GOOD, THOUGH TRIVIAL
[Ed. Note: Getting aggravated about the waning supply of Mike's communications, when I turned to the letters generously supplied by Mike's esteemed friend Harry, and found one that really makes him right here all over again. I'm delivering it in two or three segments, to prolong the fun of reading it out. Thanks as always, Harry!]
Excerpt -- Letter from Mike to Harry:
...I appreciate you keeping in touch. I'm enclosing some of my recent work. I went through my newspaper columns last night, and was very happy with my old work, and it was novice work. The first 4 days on the job I did some of my best writing. I recently got into a letter-writing argument with a S.F. columnist and challenged him to let me try his job for a week or a month with him getting the pay. I'm waiting for his reply. I hope he seeks to show me up. I'll take his job away. He's a very unhappy man, and I'm not, when I write, at all. The world is an encyclopedia of interesting things, parading past you, and I'd love to see what all you've seen with those eyes of yours.
I have a buddy from Antioch who wants to take a ride out to the Little (Big) Horn River, to the site of Custer's Last Foolishness. I'd love to ride 5 states to stand over a grave. Custer was an Ohio boy, like me. I wish, looking back, that I'd destroyed Buffalo Bill's monument when I lived in Colorado, and I may yet. The buffalo's Hitler, he was.
Boy, these are wild and hairy times, aren't they? Everybody's up on their chair, calling for order at once. The lumpen are up there with the professors and doctors. Men up with womenists, everyone fed up, too. I can understand that fed up part, but it's a bitch to hear so many unenlightened minds relieve themselves in print and public. I feel they ought to set up soap boxes in local parks today, let the peasants work off steam there. I got into an argument with a right-wing fool in front of a department store. The fellow asked me to donate money to a neo-nazi organ. I said I would if he'd spend eternity in an oven, and there we went, in front of a small crowd. I came so damned close to kicking his table of pamphlets over it was only will power that stopped me. The cops came by, so it's good I refrained, and the next time I went in there, he was rousted. It felt good, though trivial.......
MIKE -
Nothing much to report. Made a peeved response to Kevin last month about the state of the struggle to keep you in print. Then removed it. Driving past a hot tub company on 23 North, I saw (and photographed) a sign you would have enjoyed. It said "IF YOU STOLD OUR TRAILER COWARD AND I FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE COWARD MAY GOD HELP YOU COWARD." Three days later, drove by again, and the sign had been changed to say "IF YOU HAVE SOME MONEY STOP IN AND BUY YOURSELF SOMETHING NICE." So I photographed it again and felt better. Looks like lots of honking off at the blowhole going on of late, followed by retreat to imitations of social acceptability so I fit right in. Saw your message printed on the shirts you sent me in my dream. Don't know what to make of it. On the championing of the abused front, I can tell you the other day I saw a local television news report of a K-9 police German shepherd getting shot to death. They referred to the death as a "homicide."
One step at a time...