the most unusual job a vagrant ever had

the most unusual job a vagrant ever had

fiction
edward w pritchard

Some time when I was in college, its confusing to remember now, I started on the punishment of holding somewhere between twenty five and thirty different and unrelated jobs and professions in the course of my so called career. It wasn't  exactly my fault that I developed no security in life or went beyond the novice stage in so many ways of earning a living, every time I applied for a job I got it, although usually I was totally unprepared for the actual work involved in the day to day routines, and then after a lot of stumbling around, and a cloud of mental confusion on my part, I was sort of loved out of that particular business, although I was never actually fired or given a bad reverence. the plain fact was I looked properly to be in business and I was polite and intelligent especially for the first twenty years or so of my time in the commercial world. Later I developed an attitude toward free enterprise, capitalism, and the class system in America because of my lack of progress up the corporate ladder, dearth of security, and later dearth of the rewards and fruits of a life well spent in America of my time and place. But I digress

The most unusual job a vagrant ever had was when I worked down in the basement in the old vault, the one with the twelve foot thick cement walls lined with steel and the electronic timer on the impregnable steel door, that no one from the outside, bosses or fellow employees could open after I entered at nine AM until the end of my eight hour shift and half hour for lunch each day Monday to Friday back in 1986 at the old Goodyear bank there on main street in our home town. I was in charge of the loan collateral in a one man department which included a plethora of unusual items that over six hundred loan officers had diligently acquired over a fifty year period just before our friendly small town bank that was spectacularly successful was acquired in merger with the large New York bank and ran into the ground at least when it came to customer service and efficiency .

I had a CD player down in my job in the vault and listened to two or more  complete CD's each day from the thousands we had as collateral, and used a very fine thick leather chair to sit on, also collateral from a bankrupt car dealers estate, and here's the good part, I smoked some of the marijuana that was additional collateral on the Briar's estate loans back before the concept of medical marijuana existed, that I deemed a good way to relieve the stress of a boring day. That job routine lasted day to day Monday to Friday for about fifteen glorious months until that awful day I opened a special letter from our company President who I met once or twice when receiving an award for a job well done down there in the vault, a letter which I tore in half as I read the eleven reasons why the upcoming merger with big New York  made sense to the employees and stockholders of our small town Bank. Well the jig was up and I was back in the job market again, older but no wiser.

Later in my careers I specialized in watching the children and things like that and eventually qualified for the Social Security pension system here in America but sadly never got a corporate pension as well because other than working for more than two years in a law office as a runner once I never accrued the mandatory thirty years in one assignment to receive a defined pension plan from a benevolent employer. Somehow I am happy with my lot and seldom blame the system, it's the system, for my own personal shortcomings having taken the philosophical position that no one owes anyone a living or their daily bread that I heard someone say once somewhere or the other.

that's about it: a little advice from one in the trenches, or one crying out in the old wilderness on occasion

as I am so is all civilizations for all times

as I am so is all civilizations of all times

fiction
edward w pritchard

As I am so is all civilizations of all times; so write several prominent and important Germanic writers
such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Spengler and maybe Heidegger although no one ever finishes one of his essays. Mostly we postulate without science for verification, more fiction and creative daydreaming than fact synthesizing and fantasizing personal dilemmas and problems into epic growth cycles across the centuries progressing theologically toward me, my life, my discontents and most importantly my opinions.

Oh if only we all had been born in France with it's cafe society, and in my case could tolerate sitting around drinking coffee and had the social skills to have a few friends to listen to me and like the Frenchman Sartre a real woman, a willing feminist  to sit with me and lean in toward me as I whispered life's secrets.

It all comes together mystically with the Germans then bullying  an over confident Sartre and earlier today me sitting alone at the Panera bread reading a little Freud " Civilization and it's discontents" and I as an old man straining to find one of the women who is as attractive as females use to be back when, I was younger.

quotable ed on travel

quotable ed on travel

fiction
edward w pritchard

Among the highest honors I can give myself is to quote myself to emphasize a point. Here are a few of my original thoughts presented as quotes on travel especially when it is a quest for self knowledge or enlightenment.

" no one returns from travel silent"
ed

" travel especially to other places is so exhausting"
ed

" Let's just not go"
ed

" a quest begins on a whim and ends on a thud"
ed

" pack the suitcase meticulously but be sure it will fit in the overhead compartment"
ed

purgatory for non believers

Purgatory for non believers

fiction
edward w pritchard

Purgatory for non believers is a place, here and now where there's never quite enough money, you never lose that last twenty pounds and a chest cold never finishes the charade of living because of the benefit evolution gave your immune system from  3300 generations of spunky ancestors.

