Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Some people feel discomfort around fat people—not me. Tim was a friend in need and
a partner. It got worse when he smoked his menthol 100 down by 50, then stabbed his third
yolk with it, swirled it around to dead-out and dredged some grits 'n gravy residue for the lay
down. I loved the action conceptually but couldn't stomach the ringside view.
We moved on to meet with the other partners to compare notes and develop ideas. I coun-
ted on Tim to keep us on course, but he nodded to every suggestion or demand on the table,
and I doubted all those ideas could be good. I finally said, “Wait a minute.”
Questioning the process became a personal transition, discovering the means by which we
would throw of the yolk of the 50s. I mean yoke. This felt foreign to all experience, against the
grain and clearly demonstrating that everything was not everything. Nor was it cool. We had
a shot at making rent and groceries without manual labor and could not fuck it up on wrong
moves—alas, one mo time. A proven radical took to business like Br'er Rabbit in a briar patch.
Who knew? It wasn't a cop out. We hadn't made any real money and never would.
Besides that, magazine content went radical. Lively minds through history have felt
repressed by stagnant values and fake morality. One department of the new magazine had the
catchy title
Lowcountry Kitchen
, where doyennes of grace and hospitality shared precious fam-
ily receipts, leading to paid advertising by the doyennes' husbands' businesses. Recipes were
called receipts, a Huguenot colloquialism indicating original blood if not original thought.
Yes, that department was a cop out to the regional delusion, but redemption came in
April—get it? April? It was time for a joke, for chrissake! Unfortunately, nobody laughed at the
featured receipt, Toadfish Manigault. The Manigault (man•ih•go) family was landed with 17
th
Century antecedents who Did. Not. Need. Yankee disrespect on a venerable institution. Toad-
fish were scorned—and left gasping on the dock as punishment for stealing bait and being
ugly. Toadfish Manigault was a three-pounder on a bed of noodles presented by a disturbed
young man with a curlicue moustache drawn on his face. The Manigault family did not buy
an ad ever again. Blowfish bouillabaisse as a side dish didn't help.
Ah, well, the goof gods need offerings too. The business stayed afloat by sleight of hand
and constant bailing. Eyebrows arched, but they rose on anything that hadn't sought approval.
Old Mom sent a clipping about a fat kid who went to the same high school. Burdened by
intellectual self-awareness and a neurotic mother who'd divorced three times at around a mil-
lion per, the kid got a job in New York. That was the news, and who could be surprised with
all the breaks he'd had? I told her that life wasn't so bad in the catbird seat in a lovely coastal
burg with good fishing, and I had natural business skill. Where did that come from?
“Oh, your father wasn't stupid.”
It wasn't work but a spirit engaged, what the 60s had promised. Harking back to greatness
of singular character, I bought a Norton Commando, priced to sell with an Atlas front end.
Seven years without a two-wheeler felt curable. But who would put an Atlas front end on a
Commando?
