Bedtime for Bonzo

Sleeping has always been a chore for me. It probably started while I was a traveling salesman for a large metropolitan ink company. I spent seventeen years of my life in four different motels a week. One of my quirks is that I don't sleep well in a strange bed.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Do they make the holes in Cheerios with a smaller version of the tool they use to make donut holes? And is there some kind of hardening process that turns the Cheerio holes into Grapenuts? Those are both interesting questions but, please, pay attention.

Occasionally, I'd be lucky enough to get the same motel two nights in a row. That was when I found out that I could usually get to sleep the second night. I guess I just had to get used to the hardness of the bed... the extra flat pillows (one was not enough but two were too thick)... the light seeping in from the curtains that never completely closed... the drip in the sink or the toilet that ran all night... that unrecognizable smell or, worse yet, that recognizable smell... the sounds in the halls... the sounds in the next room... then again twenty minutes later (really?)... The big diesel truck in the parking lot that somebody left running all night (like, who forgets something like that?)... the - well you get the idea.

But I would spend four nights a week in four different motels and by the time I got home to my own bed it was a strange bed, too, and it usually wasn't until Saturday that I would get a good night's sleep. When little kids don't get enough sleep they get cranky. When adults don't get enough sleep they get to do the chores that have been piling up all week while they were gone.

Then I developed insomnia.

I literally went several years only sleeping one hour a night. I tried everything. I went to bed earlier... I went to bed later... I cut out caffeine after 6 PM... I ate lighter... I ate heavier... I tried to read myself to sleep but I can't sleep with a light on and I can't read in the dark... I tried laying on my back... then my left side... then my right side... then my stomach... then my left side... then my right side... then my back... then I had to get back up to straighten the covers... I tried sleeping with and without covers... then just the sheet... then with and without pajamas... then I did the cover thing with and without pajamas... then without the pajamas, without the covers, with the drapes open...

And that's how I found out I can't sleep in jail cells either.

While I was in jail I met a guy named Dooley. He was a chronic masturbater. He was always being locked up for that. (Apparently that's another thing you can't do in a school zone) And it seems that the guys in the others cells, though initially amused, eventually complained because it was affecting their sleep, as well. So the jailer hooked the guy up with some manacles and chains, arranged to keep Dooley's hands away from his crotch. Now Dooley was determined and, in his sex starved brain, thought he could woo the chains into being just a little bit longer. He would whisper promises to them... he would flatter them... he would tell lies to them... he would accuse them of being longer for shorter guys.

He even named them. The one that clinked around a lot he names Margie. And the fat, black one was Jasmine. (I think they were two of his ex-wives).

I was only in the slammer for one night but I still Tweet with several of the dealers I met there. Nice guys. They tell me that one day Dooley stopped talking to the chains. Later, when he was allowed to take a shower he just rubbed it long enough to get it clean. After he was released he was never arrested for jerking off in public again. In fact, they told me that Dooley became a politician and is now only jerking other people off.

But I digress.

Recently, I decided to start sleeping on the passenger side of my bed. I have a pillow top mattress that cannot be flipped over and where I usually sleep has gone from a shallow groove to a dip to, now, I have trouble rolling out of it in the morning. I have to get up on my elbows to see what time it is in the middle of the night. So I decided to move to the high ground on the other side of the bed.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for a left handed, anal retentive, insomniac to learn to sleep on the wrong side of the bed? I have to remember to look the other way to see what time it is... I have to hold my pills in my right hand and drink from my left... if I get to sleep, I have to remember to, unconsciously, sprawl the other direction... My ceiling fan is not centered over my bed and now the air flow is all wrong... the light seeping in from the kitchen window is at the wrong angle and now all of the shadows really do look like people...

Sometimes I miss the sound of someone breathing gently next to me... a soft snore interrupted by a warm body turning slightly during peaceful sleep... and sometimes, every now and then, on a warm summer evening, I even miss the sounds of Dooley cranking one out.

Man, I wish I could sleep.

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The preceding story was based upon actual internet rumors. Only the chains have been named.
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The Gift

When I was growing up I received a gift from my mother's father. His name was Merle Huselton.

My father worked a heavy construction job during those years but it was seasonal work. In the winter time we would live on welfare checks and eat government food. I remember going to the local firehall and carrying home tins of cheese and canned meat and bags of potatoes. As a child I never thought this was unusual. I thought this was the way everyone lived.

