tom weathers

Why ? It's the end times - the apocalypse. Events tumble forth. An impeachment happened. An election might. Covid-19 comes on little cat feet. A sign in the middle of a Kansas corn field reads: "Atlas Missile Silo Converted into Survival Condos." There might be a war. Trump's hardcore base is looking for the elite who snubbed Granny. (But it isn't all bad. An old friend says let's drive to Buffalo this summer. And a girl from 60 years ago is doing a little gardening and painting.) What's an old man from the left end of the redneck spectrum to do? Hell I'll write. My position might be unique. I can translate. It takes one to know one and I certainly am one. I'll write about incorrect people who can trace their lineage 2,000 years from Germania to Appalachia -to the rust belt cities of Northern America - to the Southern heartland. I'll write about Rednecks. I'll write about guns. I'll write about Dude the Wolfdoodle and the invasion of Ballantyne. I'll quote from the left end of the Redneck spectra - from people like Wilbur Cash, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and some more. I'll write about me.

This is a book-thing. I'll call it a book. The book wrote itself. I was a filter for whatever was inside me. All parts of the book thing deal in one way or another with notions of correctness and class. This is the theme. Rednecks have a hard time with such a theme. The more we are pushed, the less likely we are to follow. The book is divided into parts.... Describing things to know in order to deal with the rest of the book and even more things. ... Describing movement of the Celts, and people who become Celts from the dark Danube forests to the Appalachian Mountains. ... About the Donald himself - the latest lord of the Loud and Proud. ... Telling the story of an imaginary invasion of Ballantine, the upscale retail and commercial center of South Charlotte. The magical pit bull, Dude the Dog, explains class and correctness.... About weapons. It's who we are.

We go to Nova Scotia in 2010 not long after our wives died. We are sporting old men in Bob's Z4 convertible. Starting in North Carolina, we go through all the New England states. We see mansions in Connecticut and shacks in Maine. We see unbelievable landscapes in Cape Breton and the Lik-a-Chik fast food joint, which, for some reason is included in the name of this book. We get stopped by Mounties coming into Canada. There are stories which might be true. - The false execution of a Japanese tourist in an old British fort. - A spirit and a wolf in Gorham. - A waitress who looks like Brenda which causes me to become lost the next morning. - A melee between old people on two tour buses fighting to see Breton scenery. In Providence we spend a couple days with Genie who I have known longer than anyone in my life.

Back and forth across the Mississippi past 2,000 miles of corn. Into Quebec as far North the road goes. Then Hearst. There are no left turns. That is the wilderness. 4570.3 miles of travel. 15 states. 2 providences. Some dirt roads, stuffed wolves, moose and local cafes. The best looking hostess in the world. A simulated gun fight on Main Street at 12:00 AM with live bullets (while Bob sleeps). Getting lost. Faced down by a deer. Wild ride on Lake Superior. Unidentified feces. The fifth big trip since 2010 -since the wives died. Getting ready. Bob makes reservations; maps routes, makes spreadsheets, does maps, prepares the truck, makes his stuff list. I assemble more maps, start a blog, take a first pass on my stuff list. We leave at 7:00 Sunday morning 8/24. My 75th birthday is 8/25 Thursday. We are gone.

Poems about science and 3:00 AM at the Waffle House. Essays about science, Zen, the sacred and the profane and toilets.

Moral Imperative - This little book is based on the premise that health care should be a right not just a commodity. It should be like fire protection, police protection, clean water and other services provided by most "civilized" countries. It should be equally available to all citizens. It is a moral imperative. Underlying Theme - Despite the moral imperative, health care is being treated as a commodity. Not only does this create ethical dilemmas, it makes the system expensive and difficult to manage. Health care is not a classical market based system. Supply and demand functions need to be performed by a government mandated master market - typically called Single Payer - although it could be called Medicare. Parts The book has four parts. They are: 1. Merry-Go-Round 2. Single Payer 3. Insurance 4. History

Essays and poems written in 2011. The Tonal is everything there is; the Nagual is everything else (with apologies to Carlos Castaneda - may he rest in peace).

The story of an old man transported back in time to relive his life and participate in history, becoming a ghost in his own machine and the machines of others. The events shift between 1944 and 2010, culminating in Dealey Plaza on November 23, 1963.

Stories, essays, and pictures about my experiences on the underside of technical writing. The events took place at Cardinal Associates and Burroughs from 1971 to 1981. To an outside observer things would have looked pretty tame, shaggy haired young people and serious seeming older people trying to make money and do significant work. However, as I note in "Fear and Loathing With Bill and Tom in NYC", which happened in the 1973, beneath the surface it was a freak show. The young people, and some of those who weren't so young, were living out scripts that could have been penned by Hunter Thompson and Carlos Castaneda. It was all fear and loathing, paranoia and rock and roll - 60's redux stuff. What made it worse was the fact that we were doing technical writing. An artifact of 20th century complexity, the profession can be a cruel place for those with fragile minds. We were like stoned pigs, rooting for truffles of order in a forest of complexity and ambiguity. The forest is still there, but we are gone.

A short memoir in three parts. HISTORY is about the author and some characters he has known (a transvestite, an entrepreneur, a rocket scientist, a beatnik, a martial artist, a movie star, and a fool, to name a few). These stories, taking place from 1945 to 1961, are generally true. PRE-HISTORY is about the author's parents and grandparents. Occurring before 1945, these stories are generally not true, or are at least imagined. It is through these tales that the author tries to figure out what made his folks the way they were (and explain how he got to be such a pidawee). DEATH is about the passing of the author's mother in 1955 in Shelby, North Carolina (at the Center of the Known Universe - where all explanations come together). Although not explicitly about the South, it is a Southern Book. It's got crazy white people, Magical Negroes, muscadine grapes, livermush, dynamite, undertones of violence, and guns - lots of guns.