Swindle Shack Singalong, Chapter 7: Connection

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(8-25)

 

 

Like much of the atmosphere in our junkyard oasis at Evergreen Estates, I attributed the zig-zag course of my humble existence to isolation and beverage alcohol. Having a regular schedule imposed by gainful employment had kept me on track. A beneficial part of working to earn a regular paycheck, away from my personal domain. Yet with that routine scuttled by forced retirement and disability, suddenly, I found myself cast adrift.

 

At the Swindle Shack, in modern times, clocks and calendars had little meaning.

 

Even the images that passed through my head during hours of restful slumber had become fractured by this new paradigm. I dreamed in fragments, rather than full chapters. Often without a literal timeline to bind these visions together. Personalities and settings were subject to change at a pace of frantic revelation. I would wander through cascades of color against a backdrop of light or pervasive darkness, sometimes lost and seeking direction. On other occasions I was combative, flailing at ghosts and demons without purpose. With each jog in the mindstream making me dizzy.

 

Kookshow Baby would appear as I slept, now and then, to chide me for lapsing into willful loneliness. Her witty asides burned my ears with a torrid sting of truth. She would stroke her long pigtails, and pout with puffy, red lips, offering a kiss of defiance.

 

“Y’all say it’s a bummer bein’ stuck in Ohio by yerself, boy? But who went home when he coulda stayed in Cali? Who passed on workin’ with Terry and Tiffany DuFoe, at the abandoned drive-in, and Cult Radio A-Go-Go? Who turned cold, when a strong, young woman like myself was ready to let ya into her doublewide world? It was yer call, buddy! Don’t moan and groan about it, now! That trucker pal of yers knew the way home, he didn’t need anybody to ride shotgun! Y’all did this thing to yerself!”

 

After being confronted through such hallucinatory episodes, I would wake up sweating and out of breath. Often sitting on the edge of my bed for a half hour before gathering the courage to roll over, and go back to sleep.

 

The result was an artistic point of view unlike my earlier work. I embraced themes rarely touched upon, before.

 

Urban Intelligencer

 

Cigarettes traded, first

Then bombshell bits and butcher knives

The urban intelligencer said

“How am I gonna stay alive?”

He carried a baseball bat

Across the spare tire in his car trunk

He figured breaking glass and bones

Would show he was done being a chump

The first swing made him a star

Nobody ever tried to push him so far

 

He came out of Cleveland

Right down by the lakeshore

Grew up getting robbed at daylight

Until his calluses couldn’t feel sore

He was numb and stooped

Lived in that vehicle, or a camping tent

His wild eyes were hot and bright

He sat drinking rotgut, at 99 cents

After years of that mental abuse

He was less human, and more fermented juice

 

He needed a change, quick

From this solemn, sad, state of affairs

Went out to a rural encampment

But that kind of world wasn’t his lair

Ended up at a trailer park

Miles from where good people gleam

Stuck in a longbox on wheels

Just another bland, human sardine

It made him bitter enough

But he had felt that street vibe, protecting his stuff

 

A neighbor with lots to say

Started giving him her opinions

He bared his teeth like a badger, crazed

The bitch went running in another direction

Soon enough, he had no friends

No one dared to get close

But even from a distance there was a smell

Of sweat and bourbon from his clothes

He didn’t crave companionship at all

Spent his days staring at the trailer walls

 

Eventually that baseball bat

Found its way into his hands

He sat out by the front porch, waiting

For any fool with a wish to be slammed

Eyes peeled of their onion skins

Ready to look deep into the dark

He was the odd man out

At the mobile village park

Many rumors started to swirl

They figured he was lonely without a steady girl

 

Then came a day of reckoning

He woke up from an outside nap

Started cursing and spitting

And tugging at his trucker cap

The commotion carried far

They could hear it up and down the street

He belched and crushed cans all day

Sat there kicking and stomping his feet

He was armed with his post of shaved wood

Shouted, “I wish a motherfucker would!”

 

Then a bullet from next door let fly

Some domestic dispute got out of hand

A sheriff’s deputy had to quell

A fight between a woman and a man

Both of them were quarreling

In a way that threatened the public peace

Gunfire shattered the Walmart radio

The Country tunes rudely ceased

That urban immigrant was felled

Went face-down, right where he dwelled

 

Nobody knew him well enough

To fill out a burial claim

His body stayed abandoned with the county

No request filed, for his remains

All around those clustered lots

There was a shared sigh of relief

The whole neighborhood was glad

To be rid of their boorish, drunken beast

A cranky, crabby malcontent

Off to eternity, the poor bastard gent

 

With a matter of months, elapsed

The mobile box got a new resident

Some other hopeless, hapless rube

Living on a slab of cement

Stuck inside a single-wide

Like letters in a postal slot

Coughing phlegm and Marlboro reds

Shooting Bud Light, and sniffling snot

That was a better match, by far

Than the old dude who had been living in his car

 

No tears were cried as an afterthought

The memory was forgotten

Nobody gave a shit about

What a work of fate had begotten

Gossip said that the urban man

Had been planted in an unmarked grave

Up the hill at a township field

Where veterans and grandparents were laid

It was all for the best

Like cracked eggshells, left in an empty nest

 

On a Monday morning, while checking e-mail accounts, I noted a message sent via the LinkedIn website. A spot on the internet long forgotten as my regular career ended abruptly, years earlier. A recruiter named Seely Joan Frye had posted a comment on my page, under a link to YouTube content. Her response was breathy and effusive.

 

“Rod, are you still active as a songwriter and performer? I am with a record label in New York City, and we are looking for new talent. Our business model is timely, we focus on submitting product to streaming services and online radio outlets. The dinosaurs hawk legacy material, while we want to mine for gold as yet untapped. If you have any interest, please contact me immediately! I promise that you won’t be disappointed!”