Housing values never go up when you are in purgatory, only property taxes, both the old house and old car needing looming repairs, mortgages and loans are always adjustable with inflation threatening from the next recession, bank accounts are checking only with no savings and overdraft fees on the rise from bank consolidations, cash in hand is just more than enough to support your unhealthy habits and perversions, and military veterans with fat pensions and high school students with good life prospects are always soliciting lucre over and over when you enter a grocery store to buy an instant caffeine fix to get you through another interminable morning. You live in the wrong place and time happy to be just alive under the dome of a protective sky and timeless landscape.

Pretty women keep getting older and older when you are in perpetual purgatory, and they never have red hair anymore, and never know or want to know anything about art history, Vermeer's best paintings, their sparkle left then a dozen years ago, and you have to endure tons and tons of idle discussion about money, see inane most current movies, and when they finally invite into their circle you always remember someone else anyway.

Doctors only prescribe more/more/more pills in Purgatory, Ministers aren't spiritual only officious, pedantic and obtuse and politicians not only aren't philosopher Kings, but they are dishonest, and are raving fans, [rah rah rah $], about their party to a fault.

The sky is too bright at night where you live in Purgatory for non believers to see the wonder of the distant universe and the hiking trails are crowded with over population on sunny days during your walks and every one drives way too fast in over-sized trucks to ruin your bike rides on the serene hilly roads.

Old Jesus was just another poor fellow, one of about three million the cruel ambitious Romans crucified in rows, Jesus who was another perfectly beautiful baby but grew up to have lots of problems with authority and got in all kinds of trouble because of talking about class warfare in his times and place. If you try to talk to Jesus silently in your head inspired by your childhood faith he sends you thoughts deep in your brain about randomness, probability and maybe fate and determinism that you learned in college instead of ready solutions to your insurmountable problems.  

Purgatory for non believers is day to day but mercifully each morning about six am you get out of bed and get real busy doing nothing with about fifty important things to pass the time until it's time to go to sleep alone again after you are done worrying  about houses never going up in value and old cars never running right anymore and how many days there really are in five to ten more years.

quiet students discontented octogenarians

quiet students discontented octogenarians

fiction
edward w pritchard

go ahead and blow up the bridge, the river's not as cold as it use to be

The students are polite and very quiet when the grandson learning to walk and I pass them on their campus. Students here seems to have no badges of unity and other than their backpacks and their student loan meal plan cards the college students in my town  display no communal party patches of solidarity at all observable to the casually interested.

Also wearing the backpacks now a days are the underclass of America best observed as humble folks traveling about on city buses or on street-corners carrying signs to pander coins from rushing motorists. The signs are not political messages against our leaders but pleas for sustenance presented handwritten in magic marker on cardboard signs stored under expressway bridges and sometimes shared by more than one of the near homeless standing in a cold rain around holidays here in our hometown. There seems to be no connections between the backpacks worn by the near homeless locally and the students use of backpacks as the students use backpacks starting in fifth grade and on into college to carry expensive books to learn how to succeed in the business world and the near homeless use backpacks to display an affiliation with American cultural norms to authority persons driving about in shiny uniforms and new expensive vehicles paid for by the Octogenarians in our Society.

The octogenarians are the ones who are discontented now a days. The old guys  don't listen to Barry McGuire " Eve of Destruction" anymore but they often complain vocally about inept government leadership, inequality in the implementation of taxation strategies across the Centuries, and have strong opinions on which middle age wealthy male glamour boy understands the forgotten man in America the best. Octogenarians should never wear a backpack- it's like putting a hat on a horse, and anyone over sixty five in America is pretty much harmless anyway in reality, that is unless he is an older  male politician. In any case the elderly including the octogenarians have no solidarity either. The elderly have no clout collectively at all because too many of them are sidetracked by economic issues but when sitting in a group at the McDonald's having  the discounted senior coffee the elderly express loudly to the entire dining area strong heart felt opinions on libertarian-ism, rising health insurance costs, property taxes and of course why if a person can stand in a cold rain all day holding a sign begging for money from drivers at expressway exits why can't they just get a job, like everyone else.

