Sometimes, I return to Bukowski—I always wonder, when people string together those quotes about his misanthropy: well, did he really feel that way? Or was it because he did love people, kept being let down, and thought the shock value would get more people to respond than watering it down?
I also love his clear alcoholism is like mine: who else is just like, "Oh, yeah, had a few bottles of wine and then..." and normal people are like, "You mean two glasses, right?"
Then I appreciate, well, it's not quite the same but: it's supposed to be straight, then diagonal. It's called a cross-cut when you mow lawns and it'll give your lawn the "cool" diamond look you see on baseball fields if you do it right. Easier if you use a 'reel' instead of a 'rotary' mower. I can't recall the exact name for a motorized reel that's not those ginormous baseball field ones, but we used to have one that was, ah, it didn't work right. So it was a pain in the ass for pops to have to come out and restart if I turned it off by accident. To turn it off, you might shock yourself because you had to stick your hand and disconnect an electrical plug that'd shock you if you touched it.
So, Dad just said, "Remember how grandpa Jules has a few missing fingers? You don't want that, right? So you need to leave the mower on and be careful when you have to dump the grass." Somehow, I do still have ten digits.
I know a bit about lawn mowing because dad ran a lawn company and, well, I'm the bad son cause I was shittier at mowing lawns and don't know if that's considered abusive or just "you're being silly." It took a long time for my best friend, who got a job in lawn mowing as an adult, to be like, "being expected to mow the whole lawn and use the blower for grass by the time he finished Weed-eating is ridiculous, you know?"
Though I was lucky. pops never beat me with a razor strap. He did that once to someone, left a mark, and was very careful to never leave physical evidence. I had really bad backne, so bad that when the boils started showing up I had to go to a dermatologist.
It's cool, they think it was sebaceous, like my eye thing, so once the doctor said that it was, "Why would we spend money on that? It's expensive. Here's a thirteen dollar bottle of Cetaphil, it's expensive, make it last."
Now, my kid-diddler coworker: he was a good worker. Wouldn't want to upset him. So when he was groping me and I snapped and mocked his "fucking glasses," well, I got in trouble for saying "fucking," and where did I learn that word?
He could do the job, work the full days. So I'd avoid the job: Pops is impatient.
So, if I was a half hour late from school, it'd ruin his schedule and he'd maybe have huffed off. When I was lucky, he'd decide it wasn't even worth coming back to pick me up and feel that way all week—so I didn't need to hide in the woods behind Altamont Middle to avoid coming home and getting picked up at ~3:30 to work till dark. Maybe I'd get really lucky: once, I ran the mower over a big rock in a yard during the summer and he was so pissed about it, and it took so long to repair, I got almost two weeks off during the summer, which is a helluva lot better than 12-hour days from 9-9.
I got doubly lucky there: I got to play Path of Radiance and Ike became my biggest hero. A man strong enough to turn around, say, "I might lose, but I'm gonna try," and keep getting up.
They caught me there, though, so I'd get the offer to work a "half-day" from 9 from somewhere closer to 3 or five on weekends and summers.
But mom never showed up on time, so I'd get, "Well, Chad, I've got other lawns and your mom's not here. Your call to wait around or come with me. We'll get home faster."
But you can't go home faster when you finish earlier because you work until dark, every night, and "we can get a head start on tomorrow's schedule. I reflected on that, too.
And I disagree with him.
Both of them, really, but Bukowski in particular: now, eleven years at USPS might change my mind too.
But during my time there (I quit: I truly did not think I was safe to drive those routes because the truck scared me and my first solo day I almost collapsed on someone's lawn from what I suspect was the start of heat stroke; not because I'd DUI, which most would suspect), but: these days, USPS is one of the only carriers that will deliver to hard-to-reach areas because they are required to. Amazon and other companies have used this to dump packages that are 'too expensive' for profits to go to USPS and, "Constitutionally, you have to do this," thus why there are more Sunday deliveries. At least, that's what I was taught in USPS training, almost in those exact words.
That's unfortunate, but we should be proud of being able to ensure people get their mail. As we were also taught, "There are people who feel so lonely, waiting on the porch to wave at the mailman could make their day. You might be the only person they speak to all week."
I can think of people who showed me kindness when I worked dead-end jobs. I loved to 'abuse' my power as a trusted worker to give discounts to people I liked. Got offered a $20 tip after bringing a birthday party the banana split I messed up making but thought, "Well, it's going in the garbage, why waste it?" or helping an elderly couple at Freddy's and hearing, "Your mom raised you right." (lmao, but the thought was there). Or, my most 'illegal,' I liked the Tools Crew at Sears when I worked there and it was mutually beneficial for me to log in under their name for a big sale so they got a commission and I got to not worry about signing someone up for a Sears Card. And you better believe during my time at Pizza Hut, I found out my old law professor liked to pick up pizza, so I'd sneak into the ordering system and put in an employee discount.
"I just act like I don't remember...
Now those memories come back to haunt me,
They haunt me like a curse,
Tell me something: is a dream a lie if it don't come true?
Or is it something worse?"
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