Yeah I’m that bum. I haven’t worked now for a long time and don’t suppose I will again. I’m 15 years short of the pension but I don’t imagine there will be much of one when I finally arrive. Literary? I try to write and I think in time I will get better at it but it is most unlikely to be anything that would afford me any income - who the hell reads these days? I play music but again what does one do with the recordings except stick them up on the interwebs for people to listen. In all my decades as a musician I have made far less than $0.
I’m not mad or eccentric - although I am often compared to “The Dude” who didn’t have any particular talents of his own. I’m pretty normal in my habits and like to wash. I’m no town crazy preferring to stay away from people generally. The digital realm holds little interest for me and my only experience with computer games was Pong. What I’m supposed to do for the next thirty years is anyone’s guess? I guess more of the same … more songs and scribblings. I will be working on a novel of course.
What is a life? I could have been a plumber or a tax accountant I suppose. I would like to have been an actor or a musician/singer but these opportunities lie in the distant past. I wasn’t born into a family that understood art. My parents were simple middleclass people. Music was the thing on the radio and actors on TV. That’s it. Furthermore my location of birth was about as far away from artistic scenes as one could get.
So yeah I’m that bum but a silent one. I will die with a bunch of songs and a story or two, an unpublished novel and and head full of could have beens.
Oh, the memories of all these years living in and traveling around the North Country! I fondly remember meeting two good ol' boys in the now-closed coffee shop in Vermontville, and their sincere question, "Chris, if a man wants to live in a tar-paper shack, there should be a place where he has the right to, don't you agree?" (I did, and I do.) And the wise town supervisor in another Adirondack town, who, when some locals complained to him about two old gentlemen living in a ramshackle "dwelling" in the right-of-way on a town road, told them, "If Frank and Richard want to spend their summers camping out on the side of that road, leave 'em alone. They've spent a lot of years in this town. They won't be with us forever. Live and let live." God bless that supervisor, God bless those two old men, God bless tarpaper shelters, and God bless you, your lovely wife and your charming baby. Happy Thanksgiving Andy. Amen.
i. Excellent essay, and may the good Lord bless you for referencing dear, disturbed Ignatious, one of my top 5 literary characters of all time.
ii. I worked in homeless shelters for some time, and I requently (and somewhat jokingly) referenced Otis from The Andy Griffith Show as an example of what homelesness and addiction used to be, usually in the context of explaining what homelessness and additction is now, with the conclusion being "it ain't that!" Otis was a true character and had a role to play in Mayberry... he was part of the community, and while he walked his own path and undoubtedly suffered, he still bore the dignity of a fellow community member and human being.
iii. I have had similar thoughts on slums and shanty towns. For some reason we deemed it fit to outlaw folks who might not fit the mold to make their own way and discover their own answers, and therefore they are relegated to cardboard on pavement, homeless shelters, and government housing. I have seen some incredibly artful, creative, and ingenious attempts at shelter, and they usually last a few months before a clean-up is mandated from on high, and the displacement begins again. Sometimes I wonder if we should allow folks to solve their own problems, if that is what they wish to do. Crazy thought I know.
iv. hope fatherhood is blessing you as it has me. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Orality and mythos long preceded written documents. The first literature simply recorded treasures that had existed for centuries in human memory. Your gas station cackler had absolutely no need for writing or any other method of recording to develop his character. Indeed, if Achilles Odysseus and Menelaus hadn't played such characters in their own lifetimes, Homer would not have inherited the material for the Iliad.
My guess is the gas station Cackler is receiving a modest Social Security check. There's only two ways yto get beer money— panhandling or a Social Security check. To qualify you only have to manage to work 40 quarters in the long stretch of a human life.
Fantastic point about mythos in the pre-literate era; a thing that often goes unmentioned in circles of literate people. And truly, the last masters of that sort of lived, 'oral,' aura-based mode of expression have very often been bums...