I did not know that we were poor.

Having said that, I thought my grandfather was poor.

He lived in a single room above a local bar. It was a bleak room. I remember going to visit him by myself one day. There was a door next to the entry for the bar. My father sent me up to room 11 while he went through the other door. I could hear the sound of the jukebox and someone laughing as the bar door opened and closed.

Just inside my door was a steep flight of stairs. The walls were painted green at one time but were now a smudged dirty brown. The stairs creaked under the weight of my tiny feet. I could smell beer and fried onions... and something else, I guess. Not healthy. I could feel the vibrations from the jukebox through the rough plaster wall as I slowly climbed the stairs.

At the top was a long hallway. There were battered wooden doors down both walls. These walls were painted a slightly newer version of the stairway green. My grandfather's door was about halfway down on the right. Number 11. The floor was worn and sticky in spots. Empty beer bottles littered the hall. I could hear voices arguing behind a door on my left. Further down the hall I could hear someone playing a scratchy Hank Williams record. For some reason I tried to be very quiet.

When I got to number 11 I tapped on the door with my small knuckles. I waited quietly. Then I knocked again. I was about to leave when I heard him clear his throat and spit into something. I waited a little longer and knocked again. This time I heard a chair scrape on the floor and his heavy footsteps approach the door.

As the door opened I saw that he looked very tired. He was about six-four and weighed around a hundred and fifty-five pounds. He had a full shock of gray hair and about three days of white stubble on his sunken cheeks. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. I recognized the red flannel shirt he was wearing as one my mother had given him for Christmas. It was tucked into a baggy pair of corduroy pants. His work shoes were untied.

He squinted down at me and gave me a quick smile. "Johnny!" he cried. "Git in here, you little shit!" He was happy.

"Hi Gran'pap." I said. "Daddy's down at the bar." I pointed down the hallway.

His work calloused hand guided me by my shoulder into the room. He pushed some magazines off of a wooden kitchen chair and told me to sit down. He sat opposite me at the little table. His chair was made of chrome tubing and torn vinyl. There was also a sway back bed and a night stand in the small room. Inside an opened closet door I could see a battered chest of drawers and a few shirts and pants on metal hangers. The tattered curtains were gray and dusty looking. He had a great view of the alley behind the bar.

After we made some small talk he offered me a warm bottle of orange pop. (We called it pop back then. I had never even heard of soda. I guess it was a western Pennsylvania thing.) He opened the bottle of pop with a tool on his key chain. I took a big swallow and he said, "Did you finish it?"

I looked at him with my big hazel eyes and nodded gravely.

"Well?"

"It... was... sooooo neat!" I said. "It was the best one yet!"

We were talking about a paperback western called Buffalo Wagons. It was written about five years earlier by Elmer Kelton.

This was our thing.

My grandfather was an old coal miner from the hills of Pennsylvania. He had raised his family in a series of wooden shacks and lived from pay to pay off of the company store. It was a rough life and I guess he never really got ahead. He was a hard worker and a hard drinker. By the time I got to know him he was a burned out old man, down on his luck, with failing health. I don't think he was much older than I am, right now.

But he loved to read. He always had a box of paperback westerns in the corner of his closet. The covers were creased, the bindings broken, the pages dog-eared from reading and re-reading. I guess it was his escape.

He would get his check at the beginning of each month. He would pay his rent, give my mother some money to hold for him, go to the drug store to get a couple of dime novels and then get rip roarin' drunk. Several days later, most of his money would be gone. My mother would dole out what he needed for necessities and feed him several times a week. And he would sit in his room and ride the range with Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour and Elmer Kelton.

I honestly don't know which part made him happier. But I do know he loved to share his books with me. We would sit for hours and discuss the gunfighters, and the settlers living in the mountains of the old west. We'd talk about the Indians and wagon trains and skinning buffalo. And for just a little while we were there, too. Riding the trails, sleeping on the ground, eating beans and boiling coffee.

And I know it is because of him that I have a love of reading. He taught me how to think critically and how to look into the story, beyond the written words. He taught me that imagination and adventure are often the same thing. That your circumstances should not narrow your world. That history is not a bunch of dry facts and boring details but is the living, breathing essence of who we all are.

And he taught me that even poor people can be rich.

Thanks Gran'pap!
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