’s it. He better not fuck it up. It takes several months to knit a proper hat, and the boy has to start from scratch.

But if this next hat is good, the young lady has found her soulmate. They can start the wedding planning.

…

I bought a hat as a souvenir. It’s floppy as hell. I never was good with women.

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I had a great childhood, and the fact I thought it was boring is probably a testament to just how stable and safe it was. But there were parts that were pretty weird. On both sides of my family, but predominantly on my father’s side, there were aunts, uncles, and cousins who I’ve never met. I mean pictures might exist of us at the same family function, but if you asked me how many sisters my dad has, I would have a hard time answering, an impossible time naming them, and would be completely incapable of picking them out of a lineup. This probably isn’t normal.

…

I’ve never met my half-aunt Charlene. While I was in college, I started receiving Facebook friend requests from people I didn’t know. There were three or four surnames that kept coming up, and my dad was a mutual friend with all of them. They were clearly relatives, but that’s as much as I could piece together. Cousins? Half-cousins? Second-half-cousins? Are there second-half cousins? I accepted some of the requests and ignored others. I didn’t have a method for which relatives got to become my digital friends. It kind of depended on how angry I felt at the time about this secret family who I accused in my mind of just wanting to pad their online popularity statistics. I didn’t plan on interacting with any of them, I didn’t really interact with anyone on Facebook, so the stakes weren’t high if someone was offended when I declined their requests.

One of these requests came while I was visiting my parents.

“Mom! Who is Charlene Beaty Bailey?”

“That’s your dad’s half-sister.”

“Wait, what? Half-sister?”

“Yeah, she just showed up one day on the doorstep and your dad didn’t know anything about her. She was your Grandpa Beaty’s daughter before he married your grandma.”

“What?”

“Your Grandpa Beaty had a lot of issues.”

“She looks older than dad.”

“She is.”

As weird as it was I had never heard of Charlene Beaty Bailey, it felt normal for me to have another aunt I didn’t know about. But I knew for CERTAIN that my dad was the oldest in his family. I’ve always known this. It goes: Dad, Uncle Dan, some other people, Uncle Roger is in there somewhere, Uncle Bruce. But now you’re telling me that was wrong? Did I miss this story? When you are told “your dad is the oldest in his family” that’s supposed to mean he’s the oldest in his family, right? Doesn’t having an older sister make you NOT the oldest in your family?

And I’ve made it to legal drinking age before I discovered this aunt’s identity from a Facebook friend request?

This probably isn’t normal.

…

My mom elaborated a bit more, but only just a bit. After Charlene graduated high school, she moved to South Dakota to find her biological father. Who was also my dad’s biological father. My Grandpa Marion Beaty never told my dad or the rest of his new family that he had been previously married, and he already had a daughter. My dad never knew he had an older sister. My dad never knew Charlene existed until she showed up and introduced herself. And I guess we kept the family tradition alive in our own household by never talking about Charlene, or Grandpa Marion Beaty, or really anyone from that side of the family. I always felt it wasn’t my place to ask about any of them. It was hard to ask about someone you didn’t know existed.

I accepted Charlene’s Friend request.

And that was kind of it for a while. I had one weird conversation with my mom, and then we all went back to ignoring our extended family. I would see occasional posts from Charlene, I’m sure she saw some of mine. And life just went on. Those family mysteries stayed mysterious.

At least until Charlene posted about some movie she was in. Like a real movie. Where she played herself.

Journalist Jessica Bruder wrote a book called Nomadland about people who live in their vehicles and travel around. A book my aunt was in. And then a bunch of Hollywood producers, including Frances McDormand decided to turn it into a movie. A movie my aunt was in.

I was never that curious about my family. I was never that curious about my aunt. But Jessica Bruder was curious about my aunt. Director Chloé Zhao was curious about my aunt. Frances McDormand, the woman who won Academy Awards for two of my favorite movies and was married to one of my all-time favorite directors, was curious about my aunt. The world was curious about my aunt. They all cared about her life before I did. And I felt guilty about that.

I still kind of do.

Suddenly this aunt I knew nothing about was sharing her story with the world. And the world cared. And I had no idea she was living in a van. And I had no idea why she started calling herself “Swankie.”

…

The movie had yet to be released outside of the festival scene, and we were still in the heat of COVID lockdowns. Going to a movie theater wasn’t an option, so I had to wait until Hulu released the movie for streaming. I was anxious about learning my family history. I was anxious about the dozens of readers who got a hold of the Omaha Public Library’s copies of the Nomadland book ahead of me. I was anxious about all the people who knew more about my aunt than I did.

When I got a copy of Bruder’s book, I was a bit disappointed. It was interesting and well written—kind of a Grapes of Wrath for the 21^st Century. But the story of my aunt wasn’t there. She was in the book—right in the middle of chapter eight—but not her story.

That was it. I guess I would have to wait for the movie for the rest.

Hulu finally released it. We got a seven-day trial and invited my parents over to watch. They had already seen the movie but didn’t want to cancel on us. They always looked for an excuse to spend time with my wife and me. My dad couldn’t help giving his commentary based on whatever insider knowledge he had gleaned from Charlene’s Facebook posts. He mentioned Charlene had driven her van to my childhood home after I moved out. He was impressed by the van’s solar panels she had installed herself.

The movie ended, along with any conversation about my family. It still didn’t feel like the kind of thing to ask too many questions about.

A few months later we all gathered in my basement again, this time to watch the 93^rd Academy Awards Ceremony. Where Aunt Swankie, despite the COVID restricted Oscar ceremony, was attending alongside Director Chloé Zhao as her plus-one. She walked the red carpet. She sat between Zhao and Frances McDormand throughout the ceremony. She held Zhao’s Academy Award for Best Director. And when Nomadland was named the 2020 Best Picture, she was on the stage accepting the award alongside all the people who wanted to tell her story.

…

I didn’t get in touch with Swankie after her big night, at least not right away. Now that she was famous, it felt inappropriate. Like I was trying to latch myself onto her only after she was in this Oscar-winning movie.

But when my wife and I adopted three kids from Colombia, she sent me a Facebook message.

“Ok... I am trying to be patient waiting for photos. Are you home yet?”

I sent her a photo of our family and our three new children. She replied immediately.