So far as the cackler's mode of subsistence is concerned, SS checks are possible, as is VA Disability, to be sure. I have no idea. Though it's worth noting that in rural areas, the cost of living is practically nothing and there are still quite a few who won't take government money. He lives on a land lease that costs $500/yr, has no power, heats with deadwood he gathers from land he doesn't own, and is a known beaver trapper, hunter, and fisherman. It's likely he takes cash work here and there to pay for beer (which is certainly his biggest expense). Doubt he spends more than $10k/yr. There are NOT many like him left anywhere, though I do get the sense that types like him used to be more common.
I think there's a whole other essay to be written about how the decline of rural America in general has led to the "scrappy subsistence-trapper" archetype dying out quickly and almost without a word...
- are you or we perceiving this dude from a far too ‘contemporary stance or lens ..
with wry humour - such persons are also convenient boogie men or witches - being a feral child armed me & not harmed me .. & i get by.. abide eh ! not prone to religious way o bein .. was beat outta me worse’n Huck or Jim - hoowraw eh ..
might I remind as additional grist - the fundamental algorithms of existent Asperger’s, ADD, Autism, poor vision, hearing issues, various n sundry ‘parental issues.. whatever.. measle damage growing up, VD, Mood Disorders, Migraine.. such realities ripple throughout society & culture - not everyone is ‘A winner’
BUT your ‘cackler could also be the dude with snowshoes reaching stranded hunters or lost cross country skiers .. I could writer ‘fiction of this stuff till the cows come home.. and have attended the cows coming home more than many.. eh 🦎🏴☠️🐄
That there is. I know two subsistence trappers. I used to know about a half dozen, but the others have all gone to that big muskrat den in the sky. But it's not just the fentanyl that's caused their decline. Subsistence trappers were still trappers and when there was still a fur market, they still had a pretty reliable source of income. The last guy I know in NJ (of all places!) used to still make a few thousand a year off coyote pelts when Canada Goose was still lining their parkas with them. Between that, guide work and the odd handy man job, he was doing alright. Of course, Goose switched to synthetics a couple of years back and poof went that market.
Side bar: I don't know what to say to people who would rather wear non-renewable oil frothed up to sorta look like something that can reliably and sustainably help feed an old trapper indefinitely. Weirdos.
I count the loss through age or disaster our bums, eccentrics, and various drop outs as each the end of an era. Every place has them and when each character leaves through death or other means, each disappearances reduces the character of a place.
What we lose is more than just character, but the potential of everyone. The bums, eccentrics, and various drop outs occupy one side of a bell curve, and the brilliant, prophetic, and genius occupy the other side. Both enter into and converse with the liminal spaces. Without liminal spaces there can be no bums or prophets, or is it that without the bums and prophets there can be no liminal spaces?
What we're left with instead is just dull, regression-towards-the-mean mediocrity.
That was interesting and insightful. I really appreciated this line, "So far as I can tell, much of that “spirit” is found in the fundamentally Divine realities of life, mythos, literature, and above all — of being a character."
Speaking of characters, I’m always astounded by the faces on the screens from just a few decades ago. Full of character. Nowadays, it feels like every face on a screen is a plastic mask and eerily similar. I can tell people apart, but they don’t seem to have a distinct, personal humanness.
As far as the scrap metal men, they have been replaced by determined newcomers who work it like a full-time job, making regular rounds of each section of town the night before garbage day.
To be a “character” one has to be embedded to a certain extent in a community. In the bleak atomization of our neoliberal dispensation, community is increasingly hard to come by …
It seems we live as characters in video games. My favorites were Skyrim. Star Wars KOTOR, Mass Effect. We embodied fantasy characters. Or I write fantasies in the theme of Gatsby or James Bond. This piece has me thinking of what the leap is from fiction fantasy to being your own character. To paraphrase, Twain, Becoming who you pretend to be. Being a character in your head to living as that character.
I think the leap for me took 10 years, my 20s to develop. I had to experience death. I gave my first eulogy as an 18 year old and learned to give comforting words while I mourned. I let passion override reason and learned how love can make you feel great and dirty. I do a lot of extreme sports. Surfing, Judo, Motorcycling. I studied and became a professional and found I’m still ambitious. For more Responsibility in business. For children to tell my stories to.
