Johnny's Records

10/14/2026

What did that mean? What did it mean when the dog catcher suggested he’d do what he could to get my dog released to me that day? Was there some higher authority involved? Or was he weighing the story I told him against what he thought was my mistreatment of my dog? Did he think I was lacking in dog ownership abilities? Did he have to consider my plea against the weight of my sins? This life, what we are offered and allowed, so often this comes down to someone’s judgment of our worth, our abilities, our character. How much money do we have in the bank? Were our parents of a certain pedigree? What clubs do we belong to? How about church? Do we keep a regular attendance at church? In the end you have to wonder. What are the values to which we are being compared?
Going to work that morning, I was scratching my head and wondering, was the dog catcher thinking about the headline from a decade ago: Local Moms bust head shop? Did he know I was Johnny? It was a curious thing. Years had passed since I last sold pipes and bongs. Nonetheless Johnnys and hence I, we were both still associated with the corruption of the morals of the town’s children. People were still imagining I was a dope fiend, a vampire like creature trying to ensnare everyone who crossed my path.
Was this old story a factor in my not getting my dog back?
People have often asked me, How in the world have you kept a record store open for fifty years? How is your shop still standing when Virgin and Tower have bitten the dust? What secret ju ju do you possess that allows you to keep going? It’s just luck. That’s what I believe. My life has been about luck. Now the fact that I am an alcoholic, no, there’s nothing lucky about that. That I had been drunk and let my dog outside unchaperoned, my dog prone to running in search of my lost step son, no, there was nothing lucky about that. You might say it was the opposite of luck. Or, more likely, it was stupidity.
Yes, indeed, in living this life I’ve manifest an amazing amount of stupidity. Where the luck comes in is that against all odds I’m still standing. No matter how much I f**k up, and, yes I am a master at f**king up, no matter how deep I sink into s**t, there is always someone to help me. My luck consists of the people around me who are always willing to help.
(Konrad note—I can remember one day at the store I was dealing with a particularly unhappy woman. She was looking for a particular record, a release that was limited to Walmart, and couldn’t believe that I didn’t have it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get across to her the concept that in this modern world the corporate structure is such that sometimes items are restricted to certain outlets of their choosing. No amount of explanation would satisfy this woman. She wanted it to be known that against her better judgment she had come to my store seeking this release and in spirt of her great sacrifice I had managed to let her down. Yes, indeed, this was a personal thing between her and me. I had conspired to ruin her day.
What was wrong with me, she wanted to know? Was it because I was so drug addled that I had failed to help her out? Yes she actually said this to me.
This woman was standing in front of my desk. To the right of her was a line of people wait to purchase records. Standing directly behind her was a very tall young man, probably about twenty-four years old. Though I didn’t know his name, I recognized him as one of many customers I had who, every week would come into my store and spend part of their paycheck on records. As this woman was aiming her hate guns at me, this young man was getting more and more agitated. Finally he tapped this woman on her shoulder and said,
Look, Lady, don’t you go talking to Johnny like that. Johnny is a good man. How dare you say those things. What’s the matter with you? Everybody in this place loves him. This bulls**t of yours is uncalled for. I think you should just get your angry ass the hell out of here before you make me angry.
The people in line behind this young man, they began grumbling at this woman and telling her to move on.
Leave Johnny alone, they all said. He’s our guy.
Now this is a true story. Whether or not I deserve this kind of support, well, it exists. It is the way my life goes. There’s me f**king up. There’s someone coming along to pick me up out of the muck and set me back on the path.)

10/13/2026

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T BELIEVE--IT'S THE GHOULISH JOHNNY IN FRONT OF THE ZUMBA HOLIDAY TREE. HIS LOCAL DEMONS HAVE DECORATED IT FOR HALLOWEEN. OOPS, ALMOST 2:30--TIME FOR THE GOBLINS AND WITCHES TO BEGIN DANCING