“Oh my gosh! Wow wow wow. Tell them, i love them.”

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Wedding in the Sand

I’ve had a chance to recover from my trip to California, and now I’ll share some reminiscences with my friends.

The trip was a destination double wedding of my nieces, Janie’s girls, Kathy and Tina Matschiner, who both live in Lincoln. Tina’s guy, John Robinson, and Kathy’s Russ Black are terrific people. I’m so happy for all of them.

The weddings were on the beach in Santa Barbara, and it was a wonderful experience. It certainly wasn’t your usual wedding experience.

It was a catered affair for about 25 people, with a big, white tent and several pergolas pitched in the sand. The girls had hired a band from LA to play on a portable bandstand, with a dance floor in front. A professional photographer was busy all night. Food was catered, with an open bar.

The grooms and groomsmen wore matching Tommy Bahama shirts, vests, linen pants and flip-flops. The bridesmaids wore long pastel dresses, and the girls were resplendent in full bridal gowns and jeweled sandals.

The lady pastor was barefoot below her white robes, and the guests were garbed in shorts and beach attire. It was, as I said, different.

The ceremony was quite beautiful and touching. I walked Kathy down the sandy “aisle” while Rochelle’s husband, Jack, gave away Tina. (Dang, I stumbled a bit in the sand when starting out on our march, but it turned out OK.)

The fully amplified band really rocked the beach well into the night. It was fun to watch surrounding beach-goers rockin’ to the borrowed music.

They lodged me in a sweet little cottage in nearby Montecito, near the Hobbit House lodge on Miramar Beach that the couples rented (google that – it’s terrific). I rented a car and had the run of Montecito and Santa Barbara, sightseeing, taking a tour of the Santa Barbara Mission and visiting Patricia and Gabriel.

Some of you may have seen the photos that others had taken of the wedding on my site on Facebook. I tried to copy them to email here, but don’t know how. Everyone and his sister were taking photos, so I didn’t take any myself.

The plane trip to California was a disaster, thanks to the Unfriendly Skies of United Airlines. Our flight was to depart at 5:55 a.m., but the check-in was a botched and delayed mess, and the security check was a cattle-herding pandemonium, with four long, creeping lines.

There were five of us in the wedding party on the flight, with lots of wedding dresses and luggage, and as the check-in dragged on, Kathy asked the clerk to call the gate and alert them that we were coming. They didn’t do that, apparently.

Sadly, we got to the gate four minutes after the last call to board was called, and they refused to let us on.

We were stunned, and the girls were naturally frantic, but nothing could be done. Our plane stood at the gate for at least 15 minutes while we chafed and cussed and stared at the closed gate.

No apologies, no sympathetic words or even a listening ear from United.

We five in the wedding party weren’t the only ones denied passage at the gate. We watched the airliner take off with 17 empty seats.

United said they could only book us on a flight the following day, but that would have been impossible. The wedding was Saturday, and the rest of Thursday and Friday had been booked with pastor interviews, rehearsals, rehearsal dinner, staging the wedding site, etc. They wouldn’t refund the tickets.

So Kathy and Russ frantically arranged other flights for that day, rescheduled the rental cars, and we flew into LAX, and drove in a rental van to straggle into Santa Barbara Airport just before midnight to claim our luggage. Our baggage had already been stowed on flight we couldn’t get on.

I’ve got to say, the girls and their guys took the whole thing quite well, and it didn’t hold back the joy but for a brief while.

We had been stranded at the frigid Eppley Airport for 12 hours. It wasn’t fun. My jacket was in my suitcase and I had to suffer in the super-air-conditioned terminal. I don’t know who that guy Eppley was, but I hate him now. I hope he freezes in his coffin.

My solo trip home was similarly gruesome, with United (again – I didn’t have a choice) booking me on a stopover at San Francisco which inexplicably shuffled me to Delta Airlines, whose gates were two terminals and at least a half-mile away, carrying my own luggage and just about missing my connection.

##########################################

After the wedding, I saw Patricia and Gabriel only briefly. I wanted to take them to dinner the next day, but I couldn’t get hold of Gabriel again by phone (sound familiar, Jerry?)

Patricia looked fine; a little more haggard possibly, but she has earned that. Her heart is strong, she said, and she is on regular medication. No more heart palpitations or whatever it was. I’m going to call her son and see if he can tell me more about her.

Sadly, Gabe is now making the same mistakes with his old hoarding habits, and the city of Santa Barbara is citing him for the clutter on his property. Just like at his properties in Wahoo, junk is piling up overhead all over the place in Santa Barbara.

To my dismay, even the house is cluttered with junk. He has no plans forward to sell what he’s got – all the stuff he trucked in there from Wahoo – and he’s still buying more junk from thrift stores. His health seems to be fair, as near as I can tell. I give up on him, though. I know I’ve said that before but, at last, there seems to be no happy end in sight.

The two are still living in the same house, but don’t seem to be close. I’m sad for them, but there’s nothing I can do.

The wedding trip was a fine experience. I’m happy I went. I was so proud to see the girls get married, but I’m glad to be home.

But when I go back to California, and if I have a choice between flying and catching a wagon train, it’s gonna be a tough call.

Kathy & Judy Collins

Kathy had told this story about meeting singer Judy Collins several times. I put it together and had her submit it to the New Yorker magazine’s Metropolitan Diary feature in 2022. They didn’t use it. I’m guessing it was too revealing about Alcoholics Anonymous and privacy

* * *

Kathy: send ONLY the text below to NYT’s Metropolitan Diary (no title).Don’t hesitate to suggest other changes or additions before you submit.

Link to Metropolitan Diary to follow.

* * *

I was pursuing a career in opera in the 1990s when I decided to return to my birthplace, New York City.

I had studied voice in Italy where, through my mentor, I met Luciano Pavarotti and others of Italy’s opera-scene movers and shakers.

But Milan was not New York City.

I craved better career connections, and New York contained the necessary celebrities, with their ready-to-rub elbows.

Growing increasingly bolder, I got myself invited to parties, cafes, bars, and other popular entertainment-world hangouts around New York.

I had some early successes meeting some of the glitterati, which strengthened my resolve to taste the glamour that I was positive the upper echelon forever enjoyed.