But it kinda began with video games. And somewhere I made unconscious decisions to be a character in the world, small steps at a time. I’m still screen addicted. Workin on it. My instinctual answer is that I’m getting over my fear of death by embracing life. Not a perfect life, but one lived in struggle to understand things, to meet people.
During the 'Troubles' of the past five years, we have seen The Powers That Be lean into approving and reenforcing 'bare life', or, the idleness of never leaving your Pod while soma, of the digital and chemical variety, saps one of any character at all.
And those whose character could not be contained were met with state censure.
If the coming mass displacement of labor and meaning downstream of the false gods of AI looks anything like the Covid Regime, we are in deep, deep trouble as a species.
I think the scariest part of the problem relates to the economics of it
It is hard to do half employment, and the class of off the books jobs is readily disappearing
When I was 14, I worked on my Uncle's farm, and if I wanted to, there would be work for me there today
But talking to my friends who spent their childhoods in cities, they legitimately could not find a job.
When we get rid of the copper selling, wood chopping, foraging, baking, brewing, fixing on the sly, cash only jobs that allow people with some gumption to get ahead, we as a society force people to go on welfare or totally enslave themselves to the corporation. Ironically, the internet was supposed to help with this, but it has only made it worse
The grey market as it is called lives on in other countries, and I have seen it allow people to actually pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But with the amount of regulation and paperwork we see today, this kind of bum may be relegated either to history, or to doing actually illegal things because they still pay
My Dad worked on the Southern Pacific railroad long ago (before Amtrak) and aside the rail lines in my hometown of Klamath Falls, Oregon, there were what Dad described as “hoboes” who camped out near the natural hotsprings that were underneath Klamath Falls. There were little pools of hot water and steam and they would huddle near them to keep warm in the winter. I never met any of them…but certainly they were survivors!
"How to be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson is a bum's bible. Pray you stay free of addiction and severe mental illness, have a few funds, and bumhood has severe charms.
Yeah I’m that bum. I haven’t worked now for a long time and don’t suppose I will again. I’m 15 years short of the pension but I don’t imagine there will be much of one when I finally arrive. Literary? I try to write and I think in time I will get better at it but it is most unlikely to be anything that would afford me any income - who the hell reads these days? I play music but again what does one do with the recordings except stick them up on the interwebs for people to listen. In all my decades as a musician I have made far less than $0.
I’m not mad or eccentric - although I am often compared to “The Dude” who didn’t have any particular talents of his own. I’m pretty normal in my habits and like to wash. I’m no town crazy preferring to stay away from people generally. The digital realm holds little interest for me and my only experience with computer games was Pong. What I’m supposed to do for the next thirty years is anyone’s guess? I guess more of the same … more songs and scribblings. I will be working on a novel of course.
What is a life? I could have been a plumber or a tax accountant I suppose. I would like to have been an actor or a musician/singer but these opportunities lie in the distant past. I wasn’t born into a family that understood art. My parents were simple middleclass people. Music was the thing on the radio and actors on TV. That’s it. Furthermore my location of birth was about as far away from artistic scenes as one could get.
So yeah I’m that bum but a silent one. I will die with a bunch of songs and a story or two, an unpublished novel and and head full of could have beens.
Thanks for sharing. Godspeed, brother.
Oh, the memories of all these years living in and traveling around the North Country! I fondly remember meeting two good ol' boys in the now-closed coffee shop in Vermontville, and their sincere question, "Chris, if a man wants to live in a tar-paper shack, there should be a place where he has the right to, don't you agree?" (I did, and I do.) And the wise town supervisor in another Adirondack town, who, when some locals complained to him about two old gentlemen living in a ramshackle "dwelling" in the right-of-way on a town road, told them, "If Frank and Richard want to spend their summers camping out on the side of that road, leave 'em alone. They've spent a lot of years in this town. They won't be with us forever. Live and let live." God bless that supervisor, God bless those two old men, God bless tarpaper shelters, and God bless you, your lovely wife and your charming baby. Happy Thanksgiving Andy. Amen.