There is no Solidarity in America among the students, the under classes, the elderly or anyone else that I can see. But somehow we all maintain the Hope that the wealthy short haired conservative male politicians will look out for the interests of all of us commoners. Most of the time we just go on with our lives forgetting about how dysfunctional things are now compared to when Ulysses S Grant or Warren G. Harding was our President

Advice to students from one of the elderly? I hear our new President wants to beef up our navy with some new mega battle ships and restart the nuclear arms race. Students work for or invest in companies that make 1950's style bomb shelters and maybe listen to a little of Barry McGuire's " Eve of [Disruption] strike that of Destruction". Both are a little corny but since the future is so hard to predict I recommend -everything old is new again. Watch for me in a backpack hiking along watching and silently observing or maybe complaining and pontificating a little too loud over a McDonald's senior coffee.

Grandson's first birthday wishes

Grandson's first birthday wishes

fiction
edward w pritchard


Ordered by your Mother not to buy you a present for your first birthday party today I'll impart advice to sit with the Love and comfort  I give each time I am blessed fortunate enough to spend a few hours chasing you about as you perfect your walking and understanding. Fret not little King I'll slip you a cookie, vegan of course, with no sugar the next time we exchange vowel sounds standing in front of a mirror down at Quaker Square were we spent some time together way back in early Winter 2016 before the oat silos where torn down, you grew into a man, and I disappeared into your distant memory.

First listen more than you talk to those around you during this the next year as you face the daunting and extremely fascinating challenge of learning to talk to be understood and hearing to understand. From your Mother's parents may you harvest eternal curiosity with the nuances of words and symbols, spoken, written and sung and the intricacies between our language, our dreams, our Culture and the invisible Universe that sometimes is easy to forget and difficult to understand.

For your tenth Birthday Love and worship your Mother and smile kindly at your Father when you best him in a race. Play the piano with your uncle and grandmother when they sing you happy birthday. When you are twelve sleep outside on hard ground in the wind and cold, capture breakfast food from a Lake or stream and tramp joyously about the hills and valleys enclosing your environment.

For your nineteenth year be polite to your elders, kind to your girlfriend and respectful of your neighbors. Stay busy, value rare time alone, and stop and brush snow off your Mother's car in an early morning winter storm.

to be continued

and me, your grandfather, what was I like at about 65 years old coming to grips with my mortality?

here is something I wrote, some what related to how we are born, bloom and eventually die and must eventually pass on,

when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town

when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town

fiction
edward w Pritchard

Us farmers, store keepers, women and children milled around a long time after the circus packed up and steadily left town. The ground shook from the trump of the elephants, the squeak of the wagon wheels carrying the fat lady and the fire eating boy could be heard for a long, long way off and you could see the red hair of the world's tallest man for over a half mile before the entire circus retinue was out of sight; steadily traversing Cario hill off southwest to Carterville.

For four glorious days our lives were transformed by all the performers of the three ring circus but now the strongman who wrestles a giant bear, the woman who trains miniature horses, and the rest of the troupe are all gone; off to the next venue. 

Back to our lives tomorrow.

a poet, an artist, and a romantic in the trenches

a poet, an artist, and a romantic in the trenches

fiction
edward w pritchard

Captain says he don't need a poet, an artist or a romantic in the trenches when the enemy starts to bomb with the big guns, sends over the noxious gases on a foul wind, or sneaks up on you in the dark and sticks a twisting rusted bayonet in your buddies neck where it attaches at the jaw.

Ain't that the way it is, you try to behave with civility and some mercenary from over there blows a whistle and over the top they come at full gallop giving the rebel yell fighting with a fury for King, Country, big business interests and their own intricate long range plans of economic comfort after they retire from the competition to have stuff and earn a good comfortable living.

If you are going to carry a bible here in the trenches don't read it, and don't follow what it says about love thy fellow man; stick it in your shirt pocket it might just stop a bullet one day.

You can't reason with them on the other side, they ain't your friend, you don't owe them nothing and  this disagreement between countries is just a catastrophic explosion that will send pieces of the heart's of a poet, an artist and a romantic flying in all directions.

There ain't no civility or rules involved protect yourself at all costs and don't forgive them with passing time nor does self interested explanations  mitigate what the enemy did. Protect your heart from further damage.

Don't close your eyes for a moment staring out into the darkness and dust across no man's land. One day they will be a comin back over the top.