Then, one evening, I was in the Upper East Side, rehearsing some Donizetti’s scenes in a basement hall in the St. Jean Baptiste (sic) Church at 76^th and Lexington.

The hall’s doorbell rang, and I was asked to answer it.

There stood a rather hard-looking woman bearing an anxious, slightly wide-eyed demeanor.

She crowded closer to me on her tiptoes, craning her neck over my shoulder to peek at the people inside.

“Is this the AA meeting?” she asked.

It was Judy Collins.

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Letter to Editor

Nov. 16, 2024

Bargain-Basement Comics

By Bob Copperstone

All the daily newspapers serving our part of eastern Nebraska are owned by a single entity, and share a thrifty, barebones half-page comics section. Recently they announced another shuffle.

We lost Doonesbury, among other worthy strips, and left these dregs behind:

“Family Circus”: The epitome of insipidity. Age 64 and shows every year.

“Beetle Bailey,” “Hi and Lois”, “Hagar the Horrible” and

“Sally Forth”: Tough competitors in the vapidity sweepstakes race

“Zits”: The only strip worth the ink it takes to print the Lee Enterprises’ stingy comic pages.

And why bother to disinter the dusty corpses of “Barney Google & Snuffy Smith”

That hillbilly-themed cartoon is 105 years old, for heaven’s sake! The effort to update those goofy characters by giving them modern situations is painfully pathetic. Do not resuscitate!

And that’s just the daily offerings. Don’t even get me started on the Sunday comics, where sub-par panels are printed grotesquely enlarged to fill space and avoid buying us more cartoons.

This entire mess gives the appearance of a bargain-basement shopping spree at the cartoon supplier’s, Andrews McMeel International.

We subscribers deserve better than a cartoon race to the bottom.

Omaha Attorney Barges In

I am a fairly new reader of this World-Herald’s Public Pulse “Comments” feature.

I was initially attracted by the possibility of broadening my outlook on current events in the give-and-take of a public forum. It could be useful to my knowledge of current events.

But I increasingly taste a rancid flavor to the offerings. The distaste is fed by ad hominem attacks that drag participants away from fruitful discourse.

That cheapens the time and effort I take in following the personalized brouhahas that lately often monopolize the discussions.

Even if I am able to follow the drift of those personal attacks (the feuds have been going on for so long that participants are calling each other snarky nicknames or only first and last initials which mean nothing to an intruder like me), it makes me wonder if I am being adequately informed.

Or am I simply intruding on a spat among a tight little clique busily throwing dirt on the characters of perceived foes and talking over my head?

Do I want to risk being pulled into that mud-stained arena?

Well, here I am anyway. What’s next?

Early Jail Time

PARENTS: Can’t make your children toe the line? Are they repeat offenders? Do you need help?

The answer is as close as your nearest state capitol, where wise, all-knowing politicians are striving to steadily lower the age at which children can be jailed. Nebraska laws are currently on track to allow locking up pre-adolescent kids. (”Happy 11” birthday, my future little jailbirds!”

... Where will it all end?

“What’s this? Another poopie diaper? You know better than that. Didn’t the government warn you to stop that?” “Don’t cry, Dear, I’m sure you will make parole.”

A Pissy Grocery Cashier

(I sent this letter to the owner of a Wahoo supermarket several years ago.)

Dear Rex:

I was distressed on Wednesday, about 3:45 p.m., when an elderly woman in front of me at the second to the last register had dropped some blueberries on the floor.

The woman was quite elderly, but had nevertheless competently shopped for her few groceries, although she was obviously a bit addled about her mistake. The blueberries were in a fragile snap-lid plastic container, which would easily pop open if squeezed wrong.

The dark-haired cashier (I don’t know her name) glared at the woman, said “Oh, my god,” called for another checker, announced loudly that there was a “big mess”, and then ran around to the site of the spill.

The elderly customer stood back, a pained look on her face, while the checker held the offending blueberry box in front of her and proceeded to explain, as to a child, how the box could be closed properly.

In my opinion, the checker didn’t need to get all pissy about it and publicly humiliate the poor woman.

How much better a public face your supermarket would have if she had comforted the woman that “it’s all right, no harm done, let’s get someone to pick up the berries and we’ll get you checked out.”

The woman knew she had spilled them, but she was obviously addled and didn’t know what to do. The checker made her feel like a naughty child.

I know I can expect better from your store.

I remember with fondness how years ago my mother, Irma Copperstone, was about that old, and near-blind as well. She shopped at Wahoo Super, and depended on the staff – maybe you, yourself, Rex – to help her shop. She’d give them her list, and they’d fetch the groceries. Very impressive.

That helped keep her independent and out of a nursing home. I’m forever grateful for that, and it made a lasting impression on me. I shop at your store exclusively now.

I hope you can persuade your staff to be a little more empathetic. Please let me know if I can be of more help.

Best wishes,

Bob Copperstone

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A wonderfully quaint wooden viaduct once spanned Wahoo’ s Second Street between Chestnut and Broadway.

It was a formidable, three-stage bridge with an approach, level top, and descent. It carried traffic over a small ravine, while the Chicago & North Western Rail Road (that’s how they spelled the company name then) freight trains passed underneath.

The “Vy-Dock”, as we kids pronounced it, played an important role in my childhood adventures. It served as a destination for a brisk hike going south.

A longer railway hike going north in the opposite direction led to First Bridge, Second Bridge, etc., until reaching the bottom of Bodley’s Hill (named after a local family) at about the Fifth Bridge, a mile or so out of town.

My home was down the tracks on Ninth Street. When I dared to, I ventured to the viaduct. It took a certain amount of courage because the viaduct often sheltered hobos (or tramps or, rudely, bums). There were usually fresh campfire ashes under the structure.

And sometimes there were local boys who would prowl atop the viaduct, looking to moisten intruders below who strayed within the range of their warm, yellow streams.

Although the viaduct appeared fortress-strong, with huge timbers and thick planks, I was skeptical of its soundness when I heard the lumber groan and tremble when cars labored up and over.

Larger trucks didn’t use the structure, avoiding high-centering.

One time I climbed under the bridge almost to the crest of the ravine, tucking myself under the timbers. I could actually watch the cars rumble

noisily directly overhead through large gaps in the planks. I panicked; afraid they’d fall through the trembling structure and crush me. I scrambled down and never did that again.