Very edifying story.
i. Excellent essay, and may the good Lord bless you for referencing dear, disturbed Ignatious, one of my top 5 literary characters of all time.
ii. I worked in homeless shelters for some time, and I requently (and somewhat jokingly) referenced Otis from The Andy Griffith Show as an example of what homelesness and addiction used to be, usually in the context of explaining what homelessness and additction is now, with the conclusion being "it ain't that!" Otis was a true character and had a role to play in Mayberry... he was part of the community, and while he walked his own path and undoubtedly suffered, he still bore the dignity of a fellow community member and human being.
iii. I have had similar thoughts on slums and shanty towns. For some reason we deemed it fit to outlaw folks who might not fit the mold to make their own way and discover their own answers, and therefore they are relegated to cardboard on pavement, homeless shelters, and government housing. I have seen some incredibly artful, creative, and ingenious attempts at shelter, and they usually last a few months before a clean-up is mandated from on high, and the displacement begins again. Sometimes I wonder if we should allow folks to solve their own problems, if that is what they wish to do. Crazy thought I know.
iv. hope fatherhood is blessing you as it has me. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Orality and mythos long preceded written documents. The first literature simply recorded treasures that had existed for centuries in human memory. Your gas station cackler had absolutely no need for writing or any other method of recording to develop his character. Indeed, if Achilles Odysseus and Menelaus hadn't played such characters in their own lifetimes, Homer would not have inherited the material for the Iliad.
My guess is the gas station Cackler is receiving a modest Social Security check. There's only two ways yto get beer money— panhandling or a Social Security check. To qualify you only have to manage to work 40 quarters in the long stretch of a human life.
Fantastic point about mythos in the pre-literate era; a thing that often goes unmentioned in circles of literate people. And truly, the last masters of that sort of lived, 'oral,' aura-based mode of expression have very often been bums...
So far as the cackler's mode of subsistence is concerned, SS checks are possible, as is VA Disability, to be sure. I have no idea. Though it's worth noting that in rural areas, the cost of living is practically nothing and there are still quite a few who won't take government money. He lives on a land lease that costs $500/yr, has no power, heats with deadwood he gathers from land he doesn't own, and is a known beaver trapper, hunter, and fisherman. It's likely he takes cash work here and there to pay for beer (which is certainly his biggest expense). Doubt he spends more than $10k/yr. There are NOT many like him left anywhere, though I do get the sense that types like him used to be more common.
I think there's a whole other essay to be written about how the decline of rural America in general has led to the "scrappy subsistence-trapper" archetype dying out quickly and almost without a word...
- are you or we perceiving this dude from a far too ‘contemporary stance or lens ..
with wry humour - such persons are also convenient boogie men or witches - being a feral child armed me & not harmed me .. & i get by.. abide eh ! not prone to religious way o bein .. was beat outta me worse’n Huck or Jim - hoowraw eh ..
might I remind as additional grist - the fundamental algorithms of existent Asperger’s, ADD, Autism, poor vision, hearing issues, various n sundry ‘parental issues.. whatever.. measle damage growing up, VD, Mood Disorders, Migraine.. such realities ripple throughout society & culture - not everyone is ‘A winner’
BUT your ‘cackler could also be the dude with snowshoes reaching stranded hunters or lost cross country skiers .. I could writer ‘fiction of this stuff till the cows come home.. and have attended the cows coming home more than many.. eh 🦎🏴☠️🐄
That there is. I know two subsistence trappers. I used to know about a half dozen, but the others have all gone to that big muskrat den in the sky. But it's not just the fentanyl that's caused their decline. Subsistence trappers were still trappers and when there was still a fur market, they still had a pretty reliable source of income. The last guy I know in NJ (of all places!) used to still make a few thousand a year off coyote pelts when Canada Goose was still lining their parkas with them. Between that, guide work and the odd handy man job, he was doing alright. Of course, Goose switched to synthetics a couple of years back and poof went that market.
Side bar: I don't know what to say to people who would rather wear non-renewable oil frothed up to sorta look like something that can reliably and sustainably help feed an old trapper indefinitely. Weirdos.
Wonderful essay, thank you.
I count the loss through age or disaster our bums, eccentrics, and various drop outs as each the end of an era. Every place has them and when each character leaves through death or other means, each disappearances reduces the character of a place.
