This is my fiancée, Donna Sue Atkins. She is holding a rough sketch of an engagement ring I just designed for her. The design incorporates the Yin/Yang symbol of Taoism, though we are not Taoists. The design includes our monograms of “gwb” and “dsa” within the dots.
This morning I asked Donna if she wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives. She does. So I asked her again to marry me. “Let me think about it.” Midafteroon I asked her again. “Give me five minutes.” “Take six.” Six minutes later she said Yes.
I got into my car to do errands, and Get A Haircut was on the list. Pushed the Android Auto Search microphone icon and when it beeped I said “Barber shop near me.” It navigated me to a shop on Monroe Street with traditional barber poles, and I walked in, and wow, did I feel white. The clientele and staff were African-American, there was hip-hop playing on the speakers, and a large portrait of Muhammad Ali just inside the front door.
One of the barbers looked up at me and said, “Help you?”
“Just a haircut,” I said, and sat to wait. I felt like an intruder, though no one there said or did anything to make me feel unwelcome. But I also felt as though Fate had handed me a ticket to a new Great Human Adventure.
“What’s your name?” said the big man in whose chair I now sat. He reminded me a little of Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier, former defensive tackle for the LA Rams. (He is still with us at 94 years of age!) When I said Gary he said I could call him JV.
JV listened carefully to what I wanted: short, professional-looking, squared-off collar-length in back, REALLY short on the sides, and enough on top to keep it from sticking up. And in about 25 minutes he produced the EXACT haircut I had described.
“I think I know what JV stands for,” I told him.
“My first name is Jamal…”
“Nah. I’m pretty sure JV stands for Justly Victorious.” That gave him a grin.
I got permission to mention his name and my new haircut in a post,paid him in full with a $10 tip, and went home to show my Sweetheart the work of art on my head.
I lived in the Valley of the Sun most of my life. I was able as a child to walk barefoot on asphalt in heat upwards of 110° F. In 1989 I and my then-spouse bought a house near 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road, and about a year later our daughter was born at Community Hospital, less than a mile away. The marriage lasted 23 years, but was only intermittently happy.
hello, toledo, ohio
where my sweetheart has taken me on as cohabitant
whence we came after traveling in a 2023 kia soul
named celeste
At 11:52 PM the night of July 3rd, 2026 I left my apartment for the last time; the leaseexpired at midnight. I and my sweetheart spentour last night in Phoenix at the Hampton Inn & Suites.The morning of July 4 we left Phoenix; near sundown we found ourselves in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, looking for authentic New Mexican Mexican food. My sweetheart stepped on a sort of grating with small round cutouts, her flipflop caught an edge, and she pitched forward onto her face most of the impact was absorbed by her right knee and her nose near its bridge. We ended up ordering pizza delivery from Pizza 9, a chain based in New Mexico. It was delicious.
Next evening, after driving halfway through the Texas Panhandle, we stopped for the day at Amarillo and had appetizer takeout from the Red Robin across the street from our hotel. The pretzel bites were goodbut aftera day of monotonous scenery of grass, wind farms, baled hay and occasional cows, we were too hypnotized to enjoy it much.
In Yukon, in metropolitan Oklahoma City, we had an unmemorable meal except for fried green beans while watching the U.S. soccer team fall to Belgium. The better team won, thank Goodness. That day we’d had nice cloudscapesand terrain that reminded my sweetheart Donna of her native Tennessee.
In Saint Robert, Missouri, near Lebanon, Donna and I had a DELICIOUS steak dinner at a place called Colton’s. We were a bit put off by the bad taxidermy of the trophy heads, though.
Next day was chaos and mishap. In Saint Louis sudden rain and an abrupt lane change lent themselves to a near collision, sending me into a narrow triangle of asphalt that was neither one lane nor the other, and only quick braking prevented a sideswipe. I did not shake, but was shaken.
Right past the stadium in Indianapolis the AI navigator announced a seventeen-minute slowdown, and gridlock prevailed. Just when it eased some came the news that a five-minute slowdown was imminent. It feels crawly to go from 70+ mph to less than a slow walk.
From then on, despite frequent lane closures and mowing and construction zones, driving was smooth. The “Welcome to Ohio” sign gave us a big boost. The “Highway 225/Toledo” turnoff was positively thrilling; and we rolled up our driveway before it was fully dark.
Soon I will move from Phoenix, Arizona to Toledo, Ohio. I want to have all my wordly possessions reduced to what I can fit into my 2023 Kia Soul, with my sweetheart and future cohabitant Donna in the passenger seat.
The problem: I have dozens of ceramic works, and eight cases of comic books. The comic books alone would take up most of the cargo space in my vehicle. Same with the ceramics.
The strategy: I will donate all but a very few of the comic books to Friends of the Phoenix Public Library. I will pack up the ceramics and take what I can. The rest I will preserve in two dimensions, digitally…and abandon.
An ancient proverb goes something like “In the course of a long lifetime, a wise man must be prepared to abandon his baggage several times.” This is one such time.