My fondest memory of the viaduct was exciting as a carnival ride.

It involved a rickety old family car on its last legs, and my father, Hank Copperstone, who delighted in making children laugh with glee.

We’d pile into that old crate, which Dad kept in barely working order using baling wire and high hopes. That was just before we got our used 1939 Plymouth sedan -a luxury limo by comparison.

Dad would drive the earful of kids around the city, with the high point of the adventure being an “airplane ride” over the viaduct.

We stopped in the middle of Second Street just off Broadway, the car aimed west toward the viaduct. We kids quivered in suspense.

Hank stomped on the clutch, slammed into low gear, and revved the engine again and again.

Hunched over the steering wheel with a wicked grin, Dad yelled, “Are you ready to fly, kids? Who wants to fly!”

We knew what was coming. We grabbed upholstery, seat backs, door handles, each other, or any other anchor we could find.

Without waiting for an answer, Hank popped the clutch, and the elderly machine got up a head of speed, the front wheels hitting the first plank solidly and bouncing the screaming children off their feet and seats.

The rear wheels left the ground and landed with a thump, sending the kids airborne again.

Climbing the east side at high speed, the front end aimed for the sky as they reached the flat top level.

Altitude attained! We were flying!

The front end slapped the top level hard. That’s when we heard and felt clattering and scraping noises from under the car. (We didn’t know what happened until we stopped at the bottom and saw that part of exhaust system had busted loose.)

Now the ride slammed down the descending slope. The bucking and slamming continued until we hit pavement again. There was a slight dip where the lumber met the street, and we got a final set of bounces.

The ride was over. The children were dog-tired, weak from screaming and laughing. The car had had it, too.

Hank climbed back up the viaduct to retrieve the muffler and assorted parts, and threw them into the trunk. The ride home was nowhere near as exciting.

The next day, Dad got out the baling wire to get the old crate ready for the next airplane ride.

Today, the viaduct and tracks are gone, and the ravine it spanned has been filled to street level. Saunders County, which owned and maintained the structure, tried to save it after the rails were torn up. But, sadly, it was declared deteriorated and too expensive to repair.

(See? My 10-year-old self warned you it was rickety, even then!)

The ravine is now filled to street level, and Second Street is paved straight through from Broadway to Chestnut. Where the railroad tracks used to be is a strip of land cutting through the city. That land is now the largely unfinished Maple Street right-of-way and, further north, it is part of the hiking and biking trail leading to Lake Wanahoo.

On a personal note, today I live in a little white house just a few yards southeast from where Dad and I, my sisters Rochelle and Janie, and carloads of kids used to go “flying”.

Sometimes on quiet summer nights I can step outside my house and, if I listen carefully over croaking frogs and chirping crickets, I can almost hear echoes of children’s mock-terror screams and their beautiful laughter.

* * *

The following is Bob Smith’s lightly-edited account of the same battered viaduct and the same thrill-seeking adventures that linger in our memories:

In the 1950s, well before cellphones, computers, and before many homes had a TV, teenagers loved to joyride and exercise the freedoms that their fresh driver’s licenses promised. The more friends they could stuff into their cars, the better.

Often, they would challenge the viaduct for the thrill of getting the front wheels airborne over the center of the span.

One night, probably in 1954, I was cruising in a friend’s car with two other guys and three girls when we decided to challenge the viaduct.

We made two passes over the span, with increasingly jolting results. A third run, fated to be the last, aimed the car east.

At first, the driver had kept safely to the right on the two-lane viaduct. On the third pass, he edged closer to the center, gunning it even faster.

To our horror, we suddenly saw the headlight beams of another car on the viaduct coming toward us in the opposite lane.

Our car sideswiped it, and then careened leftward at the bottom ofthe viaduct, slamming head-first into a tree on the north side ofthe street.

The impactjolted the horn to suddenly blare nonstop into the quiet night. The commotion woke the neighbors, and house and porch lights began to snap on. Someone called the police.

No one was injured, and no one had witnessed the incident except the six in our car, and the other driver.

Meanwhile, the three girls had fled into the night, leaving the boys to explain themselves when police arrived.

I don’t remember if any citations were issued. Both cars were driven away.

Bob Smith and his wife, Jody, live in Omaha. He is a 1955 graduate of Wahoo High School. To this day, Bob always stays carefully in his own lane while driving across bridges and viaducts.

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I had the Cango Wildlife Ranch in Oudtshoorn, South Africa to thank for this knowledge, where they let you go into the animal cages and pet the animals. Granted, it wasn’t all the animals. And the line was too long to pet a full-grown cheetah, so my wife and I elected to stroke the head of a smaller “junior cheetah.” But still. You don’t get to do that in Omaha. The Omaha zoo also doesn’t sell authentic, hand-woven penis guards in the gift shop. Which came with a picture, displaying how it should be properly worn.

I bought a bunch of those of my co-workers.

•••

Before the zoo, we went on a cave tour at the Cango Caverns. The caves were neat, but the highlight of the trip was when the guide pointed to a metal star permanently affixed to the bottom of a flight of stairs and told us,

“This is where someone slipped, hit his head, and died.”

He also told us a story about a fat woman who took the “adventure tour” and got stuck in a crevice. They had to call rescue services, who cut off her clothes and buttered her up in order to try to extract her obese body. Unfortunately, she was the last person on the tour, so everyone else had to patiently wait a few hours for them to work her free before they could exit the cave.

We were pulled over twice on the way to Oudtshoorn, both times being told to pay tickets on the spot—which both times the African policeman stuffed the bills of South African Rand into his pocket as soon as it was passed to him through the window. One of the cops asked “do you have something for me?” Which I shrewdly replied to with an, “uhh no?” Which he then followed up with, “where are you from?” Which I then said “the United States,” which he responded with, “Oh Barack Obama?” And I immediately replied, “Oh yeah, I LOVE Barack Obama.”

That bribe was quite a bit cheaper than the other one.

Clearly there were different rules in this country than what I was used to. Rules like, “if it’s yellow, let it mellow,” meaning you weren’t supposed to flush your pee because the southern part of the country was in an extreme drought, and they couldn’t spare the water to flush anything other than #2s. But other rules were less clear, and those didn’t come with a helpful rhyme posted on a laminated sign in each public toilet.