10/13/2026

There are days in your life when you might ask yourself, Am I going insane? And I’m not just talking about those days when your circuits are overloaded with input and you’re having trouble holding all the demands of your life together. Hell, anyone in the work force during these times has one of these days on a regular basis. What I’m referring to is a day when you just can’t figure out if everything you’ve believed up to this time is flat out wrong and the world is operating on principles you don’t understand. You are doing your best mental calculating to keep things, if not moving forward, then at the very least not collapsing. But everyone you consult, every task you undertake, every bit of information you absorb, it leaves you with a sense of escalating confusion. You are wondering if you are coming off the
spool.
Yesterday I mentioned that I had at last contacted the town dog catcher and he indeed had my dog. Not on his person, per se, but he knew where Narz was being kept. Someone was looking after my dog. But I couldn’t very well find out how to change that circumstance. I couldn’t get the dog catcher to unlatch the lock that was holding my dog captive.
On the surface there seemed to be two issues. One was that Narz’s license had expired. I owed the town a fine in order to get that up to date. No problem. Where do I sign? Not so fast. Narz was also behind on his shots. He needed to go to the vets. Okay, I can do that. But wait, there was an entanglement. In order to get his shots, he had to have a valid license. Checkmate. I couldn’t move forward. As I kept going over this problem with the dog catcher, looking for a glimmer of light, it became apparent from little hints the man was giving me that Narz was sick. He was having trouble walking. Did I know this? Yes, I had been aware for some time now that he had an occasional spill.
Okay, the dog catcher wanted to know how old Narz was. I didn’t know that. Not exactly. You see, my wife got him from a previous owner. When we got Narz, the person who had Narz was a little fuzzy in regard to Narz’s age. He was grown at the time, certainly not a puppy. But he could have been anywhere between four and six years old. The guy who gave him up, he loved Narz. He had gotten married and his bride declared she was allergic to the dog. It broke his heart to give the dog up. We had to make a deal allowing him to come to the house once a month to visit. Yes, he came three times. But he found it too painful. That and it was apparent Narz had moved on. Not that the dog was cruel or anything. He just had fallen in love with my step son.
When my step son got the dog, he was in fifth grade. Now he’d graduated from college. So we’ve had him for almost twelve years, I told the dog catcher. That means Narz could be anywhere between sixteen and seventeen years old. Maybe older. He hasn’t really shown his age except in the last year. It’s this last year when my step son hasn’t been able to come home from college that much. He’s been so busy finishing up. Then he had an apprenticeship for a job.
Which is the point of my plea to you concerning Narz, I concluded. My step son has been away at school and then busy with an out of state summer job. He hasn’t seen Narz since Christmas. We all know the dog is approaching his end. That’s not a mystery. It’s one of those hard facts of life. But my step son, he loves this dog. He looks on Narz as his best friend. That’s why Narz was out on the street. He keeps returning to the house we used to live in on Revere Road. We’ve moved. To Cedar Heights now. Narz can’t figure out where my step son is. He keeps looking for him. So sometimes when I let him out, he takes off for our old home trying to find my step son. It’s a matter of love. Maybe he knows he’s dying and wants to see my step son one last time. He’ll be home in less than a week. Can’t you help me out here?
Although I wasn’t quite up on what the dog catcher’s position was, it was dawning on me that he considered it best to put Narz down. I mean, I couldn’t say this exactly. But I knew something was askew. I could sense he didn’t think Narz was coming back to my custody. Was he, like my former neighbor June, convinced that Narz was running away from me because I treated the dog poorly? Could I convince him that I loved the dog? Could I say that I fed him and walked him every day? Could I persuade him that I was worthy of the dog? Maybe I wasn’t worthy. Maybe I was a bad owner. Hell, I had been drunk the previous night, the night that Narz escaped. If I Had been sober, no doubt this wouldn’t have happened.
When I finally got off the phone with the dog catcher, he said he’d do what he could to get the dog released to me sometime today.

Oh, by the way, all of you folks wondering what is happening with a new Johnnys location, well, it's a work in progress.