What we lose is more than just character, but the potential of everyone. The bums, eccentrics, and various drop outs occupy one side of a bell curve, and the brilliant, prophetic, and genius occupy the other side. Both enter into and converse with the liminal spaces. Without liminal spaces there can be no bums or prophets, or is it that without the bums and prophets there can be no liminal spaces?
What we're left with instead is just dull, regression-towards-the-mean mediocrity.
That was interesting and insightful. I really appreciated this line, "So far as I can tell, much of that “spirit” is found in the fundamentally Divine realities of life, mythos, literature, and above all — of being a character."
Speaking of characters, I’m always astounded by the faces on the screens from just a few decades ago. Full of character. Nowadays, it feels like every face on a screen is a plastic mask and eerily similar. I can tell people apart, but they don’t seem to have a distinct, personal humanness.
As far as the scrap metal men, they have been replaced by determined newcomers who work it like a full-time job, making regular rounds of each section of town the night before garbage day.
To be a “character” one has to be embedded to a certain extent in a community. In the bleak atomization of our neoliberal dispensation, community is increasingly hard to come by …
It seems we live as characters in video games. My favorites were Skyrim. Star Wars KOTOR, Mass Effect. We embodied fantasy characters. Or I write fantasies in the theme of Gatsby or James Bond. This piece has me thinking of what the leap is from fiction fantasy to being your own character. To paraphrase, Twain, Becoming who you pretend to be. Being a character in your head to living as that character.
I think the leap for me took 10 years, my 20s to develop. I had to experience death. I gave my first eulogy as an 18 year old and learned to give comforting words while I mourned. I let passion override reason and learned how love can make you feel great and dirty. I do a lot of extreme sports. Surfing, Judo, Motorcycling. I studied and became a professional and found I’m still ambitious. For more Responsibility in business. For children to tell my stories to.
But it kinda began with video games. And somewhere I made unconscious decisions to be a character in the world, small steps at a time. I’m still screen addicted. Workin on it. My instinctual answer is that I’m getting over my fear of death by embracing life. Not a perfect life, but one lived in struggle to understand things, to meet people.
During the 'Troubles' of the past five years, we have seen The Powers That Be lean into approving and reenforcing 'bare life', or, the idleness of never leaving your Pod while soma, of the digital and chemical variety, saps one of any character at all.
And those whose character could not be contained were met with state censure.
If the coming mass displacement of labor and meaning downstream of the false gods of AI looks anything like the Covid Regime, we are in deep, deep trouble as a species.
will return soonly for a read thanks.. among a few writers here..
will put a ‘good time aside.. for such a read.. same day or eve
haha.. or 4 AM .. get some good vibe / music in my head & feast .. 🦎🏴☠️🍁
I think the scariest part of the problem relates to the economics of it
It is hard to do half employment, and the class of off the books jobs is readily disappearing
When I was 14, I worked on my Uncle's farm, and if I wanted to, there would be work for me there today
But talking to my friends who spent their childhoods in cities, they legitimately could not find a job.
When we get rid of the copper selling, wood chopping, foraging, baking, brewing, fixing on the sly, cash only jobs that allow people with some gumption to get ahead, we as a society force people to go on welfare or totally enslave themselves to the corporation. Ironically, the internet was supposed to help with this, but it has only made it worse
The grey market as it is called lives on in other countries, and I have seen it allow people to actually pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But with the amount of regulation and paperwork we see today, this kind of bum may be relegated either to history, or to doing actually illegal things because they still pay
My Dad worked on the Southern Pacific railroad long ago (before Amtrak) and aside the rail lines in my hometown of Klamath Falls, Oregon, there were what Dad described as “hoboes” who camped out near the natural hotsprings that were underneath Klamath Falls. There were little pools of hot water and steam and they would huddle near them to keep warm in the winter. I never met any of them…but certainly they were survivors!
I am seriously having to start considering that I am, indeed, a bum.
Andy, if you haven’t already, I recommend reading Thomas Merton’s “Raids on the Unspeakable” I think you’ll dig it.
Love you’re writing man, thanks for making it available to all
"How to be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson is a bum's bible. Pray you stay free of addiction and severe mental illness, have a few funds, and bumhood has severe charms.