A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Bill Chance

“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

I have a bit of a bike ride planned for later on this afternoon, but as I drove to the library to return a book due today I saw a huge thunderstorm building in the west. We’ll see. At least this time I had my camera in my car.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

-Mark Twain

I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.

-Katherine Mansfield

I spent yesterday afternoon rebuilding the bottom bracket on my mountain bike. When I went out to test it, the sky opened up before I could get to the end of the block. At least there was a nice evening rainbow.

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

-Marcel Proust

My Commute Home from Work

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Bill Chance

I used to tell people that I couldn’t ride a bike to work because the route wasn’t safe. The streets I drive on have a long, blind, fast curving stretch that would be fatal for a slow bicycle. But as I thought about it, I figured out that I could find a safe route – especially after the Glenville Trail that runs behind my house opened up. I thought about it for a year, then finally started to ride. It seemed like a big deal for me when I was thinking about it and when I rode the first time, but now it’s routine.

I don’t ride to work… there is no way for me to take a shower and I sweat like a stuck pig in this summer Texas heat – so I get someone to drive me in to work in the morning and I ride home. This has another advantage of taking away any time constraints so I can ride as slowly as I want. Friday I loaded a point and shoot into my handlebar bag and took some shots along the way.

Near my work I have a couple routes through the parking lots of an extensive area of small business parks. Looking at these businesses – of a tremendous variety – is always interesting to me. I admire and am fascinated by entrepreneurship and these strips of cheap space are the heart and birthplace of new industry.

Magrathea

Magrathea Incorporated? What a cool name. I looked them up – they are on facebook – they’re in the business of restoring classic old cars. A bit of a fall from making entire custom ordered planets – but still pretty interesting.

Wood World

Wood World – a neat store with all sorts of rare and useful wood raw materials, tools, and pen kits.

I emerge from the industrial parks and cross Spring Valley at a busy intersection next to the DART station. It’s a long, long light – then I play chicken with the transit busses turning left in front of me.

Here’s the hardest and most fun part of the ride. When you drive around Dallas, you think it is as flat as a pancake. But there are hills that you can notice on a bicycle – when you have to expend the energy to get up them. There’s this alley that I found – almost a mile long, and a slow steady uphill the whole way. When I first rode, it was a struggle riding that stretch. Now I barely even have to downshift. It’s a shock how quickly that changed.

Bike Lane on Grove.

The City of Richardson has started designating the right hand lanes on many of their neighborhood thoroughfares as bike lanes. It’s working out well – the bikes like it and it helps control the traffic. The only problem is making left turns out of the right-hand bike lanes – there is no way to do that safely.

One surprising barrier to bicycle transport are the rail lines. This one cuts right through the city and there are few routes across it – and they are narrow, busy roads.

Glenbrook Trail

The last mile and a half of my commute home is on the Glenbrook Trail – which starts out running under a power line right of way. It was supposed to go farther, but they could not get permission to cross the railroad right-of-way (see above).

The Glenbrook Trail crossing Beltline road.

The trail crosses the very busy Beltline Road (everything in the suburbs of Dallas is on Beltline Road) a block west of Plano Road. It’s a nasty intersection – when I went to meetings on the planning of the Glenville Trail they said they were really struggling with this section – there is simply not enough room.

The other day, while I was waiting for the light to turn, a woman in a VW made a left and a huge SUV was coming way, way too fast and she turned in front of him. There was a screech of brakes, horns, and skidding tires – the SUV went up on two wheels and swerved right past me – in the end nobody hit anything, though it was close. I stood there watching it thinking that if the truck hits the VW it will bounce off and crush me standing right there, four feet away, on the sidewalk with my bike.

The whole thing was over in three seconds.

The intersection is lousy with surveillance cameras and I wondered if I had died a sudden spectacular death would it be captured on one of the traffic cams. Would my demise make it onto Youtube? Texas bicyclist crushed by careening Tahoe. Would I go viral?

Plano Road crossing

Where the trails cross busy roads without lights (this one is on Plano Road) they have these S-Shaped islands. At the planning meetings it was explained that this design forces bicycles and pedestrians to stop in the middle of the crossing and then turn and face oncoming traffic to see and wait for a gap to continue across. It actually works really well – I feel safer at these crossings than I do at the lights (see above).

The ponds at Huffhines.

