The Wonder of Acupuncture

White Crane Kung-Fu Studio, Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, 1974: In my Kung-Fu phase, I was crazy about everything Chinese ... except the interior decorating. I know that may sound just too, too gay, but aside from mysteriously grand Chinese interiors in old movies, have you ever been in a Chinese restaurant that wasn't garish as hell?

I've come to learn that it's because Red is Lucky, and no sensible Chinese person on the planet wants to be unlucky. Of course, when you think about it, that makes perfect sense. I wouldn't either.

Back to the Kung-Fu and acupuncture. This is a story about needles and eyeballs, but it turns out OK. Just warning you ...

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The Abandoned Road

Dallas, Texas, 1966. On this particular day, my girlfriend and I decided to take the psilocybin before heading out. Driving the Morgan from Dallas to Shady Shores was an odd adventure. It was about thirty miles, and seemingly many days driving.

I knew of this place from years earlier. College roommates and I had lived nearby, and some scouting trip discovered an abandoned roadway that had once run atop a dam built across Lake Dallas. In a concrete building halfway out, remnants of the dam's machinery remained, huge wheels and vast pipes, going nowhere.

Whoever these mysterious builders were, they were fickle, for after building the dam across the lake, they'd cut a hole through it, so it was no dam any longer. Just a finger of elevated land reaching toward, but not touching, a finger of land from the other side. On the elevated crest, earth and stone and even trees, and the once roadway ran, and stopped at the cut.

Just the spot for our picnic.

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The Good Old A-B Test

Weed, California, February 2008: Many years ago, when I lived in San Fransisco on Beery Goulevard, I had to do some layout work. I had very little skill, but I found a simple method. Although my method was slow, it worked.

I would just make up a layout, then change one thing. Then I'd look at version A and version B, and ask myself which version sucked less.

Then I'd take the winner, and discard the loser, and then on the winner I'd change something else, and again compare A to B.

In this way, I could slowly create a layout that looked pretty much OK, if not truly outstanding.

I just realized ... I'm still using the same method. Still slow. Still works.

This little story was version A. Version B sucked more.

So version A is my story. And I'm sticking to it.

Gosh. You learn something every day. Some days, you learn two things. I wonder if today is one of those?

Bobby's Communion

Wichita Falls, Texas, 1960: My cousins Bobby and Danny lived in this nearby city. Their father Pfeiffer sold insurance and had a fancy red Farmer's Insurance sign painted on the doors of their white Studebaker. "It makes the car deductible," he said.

His wife, formerly Rosemary Hurn, my mother's older sister, was in fact the eldest of the Hurn children, and she was quite beautiful. As we remember that screen sirens of the 1940's were somber-faced and dramatic explains a lot about how Rosemary and my mother dressed when they were dressing up. The difference between them was that my mother, a plump and cheery-natured woman, didn't really fit in that picture, but Rosemary brought it off fairly well.

Rosemary, in my opinion as a child, rather put on airs. It was this snooty outlook which made Bobby's first Communion so unfortunate for her.

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