•••

We learned a few tips on how to stare down a mother elephant when one stepped out in front of her calf and started stomping toward us. Our safari guide Clifton knew exactly how to de-escalate the situation, and the mama and her baby were able to safely pass in front of our safari vehicle without incident. But Clifton wasn’t always around to tell me what to do.

Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap region was a marked stop on our sightseeing bus tourist map. The region houses the largest concentration of pre-nineteenth century homes in South Africa. The story of Bo-Kaap, like much of South Africa, is directly correlated with poverty and segregation, but with a little more fun. Slaves of Malaysian descent lived in the area originally and then the identical white row houses were leased to low-income residents. But gradually, as each home was transitioned from rental property to permanent ownership, the homeowners announced their newfound financial independence by painting the drab, whitewashed units a bright pastel color of their choosing. Today, for miles and miles, the community is as vibrant as a field of easter eggs.

We thought this would be cool, but we never got to see it.

I don’t understand the phrase “stick out like a sore thumb.” I’ve never once seen someone’s thumb and thought, “wow, that must be sore, it really stands out from the rest of his fingers.” Are there a lot of people with thumb injuries I’m unaware of?

But in a poor, African neighborhood that takes pride in changing a boring, white paint job into a neon shade of self-expression, being white is… well… suffice to say you stick out if you’re white. Especially when you’re carrying 3000 Rand worth of souvenirs in plastic bags with both hands. As soon as we hopped-off our hop-on/hop-off bus, my wife and I were approached by a homeless man of Malaysian descent.

“Oh my baby, my baby is sick. Please sir help my baby, I need money for my baby.”

Me, the experienced road warrior, was onto this man’s game. I could see right through it. No sir, not today. I kept walking without a response.

“Oh please, oh please. My baby needs formula, let’s just go in this store and you can buy me the formula. Just right here. Oh please sir my baby.”

He was persistent, but I was wise.

“Where is your baby?”

Ha, that’ll get him.

“With his mom, he’s too sick. Just right here, let’s go in this store. It’s not much money. Please sir. Here let’s go inside.”

Fuck. I was certain that would work. We passed by a Marriott property with a door guard. I considered walking into the hotel and pretending I was staying there. Surely the Marriott staff was used to this kind of thing and would dispose of the hobo based on some established protocol, but I decided that would be overkill. I’d dealt with plenty of homeless beggars in my lifetime, eventually they just go away.

“Right up here, let’s go right up here. Oh my sick baby. Please help.”

The pestering lasted several blocks, and at this point we were turned around. I couldn’t focus. I didn’t see any colorful houses. All I could hear was a smelly man in torn clothing going on and on about a make-believe sick baby.

He pushed us into a store and took us to a very specific aisle.

“Oh no, it’s not here. They’re out of my baby ‘s formula.”

Wow. Shocker.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no. There’s another store, but it’s far. Just give me the money and I’ll go get it.”

I’d gone along with this charade for long enough, I needed it to end so I could see some colorful poor-people houses. Twenty South African Rand is the American equivalent of just under two dollars. I could have fed an entire orphanage of fake babies with the petty cash in my wallet, but it was the principal of the thing, ya know? Right?

“I’m not giving you any money. I don’t think you have a baby.”

He pulled in close. Close enough to where my wife couldn’t hear. But I could. Unlike the fake panic he had been speaking in up to this point, his voice was steady and measured.

“Look, I have a knife in my pocket and I could just stab you and take everything, but I don’t want to do that. Just give me 20 Rand.”

Well, that was a new one. In the moment, I still felt calm. But something changed inside me. I matched his tone.

“I give you 20 Rand and you go away?”

“Yes. That’s all I want.”

I fished my wallet out of my front pocket—you know, only an idiot would put it in the back of his jeans as bait for pickpockets— and took out a brown bill with a picture of Nelson Mandela.

“Go.”

•••

Fight changed to flight. I no longer wanted to see any colorful houses. I no longer wanted to be in Africa. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. We went back to the bus stop, but there was no bus. I couldn’t wait, not after that. We tried finding a cab, but when we located what we were told was the taxi station, the garage was full of poor people cramming into full-sized vans. That’s when I remembered what I had read about South African taxis before the trip. There were no South African taxis. During Apartheid, white people drove cars and non­whites were expected to walk. So, gangs established an unregulated system of public transportation, which often resulted in abductions and robberies.

I needed to get out of this part of Cape Town. Now. We walked toward the ocean. That’s generally where we were staying. Where white people stayed. The urgency was painted on our faces, and a man with an AK-47 and a safety vest took notice.

“Do you need help sir?”

“Yes. Please. We’re trying to make our way to our hotel, we’re a little freaked out. A guy just threatened to pull a knife on me.”

“Follow me sir.”

I could feel the cortisol drain from my body. This man led us the rest of the way, shooing away suspicious folks and holding up traffic when we needed to cross, all under the protection of his semi-automatic weapon and high visibility safety vest.

“OK, here we are sir.”

I thanked the man profusely. I had never been so frightened while travelling, but I had to hand it to South Africa. Like the waitress who gets your order wrong but comps your meal, they knew how to make things right.

“Excuse me sir, don’t you have something for me?”

Uh, ok.

I pulled out my wallet again from my front pocket. I had given the mugger my last 20 Rand bill. So I handed this guy a 50.

“Thank you sir. Enjoy your time in South Africa.”

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Dumpster-Diving Into History: Citizens Rescue Nearly Century-Old Bound Newspapers

WAHOO -- If it weren’t for just plain luck -- aided by the city library director, a history-loving studio photographer and a museum curator -- a slice of Saunders County journalistic history would have perished from local view.

In recent weeks, the interior of the Wahoo Newspaper’s former headquarters at Sixth and Broadway is being stripped of its contents in preparation for the property’s sale.

The building dates from 1907 and is currently owned by Robert Johnson of Wahoo. Lee Enterprises, owner of the Wahoo Newspaper, was the most recent tenant. It also owns several other newspapers in Nebraska and several states. The Wahoo paper continues be published from its other locations.

Driving by, Joe Vculek, a local photographer, farmer and unofficial local historian, peeked into the bin, noticing that many bound volumes of old newspapers were among the doomed rubbish.