The last part of my commute is the easiest part – the trail goes through the ponds in the park at the end of my block. This is on the bridge over the ponds next to the new Huffhines Recreation Center.

Wal-Mart panniers.

I bought these panniers on clearance from Wal-Mart, believe it or not. They are not the best quality in the world – I wouldn’t go on a cross-country cycle journey with them, but they are handy and work great for clothes and whatever work I have to take home.

Finally Finished

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Bill Chance

Well, one thing about writing this thing is that I can get dates. Let’s see here it is, September 17, 2011 is when I started reading the Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard. I finished it this week… so it took me about ten months to get through the whole thing.

By no means is that the only thing I’ve read in the last year. I’d read a few stories and then jump to something else… only to return when that was done. The last week or so, though, I made a concentrated push to get through to the end.

It is a massive tome. Ninety Eight short stories, novellas, and novelettes, ending up one short of one thousand two hundred pages. The paper version weighs about four pounds and would be a real pain to carry around. Inside my Kindle, though, the weight of all those bytes is barely noticeable.

I had read a lot of these stories before. In high school, in the 1970’s I discovered his short fiction and gobbled up what I could get my paws on. What was cool about reading this now is that the stories were arranged in chronological order – so I revisited what I remembered and then continued to cruise right on past, on into the future (which now is the relatively recent past). I would look at the dates on the later stories and think of myself sitting there in 1973, and realizing what I was reading wouldn’t be written for another decade.

Since this is his complete body of work, in order, you can’t help but notice the continuing themes. The lonely, wealthy woman living alone in a crumbling estate, exerting an inexorable influence on the protagonist and the people living around him. The abandoned decadent tourist destination. The desiccated sea with dry sand waves and coral canyons. Empty swimming pools. Nature, time, and technology intersecting and reacting in unexpected, beautiful, and horrific ways…. And many more.

Near the end there are three longer works: News from the Sun, Memories of the Space Age, and Myths of the Near Future. These three, read consecutively, are fascinating companions to each other. They are essentially the same story, told with tiny shifts in attitude and points of view. They deal with the theory that man’s ventures into outer space have set loose a change in the very nature of time itself and the entire human race, in a series of events centered on the now long-abandoned Florida NASA launch sites is becoming unstuck in time. It is never clear whether this is a disaster – a punishment for shaking off our bonds, or a further leap in evolution where the human race is able to exist within and without time itself. The strong impression is that it is both.

Fascinating. Especially powerful in that, within these vast movements of irresistible forces the central theme of the stories remains the human relationships of the protagonists and how they struggle to maintain their place, their loves, their very lives.

Ballard writes:

I just tend to write whatever comes mentally to hand, and what I find interesting at a particular time. These decisions as to what one’s going to write tend to be made somewhere at the back of one’s mind, so one can’t consciously say: ‘that’s what I’m going to write’. It doesn’t work out like that! (interview in ‘J. G. Ballard: The First Twenty Years’, 1976).

I’m barely aware of what is going on. Recurrent ideas assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves … (interview in ‘The Paris Review’, 1984).

I feel that the writer of fantasy has a marked tendency to select images and ideas which directly reflect the internal landscapes of his mind, and the reader of fantasy must interpret them on this level, distinguishing between the manifest content, which may seen obscure, meaningless or nightmarish, and the latent content, the private vocabulary of symbols drawn by the narrative from the writer’s mind (‘Time, Memory and Inner Space’, 1963).

Some of the stories, especially some of the later ones are more experimental pieces… a skilled author showing off what he can do – pushing the boundaries of fiction. Some of these work better than others.

Vermilion Sands

Still, I think my favorite are the Vermilion Sands stores – especially The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D. Something about that decadent vacation spot really gets to me.

Now, the tough question. What to read next?

