RIP Harry Crews

 I'm not sure how I missed his death in March 2012. This man is (was) a fierce (and sometimes funny) social commentator on the American way of life, especially in such novel s as Car, Body, and The Mulching of America. The first book of his I read was A Feast of Snakes, loosely based on his childhood in Cracker country (south Georgia and north Florida). It's a book that scared me and exhilarated me and disgusted me, sometimes all on the same page, but the talent for place shone through and the sharp characters stared you down. I suppose his masterpiece was his autobiography, graphically illuminating his hard raising in the piney woods and swamps and fields, among the hard men and women who were cockfighters and dog fighters and boozers and dopers and gamblers.


Not for the faint-hearted. He pulls no punches but swoops you up and takes you on a hell of a ride, if you can just hang on.

 

Novels

• The Gospel Singer, 1968
• Naked in Garden Hills, 1969
• This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven, 1970
• Karate is a Thing of the Spirit, 1971
• Car, 1972
• The Hawk is Dying, 1973
• The Gypsy's Curse, 1974
• A Feast of Snakes, 1976
• The Enthusiast, 1981
• All We Need of Hell, 1987
• The Knockout Artist, 1988
• Body, 1990
• Scar Lover, 1992
• The Mulching of America, 1995
• Celebration, 1998
• An American Family: The Baby with the Curious Markings, 2006

Collections

• Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader, 1993
• The Gospel Singer & Where Does One Go When There's No Place Left to Go?, 1995

Autobiography

• A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, 1978

RIP

Sally Ride

An inspiration to us all.

More Waiting

I did eventually get an email about the concierge job -- "thanks but we chose someone else."

Now I'm waiting to hear about another job. I interviewed with Gray Line Tours (the sightseeing trolleys) for a part-time admin/bookkeeper. It's housing at the Chamber of Commerce so is not far away. I think I'd like it a lot as it would be a job-share with the current admin person, so could probably pack it in to 2-3 days and then be off (as opposed to half-days every day). Also, there'd be some retail ticket selling, etc. which I wouldn't mind either. They seemed to like me and said it would be a few days before they decided. That was last Monday.

And --- I have to replace my windshield. It's got a foot-long crack in it, too long to repair. As soon as my money gets here next week, I'll get that done. It's always something, and it's always a chunk of change. Sigh.

Have certainly been enjoying the rain and thunder boomers, though Mamie the dog gets very nervous and will climb in your lap if  you let her. As she's a Labrador, this means you are covered in dog.

Special RIP

Amy's dog, Dorsey, was put down yesterday. He was 13 and in failing heath. I never got to know him when he was healthy. When Amy and three of her friends shared a house years ago, they all got dogs from the pound. Dorsey was the last of the four to go. Everybody rallied around so we had a houseful of mourners. A nice grave was dug in the backyard with a blackberry bush planted on top.

RIP Andy

Andy Griffith has left us.

My earliest encounters with him were him as a comedian back in the 1950s, a very Southern comedian. I could recite "What It Was, Was Football" line for line, and I had a cat named Big Orange, after the line "I believe I will have another big orange" (said in response to the drunk saying "buddy, have a drink"). And the best explanation of what football is about is his "run from one of that cow pasture to the other without either getting knocked down or stepping in something."

I love his hick persona explaining the ballet Swan Lake, using the all-purpose explanation "And the curtain fell and time passed."

And then I saw him in the movie "Face in the Crowd," where he played  a scheming preacher who becomes massively popular and moves on into megalomania. He was amazing. Highly recommended.

I thought "The Andy Griffith Show" was good and full of well-done characters (Don Knotts was fabulous), but it was a little too rural and sweet for me. And his later shows as a lawyer didn't much interest me, though they were filmed in Wilmington, my hometown, so I enjoyed the setting.

I'll miss him.

Better "Before" Pic

I had to go to Picasa to retrieve this photo, which is a much better shot of how the "before" was before the reno. Yep, pretty jammed in. "After" is much nicer.

So now take at look at the previous post.

Renovation Done

Just finished up the reno inside the rig. Here's a pic of how it was when I bought it four years ago.

Notice how narrow the aisle is. And here's how it look now.

The dinette table  has been gone for a long time and I had book bins piled up there. The edge of the carpet shows where the couch used to be. Now I have a counter and chair and it's six inches narrower than the couch used to be, and it doesn't stick out past the fridge (lower right). That white blob is my computer. The scanner is up there, too, and the radio and a sundries box, etc.

The next picture shows the book bins neatly stacked under the counter, still accessible but visually out of the way. I put the printer down there, too, as it took up more real estate on the counter than I wanted it to and I don't need it every day.

The wood box at the bottom is over the wheelwell. You can see the tension rods, one between the bins and one next to the chair; the L-brackets are good but the counter is two feet wide and I needed some more support towards the aisle. They work great.

Anyhow, I'm thrilled at my extra space and ease of moving around and lack of visual clutter. At the moment, the couch seat is in the old dinette area (the new seating area) because the cushions I made weren't comfortable enough. Eventually I'll do something "official" about that, but it'll do for now.

I hate heat. Hooray for A/C and for my new arrangement, now that I'm holed up in the rig more often to stay comfortable.