“There’s no law against taking stuff from dumpsters,” Vculek declared. (Later, it was learned that their actions were legitimate since the dumpster was parked on a city street and not on private property).

Vculek took some loose newsprint scraps for study, and decided to share the discovery with Denise Lauver, Director of the Wahoo Public Library. Erin Hauser, Curator of the Saunders County Museum, joined the group that met that evening at the dumpster site.

Lauver later explained that Wahoo Police Department Chief, Joe Baudler, was notified of the group’s intent. (There were no police present at the recovery site or library).

The library director said her interest had first been piqued when she spotted the dumpster and some of its contents during her morning walk.

Subsequent inquiries by Vculek revealed that Lee Enterprises maintains warehousing in Omaha and that multiple truckloads from Wahoo had already been delivered there.

Vculek agreed that the albums left behind to be disposed of are possibly duplicates of those already in the company’s vast Omaha warehouses, or are in poor condition.

But he concurred that local access to any of the newspapers in Omaha would be iffy, at best, even if the papers were digitalized. For the sake of storage room, it is common practice most everywhere to destroy such items after they are thus reproduced.

Curator Hauser is still inventorying the albums now being stored in the library’s basement. When and if the printed history is snug and safe in acid-free capsules and officially accessioned by the local museum’s board of directors, the public would then be free to experience first-hand the actual printed pages.

Future generations of local history aficionados, perhaps hungry to know more about their family trees, may thank the small gang of citizens who were willing to dive deeply into a dumpster to bring the printed words to a safe harbor here at home.

Purple Streetlights May Pose Danger

One by one, many LED streetlights in the southwest part of Wahoo (the Lower West Side?) have recently begun emitting weird purplish-blue rays instead of the formerly bright white lighting.

This eerie color transformation is on the increase here in our town, causing a potential safety hazard.

The prestigious Scientific American issue of September 27, 2023 suggested that “…the hue of the light illuminating a roadway could affect how drivers and pedestrians perceive their surroundings as they make their way through the night. And that makes purple streetlights a potential safety hazard.”

I first noticed the purpling last spring around Chestnut and First streets. It has continued to spread in that general area.

The purpling is spreading steadily now, day by day. I estimate that a dozen or more are already tuned strong purple, and a lot more show signs of the deterioration. One can actually watch the progress of a defective light as it grows more purple.

I haven’t yet noticed this phenomenon in other parts of the city.

But Wahoo is not alone. Cities all over the nation have encountered this low-profile phenomenon over the past few years.

In 2021, the city of Lincoln began quietly replacing thousands of the faulty LED streetlights. That city said the manufacturer would foot that bill, and indicated that the labor costs involved would also be addressed.

The Scientific American stated that the bright purple light suggests the phosphor layer around the lights has been “delaminated”—peeled off—exposing the blue LED light underneath.*

*https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/#:~:text=It%20is%20hard%20to%20determine,LED%20light%20underneath%2C%20Brgoch%20says.

..”American cities and towns started switching their streetlights from sodium lamps to LEDs about 15 years ago, which changed the color of many nighttime roads from yellowish orange to bright white.”

“But lately an odd new nocturnal color has been spotted across the nation—and the globe. Anecdotal reports of purple-looking streetlights have been popping up since early 2021 in states including Florida, Utah, Texas and Massachusetts, as well as in Canada and Ireland.”

The article continues: “As for the possible delamination of the lamps’ coating, it could be caused by anything: heat buildup inside the light fixture because of constant operation, vibrations from passing cars or even gravity tugging downward on the phosphor layer.”

“Purple streetlights aren’t good for driver or pedestrian safety.

“First, it’s possible that losing the phosphor layer dims the lamps’ brightness…

“Secondly, blue- and violet-saturated light can worsen people’s ability to see details because of the lack of blue-sensitive cones in the center of the (human eye’s) retina.

“Finally, the blue-violet light makes it very difficult to distinguish between different colors. Everything becomes a shade of blue or black.”

Pedestrians and drivers are advised to “stay safe under purple streetlights by removing sunglasses and blue-light-filtering glasses when walking or driving at night.”

Carolyn Barry, Wahoo’s Utility Office Manager, said the staff has recently been apprised of the purpling and had recently met to discuss it further.

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When 62-year-old Jan Radecki gave them back a dollar and said she didn't have the other 20 cents of change, Radecki allegedly “was punched, grabbed by the throat, and had his glasses broken” by the Kanes. When police arrived on the scene, they found Patrick Kane hidden in an upstairs bedroom and his cousin with a torn $5 bill in his pocket, presumably the result of a scuffle to retrieve the money back from the cabbie.1

Patrick Kane ended up in court, but despite the controversy, witnesses defended Kane. It appeared the driver “locked the cousins in the car to try to keep (the Kanes) from skipping out on the fare.”

The cab driver’s attorney had his own interpretation he would tell WGN radio in Chicago.

“There was a dispute over the fee and it just kind of escalated from there,” said attorney Andrew Lo'Tempio. “It wasn’t really a robbery. That is probably a large distortion of what happened.”2

Four months later, my buddy Josh and I would find ourselves in that same city in need of a late-night ride home of our own.

•••

We arrived at the Buffalo, New York airport with just enough time to catch the light-rail to HSBC Arena, home of the Buffalo Sabres. We were on the first leg of an international hockey trip. Over the next four days we would: watch four hockey games in two different countries, kiss the Stanley Cup, sideswipe a rental car on a Canadian freeway, stay the night in an Ottawa hostel that used to be a jail, drive to Montreal at 3AM to take a picture, get pulled over by an actual Canadian Mountie, get out of a ticket by saying we didn’t know how to convert kilometers to miles per hour, and fly to Chicago to visit Josh's girlfriend. We were poor and unpretentious, so we tried to cut costs wherever we could. Specifically, we were planning on spending the night in the Buffalo Airport.

When the game got over we caught the last train from HSBC Arena to the Anchor Bar—the birthplace of the original buffalo wing. The train wouldn't be running after we finished our late-night bar food. We didn’t know how we would get from The Anchor Bar to the Airport, and then from the Airport to a bus station to catch our early morning ride to Toronto, but we'd figure it out later.