1 • Prima Belladonna • [Vermilion Sands] • (1956) • shortstory
12 • Escapement • (1956) • shortstory
23 • The Concentration City • (1957) • shortstory (aka Build-Up)
39 • Venus Smiles • [Vermilion Sands] • (1957) • shortstory
50 • Manhole 69 • (1957) • shortstory
68 • Track 12 • (1958) • shortstory
72 • The Waiting Grounds • (1959) • novelette
96 • Now: Zero • (1959) • shortstory
106 • The Sound-Sweep • (1959) • novelette
137 • Zone of Terror • (1960) • shortstory
150 • Chronopolis • (1960) • novelette
169 • The Voices of Time • (1960) • novelette
196 • The Last World of Mr. Goddard • (1960) • shortstory
208 • Studio 5, The Stars • [Vermilion Sands] • (1961) • novelette
235 • Deep End • (1961) • shortstory
244 • The Overloaded Man • (1961) • shortstory
255 • Mr F. is Mr F. • (1961) • shortstory
267 • Billennium • (1961) • shortstory
279 • The Gentle Assassin • (1961) • shortstory
289 • The Insane Ones • (1962) • shortstory
298 • The Garden of Time • (1962) • shortstory
305 • The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista • [Vermilion Sands] • (1962) • shortstory
321 • Thirteen to Centaurus • (1962) • novelette
339 • Passport to Eternity • (1962) • shortstory
355 • The Cage of Sand • (1962) • novelette
373 • The Watch-Towers • (1962) • novelette
395 • The Singing Statues • [Vermilion Sands] • (1962) • shortstory
405 • The Man on the 99th Floor • (1962) • shortstory
412 • The Subliminal Man • (1963) • shortstory
426 • The Reptile Enclosure • (1963) • shortstory
435 • A Question of Re-Entry • (1963) • novelette
459 • The Time-Tombs • (1963) • novelette
472 • Now Wakes the Sea • (1963) • shortstory
480 • The Venus Hunters • (1963) • novelette
504 • End-Game • (1963) • novelette
521 • Minus One • (1963) • shortstory
530 • The Sudden Afternoon • (1963) • shortstory
541 • The Screen Game • [Vermilion Sands] • (1963) • novelette
559 • Time of Passage • (1964) • shortstory
569 • Prisoner of the Coral Deep • (1964) • shortstory
574 • The Lost Leonardo • (1964) • shortstory
589 • The Terminal Beach • (1964) • novelette
605 • The Illuminated Man • (1964) • novelette
628 • The Delta at Sunset • (1964) • shortstory
641 • The Drowned Giant • (1964) • shortstory
650 • The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon • (1964) • shortstory
658 • The Volcano Dances • (1964) • shortstory
663 • The Beach Murders • (1969) • shortstory
669 • The Day of Forever • (1966) • shortstory
683 • The Impossible Man • (1966) • shortstory
697 • Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer • (1966) • shortstory
711 • Tomorrow is a Million Years • (1966) • shortstory
720 • The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race • (1966) • shortstory
722 • Cry Hope, Cry Fury! • [Vermilion Sands] • (1967) • shortstory
735 • The Recognition • (1967) • shortstory
755 • The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D • [Vermilion Sands] • (1967) • shortstory
757 • Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan • (1968) • shortstory
760 • The Dead Astronaut • (1968) • shortstory
769 • The Comsat Angels • (1968) • shortstory
781 • The Killing Ground • (1969) • shortstory
788 • A Place and a Time to Die • (1969) • shortstory
795 • Say Goodbye to the Wind • [Vermilion Sands] • (1970) • shortstory
806 • The Greatest Television Show on Earth • (1972) • shortstory
811 • My Dream of Flying to Wake Island • (1974) • shortstory
820 • The Air Disaster • (1975) • shortstory
828 • Low-Flying Aircraft • (1975) • shortstory
841 • The Life and Death of God • (1976) • shortstory
849 • Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown (1976 version) • (1976) • shortstory
856 • The 60 Minute Zoom • (1976) • shortstory
864 • The Smile • (1976) • shortstory
873 • The Ultimate City • (1976) • novella
925 • The Dead Time • (1977) • novelette
940 • The Index • (1977) • shortstory
946 • The Intensive Care Unit • (1977) • shortstory
953 • Theatre of War • (1977) • novelette
968 • Having a Wonderful Time • (1978) • shortstory
972 • One Afternoon at Utah Beach • (1978) • shortstory
982 • Zodiac 2000 • (1978) • shortstory
989 • Motel Architecture • (1978) • shortstory
1000 • A Host of Furious Fancies • (1980) • shortstory
1010 • News from the Sun • (1981) • novelette
1037 • Memories of the Space Age • (1982) • novelette
1061 • Myths of the Near Future • (1982) • novelette
1085 • Report on an Unidentified Space Station • (1982) • shortstory
1090 • The Object of the Attack • (1984) • shortstory
1101 • Answers to a Questionnaire • (1985) • shortstory
1105 • The Man Who Walked on the Moon • (1985) • shortstory
1116 • The Secret History of World War 3 • (1988) • shortstory
1124 • Love in a Colder Climate • (1989) • shortstory
1130 • The Enormous Space • (1989) • shortstory
1139 • The Largest Theme Park in the World • (1989) • shortstory
1145 • War Fever • (1989) • novelette
1161 • Dream Cargoes • (1990) • shortstory
1173 • A Guide to Virtual Death • (1992) • shortfiction
1175 • The Message from Mars • (1992) • shortstory
1184 • Report from an Obscure Planet • (1992) • shortstory
1189 • The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. • (1981) • shortstory (aka The Secret Autobiography of J. G. B******)
1192 • The Dying Fall • (1996) • shortstory

