For me this new goat year is all about completion -- whittling, chiseling away at projects left unfinished; for instance, this Colt 45 Chronicle project. Begun in an emotional meltdown as the Seahawks were eliminated in the 2012 divisional round of the playoffs, I had intended to be finished with it by this year's Super Bowl. In fact, I made a pledge to that effect. Needless to say that pledge went unfulfilled. But since 2015 for me is going to be a stubborn goat-like display of dedication to completion, I am re-pledging to finish off the Colt 45 Chronicle in the next couple of months.
The Colt 45 Chronicle is a collection of letters I pulled out of storage at halftime of the playoff game in Atlanta where the Seahawks were getting their clock cleaned by the Falcons. Seattle came back in that game, and should have won, but the defense could not prevent Matt Ryan from connecting long to Roddy White, I believe it was, to set up the winning field goal by Matt Bryant.
I began posting these letters, which recount my first few years (at the end of the 1980s) in New York City where my wife and I had moved so she could attend medical school at Columbia University, shortly thereafter. It has taken me longer to re-type the letters and post them (over two years now) than it took to actually write them (18 months).
It is fitting that I finish these letters off now that Seattle failed to repeat as Super Bowl champs. The loss is a week old but it still pains me. I am worried that my original assessment is proving to be on the money -- that the appalling call to throw the ball on a slant over the middle, a ball that was intercepted, is going to be a Fisher King-like wound for the team going forward. I still wake up each morning thinking, "My God. We should have won that Super Bowl." Mostly, I feel bad for the young men, for Marshawn Lynch. He was deprived his just designation as one of the all-time greats. And for that I am angry at the decision of the coaches -- Darrell Bevel, Pete Carroll -- to make such a risky, poor call.
We're primates; we have this thing about justice, about fairness. The outcome to Super Bowl XLIX continues to cause emotional heartburn because it was foolishly unjust.
At the office we still have a wall plastered with the color photo spreads that appeared in the Seattle Times going back to the Thanksgiving-night shellacking of the San Francisco 49ers. Each week, either I or the business manager of the local, would post the new photo spread up on the wall. It is an impressive display. The last spread to go up on the wall is a full body shot of Marshawn Lynch, obviously in a lot of distress, walking off the field in Arizona with his helmet in his hand, a grimace on his face and his head cocked to the side and slightly downcast. The caption reads in something like 50-point type, "WHAT IF?"
So onward we go, into the Year of the Goat, a year for completion.
The letter below describes my first day as a temporary inventory clerk at Lane Bryant, a plus-size women's clothing company. I remember the building was a high rise on 42nd Street across the street from the New York Public Library.
These letters usually break down into two categories: 1) some sort of description of life in the Big Apple, and 2) wailing and moaning that my university life is over. Both are on display in this letter, the latter in the form of a drunken stream-of-consciousness poem.
Summer 1989
Well, I just wanted to write and say hello, keep the line the alive. I got your post card from Palm Springs back in March. Shit, it's July already, and I still don't have steady work. But what I have had is a bunch of crummy temporary jobs since I left California in January. I started out in February doing inventory for LANE BRYANT, a clothier of large woman. I was working at their big New York headquarters. I was working in hosiery. It was on the 9th floor. They had hired half a dozen of us temporaries to count up the number of socks and underwear ordered by the 240 nationwide LANE BRYANT stores. Two hundred and forty stores, and I hadn't even heard of them before.
The first day I reported in I had a hangover, and I don't think I had showered. While I was in the lobby I caught a peek of myself in a mirror. Ouch. My face was the color of dish water, except for under my eyes, and that was charcoal black; my hair was glued to my head; my clothes looked like I had fished them, shit stained, out of the middle of the street. I was wearing my Red Wings, and they were old and scuffed. I had a tie on but I don't think it helped much, just a beer-o trying to dress up.
The supervisor finally came and escorted me down a brown-carpeted hall. I liked her. Her name was Rosa. She spoke to me like I was a person and not some animal to scold and flick matches on. She looked old, worn, but there was something young and beautiful about her. She was nice.
After a few turns and a flight of stairs and a few more turns, she led me into a room. Before me stood a big conference table. It covered the length of the room, and the room was pretty damn long. Around the table sat six or seven black faces. They looked at me as if to say, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you out making the real money?"
I walked to the other end of the room and sat down. Rosa sat down a few feet away at the head of the table. She pulled out a pack of mentholated cigarettes and lit one up. It was a 100, really sweet and long. It smelled sharp and chemical and good.
I looked down the table, all nice faces except for one guy. Good, only one asshole. Rosa told me to wait, that the person who would tell me what to do would be there soon. She said that she wasn't my supervisor; that my supervisor would be in soon; that she supervised half the people and that the other woman supervised the other half.
****
Halfway home and nowhere to go.
Blood should be greasing my rhythm.
Nice idea; live it, motherfucker.
At least dreams are for free -- thanks to the MINUTEMEN
Life is only lived when you're young
And then after you're young, you got to write about it.
That's the only way you can keep your youth and your whimsy
To think that you're writing it
What a tragedy
We are dead after 6th grade
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