The original buffalo wing tasted, well…, like a buffalo wing. I guess that was the point. We sampled the requisite items and then got to work figuring out what we were going to do once the bar tab was paid. Uber wasn't a thing yet, and Josh's first-generation iPhone was only equipped with first generation apps that allowed him to play Settlers of Catan and store a digital copy of his library card. We asked our waiter for advice.

“Do you have any tips on how get to the airport from here?”

“I’ll call you a cab.”

A taxicab. This elegant solution never entered our sheltered little Nebraska brains.

•••

When I think of New York taxi drivers, two archetypes come to mind. The initial stereotype is a first-generation Indian immigrant who speaks in a heavy Farsi accent. When I went to New York City with my family a few years prior, this was who picked us up from La Guardia. It was also who was driving when my mom loudly whispered, “LOOK AT HIS NAME CHRIS,” and pointed to the visor where his identification badge read "Butts Faisal.” Butts. With two t’s. As in more than one butt. My mom thought this was hilarious.

Even though Buffalo isn’t a New York City borough, it was the second type of driver who pulled up to the Anchor Bar parking lot. His name was Joe—a gruff, overweight man with a Brooklyn accent who doesn’t give no shits ‘bout nobody. The burly Sopranos character rolled down his window and yelled through the opening:

“YOU TWO CALL A CAB?”

“Yeah, uhh… That was us.”

“WHERE YA HEADED?”

“The airport?”

“GET IN.”

It's a sixteen-minute cab ride from the Anchor Bar to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, twenty-four minutes if it's obvious that you're not from around there. As he pulled away from The Anchor Bar, Joe aggressively snatched the tiny handheld radio receiver that was clipped to the dash. He spit as he talked.

“ 323 LEAVING NOW.”

The receiver was replaced with enough force to make it think twice about doing whatever it was that it did to upset Joe. He turned his attention to Josh and I.

“WHAT YA GUYS DOING IN BUFFALO?”

“We're actually taking a trip to catch a bunch of hockey games. We just watched the Sabres tonight.”

"YA GOT A FLIGHT OR SOMETHING?"

“No, we were hoping to get a couple of hours of sleep before taking a bus to Toronto in the morning.”

“A BUS? WELL, WHY IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO THE AIRPORT?"

“We thought it would be a safer place to sleep.”

“HOW YA GETTIN TO YOUR BUS?”

“We haven 't really figured that out yet.”

“I'LL TAKE YA.”

He wasn’t asking. It was an order. Now that we had guaranteed a second encounter with Joe, his radio started beeping.

“this fuckin guy he never shuts the fuck up.”

“Car 323 this is the station over BEEP… 323 report. BEEP.”

Joe ripped the radio receiver from the latch as if the voice on the other end was the high school point guard who slept with his girlfriend.

“YAH WHAT YA WANT?”

“323 report BEEP.… 323 REPORT! BEEP”

“(goddammit this fuckin guy) I GOTTA COUPLE GUYS AND I’M HEADIN TO THE AIRPORT.”

“323 I need you to go to 17^th and Handley for a call. Acknowledge. BEEP.”

“I GOTTA COUPLE OF GUYS I AIN’T GOIN…”

“323 ACKNOWLEDGE. BEEP”

Joe wasn’t acknowledging.

“323 VERBALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HEARD ME”

ALARM

Joe had hit the talk button again, overriding what the dispatcher was saying to cut him off, mid-sentence with a beep. Just to piss the guy off.

“323 I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING BUT I EXPECT YOU TO REPORT. VERBALLY ACKNOWLEDGE OR I AM WRITING YOU UP. BEEP.”

“Yeah I hear ya. I hear ya. I acknowledge.”

The car slowed until Joe came to a complete stop in the middle of the intersection.

“ALRIGHT. AIRPORT. NOW YOU BOYS GONNA BE RIGHT HERE AT 7AM?!”

Joe wasn’t asking. It was another order.

"YOU BETTER BE HERE. IF I’M GONNA BE HERE I EXPECT YOU BOYS TO BE HERE. 7 AM. YOU GONNA PROMISE ME?”

“Yeah… we promise…yes we'll be here "

“ALRIGHT, GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. I’ll see you boys at 7. That'll be $23 for the ride.”

My friend took out his wallet and started counting bills. When he selected a $20 and a $5 out of his wad of cash, he raised his eyebrows toward me and shrugged toward the money. We were from Nebraska, we didn't know how much to tip a cab driver.

“YOU BOYS BETTER BE HERE AT 7.”

Remembering what happened to Patrick Kane as he was trying to exit a Buffalo cab, I grabbed an extra $10 out of Josh's hand and gave it to Joe—before he had a chance to lock the doors.

•••

Sleeping in an airport was even less comfortable than we expected. Terrified we would miss our official meeting time, we woke a full hour before Josh's alarm. We found our agreed upon rendezvous point and at 6:58AM, a yellow cab pulled up.

“I GOTTA SAY. YOU BOYS ARE GOOD. BUT I’M BETTER. I TURNED DOWN TWO RIDES TO PICK YOU BOYS UP."

Joe had apparently patched things up with the dispatcher. He attempted small talk.

“WHAT YOU BOYS DO FOR WORK?”

“Well I'm in college still, and my buddy here is a youth pastor.”

“A PASTOR? YOU A PASTOR? DAMN… YOU KNOW THAT'S REAL GOOD. THIS WORLD IS A FUCKED-UP PLACE. YOU KNOW JUST THE OTHER DAY I HAD A GIRL SAY SHE WOULD SUCK MY DICK SO SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY HER FARE. I MEAN CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? IT'S A FUCKED-UP WORLD WE LIVE IN."

We gave Joe another real nice tip, at least it felt really nice. It was at least nice enough for lawyers to never get involved. I turned to Josh.

“Wow, I don’t know to make of that. Can you believe his blow job story? You think that was true?”

“I’m not sure, but did you notice how he never said whether or not he accepted the blow job?”

Somehow, I have a feeling Joe was one to follow through. After all, he did pick us up on time.

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My parents had their 50th anniversary this year, and during their party, I pulled them aside to ask them a series of questions about their relationship. My six -year-old son and eight-year-old daughter came up with the initial questions, but since those were all pretty stupid, we asked AI to write the rest of the interview for us.

This is that interview.

CHRIS:

All right. You remember the newlywed game?

MOM:

Yes, I do.

CHRIS:

This is the 50th anniversary game.