November 2015 I answered an ad calling for restaurant workers at the airport; got a Cashier/Host gig at Matt’s Big breakfast in Terminal 4 right by Gate B5 at Phoenix Sky Harbor Int’l Airport; gave two weeks’ notice in September of 2021; had some glorious semi retirement adventures; reapplied for work with parent company SSP America after doing a three-week prep cook training course; was hired as a prep cook for the SSP Commissary in May of 2023; was tapped for tomato-slicing duty by Chef Adam that November. My main job since then has been running thousands of tomatoes through a manual hand-slicer with multiple parallel blades. Over two-plus years I have gotten to be good at it. It is not rocket science, but it does involve some choreography, especially when I start running out of tomatoes.
My good-humored co-workers call me “Mr. Tomato” or “Tomatoman” on occasion. That is fine with me. I strive to be the best Tomatoman I possibly can be. And to the other Tomatofolks out there, amateur or professional, I salute you. May your tomatoes ever be firm yet not underripe!!
When I was growing up our family library included books of fairy tales, and one of my favorites was The Wonder Clock by Howard Pyle. And my favorite of the twenty-four stories in that book was “How Boots Befooled the King.” The book is in the public domain now, and I urge interested parties to find it via Google Books or Project Gutenberg. It is lavishly illustrated in glorious detail by the author.
“How Boots Befooled the King” came to mind because tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, a day for practical jokes and pretense. It was once my favorite holiday. The challenge of coming up with believable fakery delighted me.
One memorable April Fool’s Day in the late 20th Century I called my mother and crestfallenly asked her if it would be OK if I stayed in her guest house a few days–domestic trouble at home; looks like a divorce is in the cards. She bought it hook, line and sinker, and was furious when I “April Fool!!”ed her, but also enormously relieved that it was a joke. (Alas, in 2004 or thereabouts it started to become obvious that the marriage wasn’t working out. We were growing apart. Eventually we agreed to stay together until our daughter had finished her education. The divorce was finalized on December 19, 2011.)
One prank I pulled right before an April Fool’s Day 5K footrace called the “Fools 5K” in the early 90s, which I and my running pal George had signed up for, happened just before the airhorn sounded to start the race. I looked George in the eye and said, “Hey, George, some advice. Whatever you do during this race…try your best not to think of the Jetson’s theme song.” Poor George was doomed to run every step of the three-miles-plus with the obnoxious “Meet George Jetson…” theme song looping in his head. In my defense, at least it was only a 5K and not a marathon. And I bought lunch after, to make up for my mischief.
My Sweetheart Donna had a younger brother, Scott, who was born on April Fool’s Day. “I teased him mercilessly on his birthday,” she says, calling him an April Fool and “Scott the Snot” and “Scott the Pot.” But she couldn’t fool him. “He was so much smarter than I was, or ever will be.” She loved him profoundly, and he loved her. Tragically, Donna lost Scott to the AIDS epidemic. She grieves, and always will.
I wonder if and how I will celebrate April Fool’s Day tomorrow. I feel too old and sober-sided to pull any shenanigans, especially in these harrowing times. Most likely I will do a search on “April Fool’s Day pranks” and vicariously enjoy other people’s japes. And I will definitely do a search for Norman Rockwell’s famous April Fool’s Day painting, wherein all kinds of crazy-impossible things happen, including birds flying upside down.
I hope you have an uplifting and good-foolish April Fool’s Day tomorrow, Friends. 🙂
When I was eleven years old/A sixth-grade student at a middle school called Unit VI/My homeroom teacher was Mrs. Virginia Holmberg
She was strict and forbidding/But an early pioneer of behavior modification/Incentivizing as she did/A perfect week of spelling scores/with the reward of a candy bar
And she read us an exciting Horatio Alger story once with each chapter ending in a bad-luck cliffhanger
But she also heaped out scorn in quantity/Shaming a kid who’d written his name on his desk top with//”Fools’ names and Fools’ faces/Are often seen in public places.”
So one fateful day she was talking about how breathtaking the sight of Halley’s Comet was…
And I, the runny-nosed know-it-all, the smallest kid in the class, saw a delightful opportunity…
And my hand shot up and Mrs. Holmberg nodded and me and said, “Yes?”…
And I said, “Mrs. Holmberg, wasn’t the last time Halley’s Comet came close to Earth…in 1910??”
Many class members gasped/In astonishment/at the revelation of how OLD Mrs. Holmberg must be/And I could swear she blushed/But then a little self-deprecating smile came to her face/And she said, “Why, yes. But I was only a little girl then.”
fifty-eight years ago today/I was in an operating room at st. joseph’s hospital/with a doctor reaching into my nose/and excising with his instrument/a gaggle of nasal polyps/of various sizes
then the doc jammed a yard/of packing material into my nasal cavity/to staunch bleeding
and the removal of that packing/produced the most intense pain i have ever felt/to this day
and second place goes/to when dr. frerichs in a subsequent visit/again reached into my nose/to pluck out developing scabs/to minimize scar tissue
and a distant third is the time/i tore off most of the skin of my left big toe/in a bike accident/when i was barefoot
but back to that scar tissue/minimized or not it and more polyps/have appeared in two mris/done five years apart/in my right sphenoid sinus
and that that region is unchanged/in five years/is great news
and I love the word “sphenoid”/so i am overall good/with my nose now