What I learned this week, July 13, 2012

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Bill Chance

An online story from Neil Gaiman.

I Cthulhu

or What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9′ S, Longitude 126° 43′ W)?

– Go read this before it’s time to feed the shoggoth.

A while back I went to this huge food truck thing at the derelict shopping mall – Valley View.

It looks like they are going to make a semi permanent thing out of it. Interesting read about the death of a Mall, the economics and timing of urban renewal, and food trucks.

New Valley View owners hope to park food truck test kitchens in vacant food court stalls

Another update. A while back I visited and wrote about the Dallas Wave and the Santa Fe Trestle Trail. These have not worked out as advertised or hoped.

While Dallas Chokes on the Trinity, the Suburbs Show Us How It’s Done

The Dallas Wave with a DART train going by overhead… and the skyline in the background. (click to enlarge)

Weird Book Room

What’s happening this weekend? This might be fun – Ducado Vega is always good – I used to hang out there decades ago when it was the Greenville Avenue Country club.

Raleigh Technium

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Bill Chance

I’ve been doing good – riding my crappy old mountain bike almost every day. Over the week of July fourth I took a couple days off – plus I’m commuting home from work at least a couple times a week (when I don’t have to go somewhere after work and I can get someone to drive me in) so I rode over ten miles each day for ten days straight. I’m not losing as much weight as I want (yet) but my bike riding fitness and skills are improving faster than I thought they would at my age.

The mountain bike works well as a cargo bike or a fitness bike. It’s inefficient so it works well to build fitness. With the panniers mounted it can hold a surprising amount of groceries or work clothes and stuff. Like me, it’s not very cool and it creaks in unexpected places – but it gets the job done.

But something was bugging me – tickling the back of my brain. Out in the garage is my old road bike, my Raleigh Technium 460.

I bought the bike back when I was a young, thin, serious bicycle rider… as best as I can remember that was 1986 or so. It was a very popular and common entry-level bicycle – but was innovative in its day. The three main tubes are aluminum – one of the first affordable aluminum bikes. To keep the cost down the rear triangle was steel. Instead of welding, it is all held together with custom swaged fittings and is glued with industrial epoxy.

At the time a lot of people were afraid of a bike held together with glue. Now, of course the best frames are carbon fiber… sheets of woven fabric impregnated with adhesives… so I guess the idea was proved out.

I loved that bike. I would ride it around White Rock Lake after work more days than not. Never a racer – I rode organized rides – including the infamous Wichita Falls Hotter than Hell a few times. On weekend I’d take long rides out from East Dallas north into country roads piercing the cotton fields around Frisco and Murphy (these are now endless tracts of suburban sprawl) until I’d fight my way home bonked, tired, thirsty, and with weird sunburns.

All that ended when my kids were born. I bought the mountain bike hoping to get in short rides here and there but the time it took to stay in riding shape was all soaked up by work and soccer practice. The road bike fell into disrepair and disuse. I thought about throwing it away but there was always some dusty, cobwebby corner of the garage where I could stuff the thing or some disused rafter where I could hang it.

I haven’t rode the Raleigh Technium for at least a dozen years.

But it was bugging me… so I took a look at it. It was dusty and a little rusty, but other than the tires, it seemed to still be in one piece. So I found some tubes and bought some tires (it has 27 inch tires instead of the now-standard 700c, so it was tough to find some to fit) and sat down with some solvent, soap, oil, and wrenches and had at it.

About five hours later I had black grease stains tattooed deep into my hands… but I also had a bicycle.