MOM:

Oh, my goodness.

CHRIS:

The questions were made by your family members and ChatGPT. So you're going to do it and then we're going to make dad do it.

MOM:

Oh my.

CHRIS:

See if the answers line up later. First question. Do you think kissing is lovely?

MOM:

In the early days?

DAD:

Yes.

CHRIS:

Do you think hugging is lovely?

DAD:

Yes.

MOM:

I don't think anything is lovely. Yeah, I like hugging.

CHRIS:

Would you rather kiss or hug?

MOM:

Hug.

DAD:

Hug, I guess.

CHRIS:

Did you guys like each other when you kissed?

DAD:

Yes.

MOM:

Did the kids make up these questions?

CHRIS:

These are the kids ones. This is the last kid one.

MOM:

Okay. Well, yes.

CHRIS:

Okay. What is one thing your spouse still does after 50 years you still secretly find adorable or mildly annoying?

MOM:

Mildly annoying. I find it annoying when he likes to help me cook.

DAD:

Jeez, I don't know. I'm playing two questions at the same time here. The annoying part, I've kind of blown all that off. I don't know if any of it annoys me anymore. Anything that did annoy her. So then if we don't go there, we got to go the other way. The way she takes care of children.

CHRIS:

That's annoying?

DAD:

No, that's...

CHRIS:

That's adorable?

DAD:

Yeah.

CHRIS:

What car did your wife have when you first met?

DAD:

What what?

CHRIS:

What kind of car did she have when you first met?

DAD:

She didn't have one.

CHRIS:

No? How'd she get around?

DAD:

She was either with her friends or I think she might have borrowed the family car. Or when we first met, it was mostly me getting her around.

CHRIS:

What kind of car did you have?

DAD:

I want to say that was either a Ford or the Rambler. I don't know if I still had the Ford. I think I had the Ford. We spent more time on my brother's Cutlass, though, after I come back from the Army, so I think the Ford. I'm going with the Ford.

MOM:

He borrowed his brother's car, I think. And then his first car was a Nova, I think. No, it was a Rambler. Never mind, it was a Rambler.

CHRIS:

What color was it?

MOM:

Bluish.

CHRIS:

Okay. Who said, I love you first, and how long did it take?

MOM:

I don't remember. But, you know, he went to the service right away, and then we kind of reconnected. So, from the first I met him, probably, I don't know, two years?

DAD:

Probably me.

CHRIS:

How long did it take?

DAD:

I don't know. Months.

CHRIS:

What was your spouse wearing on your first date?

DAD:

I have no clue.

CHRIS:

What were you wearing?

DAD:

No clue. I suppose jeans.

CHRIS:

Were they clean?

DAD:

Yes, I'm sure they were.

MOM:

No clue.

CHRIS:

What was your first date?

MOM:

We double dated with our friend and went to the drive-in theater.

CHRIS:

What movie was playing?

MOM:

Don't know.

CHRIS:

Did it go well?

MOM:

Well, I met up with them again.

DAD:

The first one I remember was going to Taco John's, and she didn't know what she wanted, whether hot. I just got her soft shells with hot sauce, the hottest of head. She didn't say anything about the second or third bite.

I ate seven of them.

CHRIS:

Sounds romantic. If your spouse could relive one vacation you took together, which would he pick?

MOM:

Which would he pick? I think he liked the trip we took when I had a conference in Vegas and we went didn't have any destinations, but we drove to Scott's Bluff and down through Utah and then over to Nevada and South Bryce Canyon along the way.

DAD:

She was kind of sick on her honeymoon. That probably wouldn't be it. I'm going to go with first trip to Vegas.

CHRIS:

What is your wife's go-to comfort food or favorite snack?

DAD:

I'm not aware she has one. Licorice.

MOM:

Anything.

CHRIS:

Which of you is more likely to start a small project that turns into a weekend-long adventure?

MOM:

Me.

DAD:

Not me.

CHRIS:

What song would your wife say is your song, like your couple's song?

DAD:

Don't know. She's always reminding me. I didn’t see that big microphone there?

CHRIS:

What did you say it was your song?

DAD:

As a couple?

CHRIS:

Yeah.

DAD:

Don't have a clue. She would remind me, probably.

MOM:

My song?

CHRIS:

Like your couple song.

MOM:

It was called The Wedding Song back in the 70s. It really was. It was called The Wedding Song.

CHRIS:

Your song was called The Wedding Song?

MOM:

Uh-huh.

CHRIS:

Who sang it?

MOM:

I don't know.

CHRIS:

What's the most unusual gift your spouse has ever given you?

MOM:

Oh, my goodness. He gave me a stuffed cat that had stitches in his eye.

CHRIS:

Did you like it?

MOM:

It made me laugh.

CHRIS:

When was this?

MOM:

First Christmas.

DAD:

I don't know. I probably have to walk around the house to figure it out.

CHRIS:

Who's the better driver?

DAD:

She probably is.

MOM:

I'm gonna not say.

CHRIS:

What was your husband's favorite activity when you first met?

MOM:

Driving around in his car.

CHRIS:

Favorite things she liked to do when you first met?

DAD:

I suppose driving around, I guess. Seeing friends.

CHRIS:

What was your first reaction when you first met your spouse?

DAD:

I'm gonna... I'm looking for the word… Wouldn't be confused…On alert.

CHRIS:

What was your first reaction when you first met your spouse?

MOM:

Neutral.

CHRIS:

What flavor was your wedding cake?

MOM:

I think it was vanilla.

DAD:

I think it was white, I think. I'm going to go white.

CHRIS:

White?

DAD:

White.

CHRIS:

White's a flavor?

DAD:

Yeah, white's a flavor. Whatever white is, I don't know what flavor is white.

CHRIS:

Not brown.

DAD:

Yeah, it's not brown.

CHRIS:

After 50 years, what's one thing your spouse does that reminds you why you love them?

DAD:

The way she cares.

CHRIS:

After 50 years, what's one thing your husband does that reminds you why you love him?

MOM:

I don't know when he gets gentle.

CHRIS:

Okay, anything else you want to say?

MOM:

It's went by quickly.

CHRIS:

How romantic… Anything else you want to say?

DAD:

I might be in enough trouble already. I don't know.

CHRIS:

All right. Happy anniversary.

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