10/12/2026

The dog catcher for the town of Darien, he had my dog. I can’t tell you what a relief that was. When your dog is missing, when he’s flown the coop, when he’s by nature a wanderer, when he’s getting older and wandering no longer suits his constitution, damn, that’s a lot of worrying. When you’re worrying about a lost dog that you love, your mind can veer into some strange places, your imagination can play cruel tricks on you. Now here on my answering machine was a message from the dog catcher saying that my dog was in custody and I needed to call.
Okay, at last I can get my dog back. I’ll probably have to jump through a few hoops. But now that I’ve faced the scorn of June, how bad could this be? Damn, if only I’d checked this phone first, I could have spared myself that phone call.
The dog catcher was a calm man. He spook in a voice so soft and smooth he could have been selling laxatives on the radio. He seemed to know his domain and how it was to be ruled. Yes, he had my dog. He was in custody. That’s where he left off his original statement.
Okay, Narz is in custody. What do I have to do to get him back? Well, that’s the problem. You see, his license has expired. His license has expired? Okay, what do I have to do to get it up to date? (Konrad note—to tell you the truth, dear reader, I never realized Narz had a license. My wife must have seen to that. Well, at least she saw to it when she first acquired Narz from his original owner. It seemed that the license was more than a few years in arrears.) Well, you’re going to have to pay a fine for having his license expire. A fine? Yes, that seems to be about right. I’ll come down and pay the fine. Then can I have my
dog?
Well, it’s not that simple. Oh? Is there another problem? Yes, there’s a matter of some shots. It seems your dog is not up to date on some of his shots. He needs to go to the vet to have his shots updated. Geez, that didn’t sound so great. How could that have happened? No, I didn’t say this to the dog catcher. This was my own internal thought. I was thinking, How could I have not attended to this aspect of Narz’s well being? What the hell, Konrad?
Okay, I said, I guess I messed up there. So I’ll take him down to the vets and get him his shots. Then can we get his license renewed? Theoretically, yes. That would be the right thing to do. The dog needs his shots. But there’s another problem. Okay, what’s that? In order to get his shots, he needs to have his license.
Despite the fact that I had just changed my shirt, I was beginning to feel the heat of the day. The bursts of adrenaline that had been fueling me during the first hours of the day when Narz was lost, this had been shut down and was now disintegrating. The break up of this powerful chemical, I thought it must be causing me some cognitive confusion.
Wait a minute, I’m not quite getting this. You’re saying I can’t get my dog because his license has expired. There’s a fine for that. I’m saying I’m willing to come down to your office right now and pay this fine. But there’s a problem with that problem. I can’t get his license renewed because his shots are also out of date. Narz needs to go to the vet and get his shots. But in order to do that, he has to have his license. Is it me or does this sound like I’ve got something wrong.
No, you’ve got the gist of the matter.
Okay, so how am I supposed to work this out so I can get my dog?
Well, that’s a problem now isn’t it, Mr. Konrad?
I actually had to pause for a moment to try to get this contradiction into focus. I was thinking of the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I had thought the central premise of that book was a metaphor for the mind set that kept mankind in a state of war. Now I was seeing this kind of logic in effect and for the life of me I couldn’t understand what was the point of it. No doubt I was acting foolishly but I tried two more times to go through this logic with the dog catcher. Both times we arrived at the same place. Or should I say we arrived at no place. No place I could stand or understand.

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10/11/2026

As I said, some people are never going to like you. There’s no point in trying to force the issue. It’s not an emergency. It’s not a wrestling match. It’s just one of those hard facts of life you have to accept. Most times it is of no consequence. You can take it or forget it. But then there comes a day when you need to opportune this person for some help. Then you have to move outside your comfort zone and accept whatever rudeness and cruelty this person may believe is his or her right to lob your way. I fear I am too sensitive when it comes to this situation. While I am more than keenly aware that people like to choose cruelty, in so doing imagining themselves the right hand of God’s justice, still I like to hope for something better. On this morning as I was wondering where my dog might be, once again I was to be disappointed.
I knew when I was dialing the number, a number I had on a piece of crumbled paper in my wallet, saved from the last time I had asked Vito if he might be so kind as to look after Narz while my wife and I were in Italy—I knew I was going to get June and I also knew I was going to regret talking to her. But I needed to find my dog. If it meant entering the house of the witch, so be it.
The moment I identified myself—this was at a time just before people had caller ID—I heard June’s sharp intake of breath, a sound I assumed meant she was gathering up her poison. Given that my situation was desperate, I saw no point in trying in any way to fluff my story. Yes, I did leave out the part of my drinking. I figured June would have enough to crucify me without that information. I stated that I had let Narz out the previous night and he had failed to come home. I was wondering if perhaps he had shown up at her house.
Are you asking me if I have your dog at my house?
I’m asking if perhaps he made his way to see Vito.
Isn’t he your dog? Aren’t you responsible for him?
I could sense her angling to be removed from any responsibility for the care of Narz. I certainly wasn’t trying to paint that picture.
Narz likes to wander. He goes to see the people he is fond of. Vito is someone he is fond of.
Shouldn’t your dog be content with the people who own him? Isn’t he fond of you and your wife?
As frightened as I was about Narz’s welfare, I found myself having to bite my tongue so as not to take the bait of anger June was throwing at my feet.
Narz is very fond of my step son. He’s been away at college for nine months. Narz doesn’t understand this. He keeps returning to our old house in hopes of finding him.
That’s not my problem. Your inability to act responsibility with that animal isn’t my fault. Perhaps if you were a better owner.
Okay, June. Thank you.
When I hung up I had to make an effort to not cry. It wasn’t so much that this woman had hurt me with her cruelty as I was already so wobbly regarding my own failures with Narz that it only took the slightest rocking to push me close to the edge. I retreated to the bed room, thinking I would change my shirt—already drenched with sweat from the day’s heat—and go out to retrace the route Bill and I had just covered. I would drive slower this time,. I would stop at any place where the bushes were high to see if my dog was lying there. The phone in the bedroom—distinct from the the one in the kitchen from which I had just telephoned June—this phone had an answering machine. Yes, these had just become popular. The red light that indicated someone had left a message, this was blinking. I hit the button and discovered there was a call from the town dog catcher. Holy s**t, he had Narz. My dog was at last found.