The Raleigh Technium – an example of bicycle technology of the 1980’s. I think bikes of that vintage are gorgeous in an almost sculptural way.

It sat there for a while… I had a surprising amount of trepidation about climbing on board. It was like a time machine had suddenly popped out of thin air and sat beckoning, the siren song of the past forever gone. Finally, as the sun was beginning to set I walked out to the bike path that runs behind my house, leaned on the bike, and swung my leg over.

The seat was set too high and my foot caught. Both me and the bike tumbled down hard on the pavement. I now have a big black bruise on my thigh from the motionless crash. I guess I’m not as flexible as I was over a decade ago. I pulled out my hex wrenches and lowered the seat a bit, raised the handlebar about the same, and set off again.

This time it was amazing. I slid my feet into the old-school toe clips (I have some Shimano Clipless pedals I will put on the bike soon) and hunched down over the dropped bars, pumping the long light alloy crank arms – I felt the bike shoot forward in a way the clumsy mountain bike can’t and won’t. It felt like a leg-powered rocket. It was a little unsteady, the steering more twitchy than I was used to but it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it. I looped around the ponds at the end of my block, came back along the trail, went down to Saigon City on Jupiter and then turned and rode along Duck Creek to Plano.

What surprised me was how much more efficient the road bike was in cutting through the wind and going up slight inclines. The lighter weight of the bike, more ergonomic positioning, and less wind resistance made so much difference. I must have been grinning like an idiot as I looped over the creek and started north along the Owens trail under the high tension lines.

Quickly, though, the front tire began making a noise and I realized I had a flat. As I dismounted to look at the tire, the seat dropped down against the tube – I had not tightened the bolt enough. Now I remember the rigors of road bike maintenance – patching the narrow high-pressure tires, trying to keep everything adjusted and lubricated, trying to keep the myriad bolts tight. I had shot away without any tools or even my phone so I had no choice but to walk my bike the mile or so back to the house.

I couldn’t find any reason for the puncture… but I looked at the box the tube came out of (I had the tube in a crate in the garage) and it said Oshman’s on the price sticker. Oshman’s went out of business over a decade ago – so I guess that’s why the tube went.

So, after work, I stopped off at the bike shop and bought new tubes and a portable pump, and made the bike ready again. This time I was able to make a long ride in the evening without any major problems – stopping a couple times to adjust the seat or brakes with the tools I carried. I rode until I wore myself out.

The thing is fun. Still, though, the back wheel is seriously out of true, the bottom bracket has an ominous click, and the seat needs adjusting. I need to dig through the garage for my long-idle bike tools (if they are still there) and then try and buy what I can’t find. I’d like to bring it… if not up-to-date, at least back to where it was in the waning years of the last century. The problem is that bicycle technology has passed it by – I find myself looking at new road bikes. Christ! The things are so expensive – I paid around five hundred dollars for the Technium… I think, back in the day. That was a lot of money but I was able to just go to the bike shop and write a check. I didn’t have the expenses then that I have now. I didn’t have two kids in private college. There is no way I can buy a five hundred dollar bike right now.

So, I’ll fix what I can and hope nothing else breaks. I’ll do what I can to muddle through. I’ll try to keep riding every day, keep expanding the times I commute by bike, get stronger, get thinner. I feel like I’m looking into a time machine, trying to roll the calendar backward. I have been here before, I’m here again – with the same hunk of steel, aluminum, and rubber. We’ll see what happens, won’t we.

Hugh’s Bicycle Blog – Raleigh Technium 460 Restoration Part 1

Part Two

I just purchased a lightly used Raleigh Technium bike from a garage sale for a few bucks.?

Raleigh Technium Fixie Project

Dallas Star

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Bill Chance

I have an entry half-assed written, but I don’t have time tonight to finish it – have to get another scene on a short story done.

So, into the photo folders… and here are some more photos from the Chihuly Exhibition at the Dallas Arboretum.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Tabasco or Crystal

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Bill Chance

I’ve been watching what I eat with some success but sometimes I give in. Candy left a newspaper article in my office from last Friday – there is a new Cajun Restaurant in Richardson, Wicked Po’Boys. I couldn’t resist.

It’s located in the Eastside development not far from where we live.

Wicked Po’Boys in Richardson, Texas

They have put up a bit of an iron balcony out front to try for a little New Orleans style. Not quite the Garden District, but a nice touch.

A real balcony in the French Quarter.

Balcony in the Lower Garden District

The place is long and thin inside – but attractive, with a big bar and a big menu. I ordered a grilled shrimp po’boy and an Abita Amber, Candy ordered a roast beef po’boy. Most people think about po’boys and seafood (shrimp, oyster) but the roast beef or debris style is right up there too.

Blackened Shrimp Po-Boy from Wicked Po’Boys

Roast Beef Po-Boy from Wicked Po’Boys

Our sandwiches were greatness. I’m afraid we’ll be back. There are pots of gumbo that beckon. There are still oysters.

Now, if you are going to eat Cajun, you need to make a huge decision. There are a number of eternal “this or that” questions you must face during you short time upon this mortal plane. These questions must be faced and must not be shirked. Ocean or mountains? The book or the movie? Hot dog or hamburger? Paper or Plastic? Shaken or stirred? White or wheat? Boxers or briefs? Tea or coffee? Dogs or cats? Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Coke or Pepsi? Shower or bath? Chocolate or Vanilla?

But the most basic question, the one that truly reveals the tint of your deepest soul, the most difficult conundrum of them all….

A tough choice.

Tabasco or Crystal?

Now I know some folks will put Original Louisiana (the one with the red dot) there (and it is a worthy contender) instead of Crystal – but I’ve been to New Orleans and I know the truth. It’s Tabasco or Crystal. A tough choice.

Choose your weapon.

Here is the condiment rail at Wicked Po-Boys. If you are a true hot sauce eater you will recognize the bottles from the shapes on the top.

Now, I understand the duality of the Crystal and Tabasco choice. But, really in life, things do not come in twos. The duality of nature is an illusion brought on by our own weakness of perceiving the true nature of things. Life is not a duality – there are really three choices. Wicked Po-Boys recognizes this deep philosophical truth by offering Sriracha. Oh, and in Richardson, you had better have Sriracha.

But, as much as I love the rooster sauce, I’m not quite adventurous enough to put it on Cajun food yet…. It’s not that I’m afraid as much as I’m not sure how to improve on perfection. Sometimes the classics are that way for a reason.

So what did I choose? Ever since my visit to Avery Island I have held a deep respect for Tabasco. It is truly a culinary treasure. But it is also too vinegary. I respect Tabasco… but I ate the Crystal.

A lot of it.

By the way – take a look at the “best used date” on that bottle of Crystal in the photo above. You have to eat it by March 7, 2015. Don’t worry – it’ll be gone by then.

Wicked Po’Boys Set To Open In Richardson

Wicked PoBoys Facebook

First Look: Wicked Po Boys

Knockemstiff

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Bill Chance

After I finished Volt I moved right on into another book of short stories set in the gray area between doomed small-town America and the outskirts of hell. This one is called Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock. The eighteen stories take place from the sixties to the nineties and contain a lot of interconnected characters – all living (if you can call it living) in a small Ohio town with the odd name of Knockemstiff. It seems like a stretch of literary license to make up a name like that for a set of stories like this – but the town used to exist. The author actually grew up there. There is even a map in the front of the book – like a trailer park trashy Lord of the Rings. One woman that shows up in several stories has KNOCKEMSTIFF as a tramp-stamp tattoo.

The author says that some of the events in the stories were inspired by stuff he saw – but the real inspiration was the decades he spent as a blue collar worker – a meatpacking plant and thirty years at a paper mill. After three marriages and four stints in rehab he quit work to write.

The first story, about a boy with a drunken, violent father, who gets the both of them in a nasty fistfight in the concession stand of the Torch Drive-in movie theater during a showing of Godzilla. It was pretty horrific in its details – the kid’s father drinking whiskey from the car’s ashtray and wiping the sweat off his head with a paper bag – but it was well-written and effective and not too over the top.

Now then, though, the second story, Dynamite Hole… well, to say it was over the top is a bit of an understatement. These are not stories for the easily offended or the weak of heart. Dynamite Hole is a true journey to the heart of perversion and hopeless doom. Do not read this book if you don’t have a strong stomach and a good sense of the separation between fact and fiction.

Now, I really liked this book. That does not make me a bad person. This is a fiction, these are lies. Even if the town once existed – this stuff did not really happen like this (I hope). It is a set of horrific tales about the dregs of human scum… all of which somehow end up in the same tiny hamlet – soon to become a well-deserved ghost town. Maybe sharing a read with these folks makes me feel a little bit better about my own flaws… I don’t know. It’s well written, interesting, entertaining – that’s good enough for me.