10/10/2026

Holy gopher balls, Konrad, where in the world are you going with this story? Aren’t you talking about Johnnys? I thought this was a story about Johnnys moving. You know, a new store in the year 2026. Maybe. Maybe it’s about that. Then again, maybe it’s a story about the weirdness of life, the way things wobble and shake. Maybe it’s a story explaining how Johnnys came into existence, a story designed to guide me, the man writing these posts, in choosing his next spot.
This is the way I do things. I weigh the past, I shepherd my mind through the lands of what has been, surveying the lay of things, in order to figure out what might come next. Is this a constructive pathway? Beats me. But it is the way I deal with the future when the future is a little scary. No doubt a Buddhist would tell me to let go of everything I can’t control and just relax into the flow. That’s a nice sentiment. I think it has a good beat and I can dance to it. Nonetheless, it isn’t how I work. Besides, Rusty told me he wanted to hear this story. So there you have it. Rusty said to jump and I put on my stilts.
When I left off this tale, I was standing in my driveway watching my friend Bill drive off. We had gone out into the early morning heat in search of the missing dog Narz. He had run off to who knows where when I, Johnny, drunk, had let him outside at three in the morning and then fallen back to sleep before Narz checked back in.
Waking at six in the morning, I realized he was gone and called Bill to help me look for my lost dog. We had driven to my old neighborhood and then the high school and there was no sight of Narz. I was panicking. I was thinking Narz might be collapsed somewhere between our current abode and our old residence. I was cursing myself and my drunken stupidity. I was thinking I was no doubt the worst human who had ever lived. I was thinking of my step son and how he was calling almost every day to check up on his dog, the dog he hadn’t seen for maybe eight months now. S**t, this was a bad situation.
I knew what I had to do. As distasteful as this was going to be, I was going to have to call Vito’s house to see if perhaps Narz had made it there. The reason I dreaded doing this was, well, it wasn’t Vito. I knew Vito loved Narz and as such, had nothing but kindness for me. It was June, Vito’s wife, who I feared talking with. I couldn’t get an exact fix on June’s attitude towards me but I knew it wasn’t friendly. That I had asked she and Vito to look after Narz while my wife and I were away, this hadn’t sat well with her.
Again, I wasn’t sure exactly how this stood in her mind. I knew that Vito loved Narz and was happy to take him in. But June saw this differently. Did she think I was a bad owner? Yes, that much was plain to me. Why? Well, I can’t speak for June in this regard. My guess was that a good owner wouldn’t….I don’t know. A good owner wouldn’t allow his dog to befriend a neighbor. If Narz had such a good home, why did he like their company? If he was happy at home, why would he run away and come to them?
How was I to explain the philosophy of Narz? How was I to explain that Narz was not a one person dog? Or, better put, Narz would love to be around my step son. I don’t know if that was true twenty-four seven. But it was mostly true. Even then, Narz liked to make his way around in the world. He liked everyone. It wasn’t in his nature to restrict himself to one family. He had told me that a hundred times. I wasn’t going to try to change that aspect of him. That would be unfair. It would be a violation of his spirit.
I don't know much about this world. I often am confused about right and wrong. But when it comes to violating someone’s spirit, well, that’s pretty basic, isn’t it?
But I wasn’t going to be able to explain this to June. Like many other people who had a cursory understanding of who I was, I knew that June considered me to be of questionable character. Okay, you didn’t to have a cursory understanding of me to believe I was a questionable character. I am not everyone’s cup of tea. That’s just a fact.
Another fact was that there was nothing I could do to change her opinion of me. Or, another way to phrase this is, there was nothing I wanted to do to change this woman’s opinion of me. It wasn’t high up on my list of things to change or even consider. In fact, until this morning, until this time when I had to go begging for information about my dog’s whereabouts, damn, I wore her disdain as a badge of honor. You know what I mean. Some people, pleasing them only degrades your own truth.

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10/09/2026

A strangely attractive package? Was that how my first wife saw me? Certainly I was a lot to put up with. We were husband and wife during the time of the local moms bust head shop incident. She was aware that I had a certain reputation in town. She knew I couldn’t be trusted to stay away from controversy. I keep mentioning the store windows and how either myself of a local artist would create a picture that had nothing to do with retail. One summer I came up with this typical Johnny idea, a picture I just thought was hysterically funny. I had an artist I had become friendly with, a wonderful woman named Lisa, who would kindly dedicate her time and talents to paint on my window whatever crazy notion I came up with.
For this summer window I wanted a painting of a large thermometer. Not just a thermometer. This particular instrument of heat measurement, it would be bursting at the top on account of the heat. The top portion of the thermometer would be separated from the main body and large splurges of mercury would be shooting out.
Okay, so far so good. Not a particularly unique or original concept. Many cartoonists had employed a similar idea. Ah, but this is where I decided to take a left turn into the weird and bizarre. Yes, I definitely borrowed part of the idea for the rest of the picture from the Rick Griffin cover he created for the Aoxomoxoa album. (Konrad note—originally the picture the Grateful Dead used for the cover of their album, it had been created by Mr. Griffin for a poster of the band at the Avalon Ballroom. The band liked the imagery of that poster so much they requested that it be used for the album.)
In accordance with Mr. Grffin’s iconography, at the top of the window I had Lisa paint a wicked sun that bore a curious resemblance to an o**m. That’s where the immediate resemblance to Mr. Griffin’s work ended. The rest is my interpretation of the same theme.
At the bottom of the window, on either side of the base of the thermometer, I had Lisa paint a large ice cube. You know, an ice cube on either side. On each of the two ice cubes I wanted a seated penguin smoking a cigar. Oh, yes, that was dementedly wonderful. It tickled me no end.
At the base of the window I placed a large number of white bathroom tiles I had left over from some project or other Bill and I had undertaken. These I had Lisa splatter with red paint to represent the mercury from the overheated thermometer. Just in case the suggestiveness of this window was elusive to any passer-by, I dropped a number of Trojan prophylactics on the tiles.
Strangely, very few people commented on this window. Or if they did comment, they failed to catch the sexual innuendo. A few Deadheads caught the reference to Aoxomoxoa. But I fear these folks had failed to catch the Implications Mr. Griffin had placed in his work. One night when we were headed out to a party, my wife drove down to the store to pick me up. Oddly, she rarely came inside. I believe she found the concept of my store to be just a little more crazy than she was comfortable with. I was delayed a few minutes doing the day’s totals. When at last I jumped into her car, my wife shot me a funny look.
John, is there something sexual going on in that window?
You know how it is. Sometimes in the aftermath of a failed marriage, you look back and wonder what it was that brought you and your ex together in the first place. I don’t think I have an answer to this question regarding my first marriage. What I do know is that my first wife had an incredible amount of patience. Where this came from, who can say. I think she found something about my renegade nature incredibly attractive.
I mean, if you knew the woman, you probably wouldn’t have imagined this to be the case. Certainly the people she was involved with, her friends, her pursuits, these seemed upper middle class conservative. No, she didn’t involve herself in politics and, if she had, she would have been considered a middle of the road democrat. But her aspirations were to fine living. She believed that money was a measure of success and success was high on her list of priorities.
Again, why she married me, that seemed in opposition to her professed beliefs. It’s a funny thing in this life. So often we believe we’re one thing, plant out flag in a particular corner, but what our hearts crave, that is in a completely different sphere, often a sphere we haven’t the slightest clue as to its nature. I believe this was the case with both of us, my first wife and I. We were attracted to something in each other that neither one of us could explain. As such, all of our friends, the ones who believed they knew the real us, neither camp could understand what the hell we were doing married to each other.
Certainly when it came to Narz, my wife and I shared different attitudes. As I mentioned, my wife’s interest in the dog was that her son loved Narz. That's the beginning and end of it. My interest in Narz, well, to me he was a soul of immense riches. He was a philosopher, an outlaw, a free spirit, a creature of sublime instincts. I considered him a teacher. In the end, Narz became something much, much more to me.