Even the titles of the stories seem to seep with quiet disaster.

Real Life
Dynamite Hole
Knockemstiff
Hair’s Fate
Pills
Giganthomachy
Schott’s Bridge
Lard
Fish Sticks
Bactine
Discipline
Assailants
Rainy Sunday
Holler
I Start Over
Blessed
Honolulu
The Fights

Minor characters in one story turn out to be the protagonists in another. I thought of going through one more time and making a chart of who was related to whom and who did what and what nasty end they came to. But before I could get started, I decided I didn’t really want to spend that much time with these people… at least not right now.

Despite the deep horrific lives these folks live – the Bactine huffing, the living for years in abandoned cars out in the woods, the tons of stuff I won’t even write them down here – there are moments of hope and redemption. In one of the last stories, Blessed, a father is driving with his family into the city so his wife can sell some blood (he can’t sell any because of the hepatitis). The father’s promising burglary career as a second story man was destroyed when he fell off the roof of a pharmacy in the middle of the night. The little family road trip goes about as horribly wrong as possible. What really bother’s him, though, is the fact that he has come to realize that his son is mute. When they return home, his wife won’t let him back into the house until he cleans up (for well-deserved reasons).

As he peers into the window, he sees and hears his son talking excitedly to his wife, the boy’s mother. He isn’t mute – he only refuses to speak in the presence of his dad. The father takes this as a good sign and determines to go on, as best he can.

Such is life in Knockemstiff.

Gothic Hillbilly Noir?

Winosburg, Ohio

‘Knockemstiff’ Writer Pulls No Punches

REVIEW OF KNOCKEMSTIFF BY DONALD RAY POLLOCK

Sail on Silver Girl, Sail on By

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Bill Chance

The coolest part of the Dallas metroplex- the place with the hottest scene right now – is Oak Cliff. I am so happy about that – for decades I’ve loved that part of town and am happy to see that it is finally starting to have its place in the sun. There is the Bishop Arts District already well-established and now to the north, the area that the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge is serving looks poised for a new Renaissance.

When we were coming back from the Belmont not too long ago I noticed some construction going on along Fort Worth Avenue – about a long block east of the hotel. Looking it up I discovered it was a complex started by the folks that gave us Smoke – and it was a combination beer-garden style bar and a restaurant. The bar was “The Foundry” and the restaurant “Chicken Scratch.” I put a visit to that place on my list of things to do.

Then, this week, I noticed that Holt and Stockslager would be bringing their Simon and Garfunkle tribute stylings to The Foundry stage on Friday night. I had seen them first downtown at one of the Patio Sessions and had loved their show. We also saw them at the Dallas Zoo when they warmed up for A Hard Night’s Day. I was up for a third show.

I looked up the address for The Foundry on Googlemaps and saw pictures of a big sprawling auto repair business. When we drove over I was impressed to see the transformation. It’s a huge space, made with repurposed shipping containers. Giant bulk fluid containers sit up on the roof, lit from within at night to give a colorful techno-retro glow. There’s plenty of seating, from the air-conditioned bar, to lines of picnic tables, to old couches under the tin roof. It’s an interesting place, lots to do, and a lot of attention to detail.

It was warm, but the once the sun set it was comfortable enough. The place is lousy with fans and misters to fight back the summer heat.

We picked up some rotisserie chicken at Chicken Scratch – I was happy to see they offer Collard Greens as a side. The food was really good – they also offer fried chicken if that is more your style. The bar is not a hip martini mixology joint – but their beer selection is impressive and delicious. We sat at a picnic table shared with Holt and Stockslager. Not too many music venues let you eat chicken with the talent before the show.

Holt and Stockslager did not disappoint. I love the stage -built out of old wooden pallets arranged into a big oval cave. The crowd was talkative – the beer-garden atmosphere lends itself to socializing. It would be a great place to go with a big group. Still, looking around, I saw a few folks that were there for the music, mouthing the words to the familiar tunes.

Near the end, they brought out the keyboard for Bridge Over Troubled Water. Stockslager did some stretching to get ready and then he wailed into it. Really, really good. Afterward he advised, “Don’t try that at home.”