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10/08/2026

New Releases for the Week! Modest Mouse- An Eraser and a Maze is new too. We got it on Cd. Hopefully next week we will get it in on Vinyl!

10/08/2026

When Bill dropped me off, I swear the temperature must have been nudging one hundred degrees. I stood in the driveway and watched my friend navigate his way out of my driveway. The wheels of his Cadillac made a crunching sound as they rode over the gravel. The driveway was a long and shaped like a snake on the hunt. On one side were a series of small boulders that stood before a woods. On the other side, perilous close to the driveway, was a pond.
When we’d bought the house it had been in the late autumn and the pond had been filled to the brim with water. I had memories of seeing it years ago in the winter when the local neighborhood kids had played hockey on its frozen surface. Ah, put little did I know that the pond had no natural feed. There was no stream or brook that supported this body of water. It relied completely on ground water to keep it full. The first year we lived in the house, there had been a drought. Watching the pond grow more and more shallow, I had kept track of the rainfall. After the middle of June, there was no precipitation until sometime in late September. By that time the pond had completely disappeared. Nothing remained but mud.
To explain to you just what kind of crazy madness dwells in me, for a month or more I worked on digging the pond out. That’s right. I was crazy enough to imagine I could.dig this pond down deep enough that it would fill with water using no other tools than a shovel and a wheel barrow. Let me see, the pond was maybe two hundred yards long by fifty yards wide. Maybe it was bigger. Yes, I imagined I was personally going to dig this out myself. Okay, the kindest thing I can say about myself is that I have a vivid imagination.
A friend of mine, Tony Budd, would come over and lend a hand. What a sight we were. Both of us would have on old boots, boots that had probably belonged to our fathers. We wore the rattiest sweat pants we could find. Experience had taught us quickly that we were going to get covered with mud. We had on old sweatshirts that were so worn out they barely held together. That was okay. We weren’t looking to shine. Our goal was simply to survive.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in mud. You put in a few minutes of labor and you can’t help yourself. The tidiest person alive becomes immersed. You begin to sink down into the goop beneath your feet. You step on the shovel and the mud resists you with all its strength. You go to lift that first shovel full of mud and it’s all you can do to maintain your feet. By the fifth shovel you’re bound to fall. Once you’ve got mud on your bottom, well, what’s that saying? The bottom drops out. You realized you’re in for a slog. There’s no avoiding the obvious. You are going to be covered from head to toe in mud.
Yes, it was true. Ground water was just beneath the surface of the mud. After a wheel barrow load of removal, there would be water seeping up into the space you created. While this to me was a sign that my vision could be realized, it was also an indication that the mud was going to become even more resistant to our efforts. Not exactly thinking this project through, perhaps just beginning as an experiment, we started out digging the edges of the pond. Perhaps we chose this curious method because we feared venturing too far out into the mud. I think we both were a tad fearful that the mud might have the characteristics of quicksand and gobble us up.
But out onto the pond we eventually had to go. To achieve this kind of evacuation, we set up a series of boards upon which to balance the wheel barrow and enable us to return to shore with a complete load. And while we managed to keep the single wheel on the wood, more often than not Tony and I, each one of us on either side of the wheel barrow, would eventually slip and into the mud we’d land for, oh, the fifth or sixth time.
It was hard to maintain any seriousness about this task. Okay, obviously this was an idiot’s mission. Tony participated because he was my friend and because, more than anything, he was curious. What would become of us as we participated in such a silly pastime? In truth it was not unlike being in one of those silent movies where the climax of the action was a pie fight in which no one was immune from wearing custard and meringue on his or her face. If it was unlikely to lead to a successful outcome, it had about it a certain primal pleasure.
As it turned out, I was a bit more crazy than Tony. Yes, it’s true, I am a lot more crazy than Tony. While he was in high school and had classes to attend, I began a full time assault on the pond. As the summer drew on and no rain was in the forecast, I developed an intricate system of lumber to allow me to get out into the middle of the pond and bring back load after load of mud. Where did I park this mud? you might ask. Why over in the aforementioned woods, of course.
You might wonder what my wife thought of this. Well, by this time we had been married for about eight years. My wife had become accustomed to my, er, peculiarities. She had learned that it was easier to let me go about whatever strange task I had on my mind rather than argue with me about what the neighbors might be thinking. She knew enough about me to know that I had gathered to my identify a certain pedigree of madness. I can’t say that she considered this part of my charm. But it was part of the package that was me and somehow she found the package strangely attractive.