Christmas Time

I'd like to make a recommendation.

It will require some stickers and name tags for your gifts this Holiday Season.

Most of my readers (both in fact) are bored to tears about economics. Most of my readers (both in fact) would rather shoot themselves in the foot or snip off any other bit that sticks out of the trunk instead of looking at another demand curve.

However, they need to know that there is an economic fact that economist just won't share.

That fact is the "Science of Economics" is about "why".

I often tell my students, my children, and anyone else who will listen, that of the four dubbleyous; who, what, when, and why, the first three are facts. The last one is always an opinion.

So economics is not a fact, it is not a hard science about facts.

It is an opinion.

I often ponder why people who refuse the idea of a Creator and an unseen Heaven can believe in something as nefarious as "The Economy".

I don't.

Believe, in the economy that is.

I have spouted on my opinion about the Debt, our unending obligation that makes it so that every baby born on this Christmas day will carry home a present of over $40,000 of debt that they earned by just being born American.

I have mentioned my opinion about the deficit, our unwillingness to agree to spend less than we make. Both personally and as a State and Nation.

I may even have opined regarding the balance of trade. The ghost of Christmas past that any trained economist will deny as irrelevant since dollars spend always equals dollars bought.

I have even tread on the quicksand of making obtuse reference to the source of, and ultimately where the responsibility lies for all these "problems". The quicksand of which, when our the nations which host our debt grow tired of our greed, will make Ross Perot's giant sucking sound like a fart in a whirlwind compared to China selling a trillion dollars for euros at ten to one.

If you would like to do something semi-productive this Christmas then follow my lead.

When you shop look for a box of stickers with an American flag. Then print up some labels that say " This present brought to you by the workers of America"

(With an American made pencil please)

And by golly if it ain't made in the USA then don't give it.

It is, in fact, that simple.

This Christmas, if every person who gave a Christmas present gave a gift that said "Made in the USA" on it we could pay an extra twenty billion dollars on our balance of trade. If everyone did this every Christmas we wouldn't need to have fathers and mothers half the world away fighting and dying for sand and hot air.

Do it, just try to do it.

P.S.

"Care to guess what it says on the back of my Flag stickers?"

The Balance of Trade.

Money is funny, but nothing to laugh about.
Every country it seems has one. A currency that is. In fact it seems to be the defining characteristic of the thing we call country. In the early days of our on US of A the story goes that George Washington stole the silver out of the pantry to make the first "Disme" the country ever owned. Fortunately for George someone had the foresight to put Martha on the obverse to appease the woman now reduced to taking her English tea from a China cup.

Unfortunately John Harper choose a bad hair day for the first lady's portraiture. (The chicken on the back was having a bad day too)

So it is, or so it seems, that the concept of money is so common that we don't even think about it. We dive for a dollar lost in the parking lot with the expectation that it is more than a piece of paper but indeed, in the big picture anyway, it is no more than a check from Uncle Sam's checkbook.

This is where the economist seem to lose their way. Stories of bags of hundred dollar bills in Afghanistan and the fourteen truck loads of hundred dollar bills spirited out of Iraq into Syria in the first hours of the second gulf war. These stories lose sight of the fact that they are in fact checks. Checks with check numbers that can be just canceled if we choose to do so.

According to the economists the balance of trade has no meaning. Because these dollars are in fact "checks" they must be cashed at the Federal Reserve Bank. Even though one might take these dollars in Syria and move them to Germany then to France, ultimately they must come back home. Home where they are traded for American Goods.

This theory might be alright if it were not for the funny money economy that drives the US government. If we printed checks that say Redeemable in bushels of wheat, or pork bellies ,or even in socks and jeans, we might have something. But we don't. We have checks that are redeemable in T-Bills. Debt of the US government. Now all this gets esoteric pretty fast. And it should hurt your head. Write a bad check at the X-mart - no problem just drop by and write another check to pick it up.

Do you remember a few years ago when some of the richest nations of the Middle East Decided to buy the US ports? We finally decided it was a bad idea to have the Muslim Nations doing our national security checks but that underscores the problem. Nations who sell us oil, for example end up with an obscene number of our checks. Then they can't always buy what they want with them. Making them less desirable that maybe checks from, say, Russia. (They can apparently buy congressmen but that's another blog). We have the same trouble with Chindia. The sell us whtchacallimits and dollars accumulate in Chindia in absolutely obscene quantities. And they don't buy goods from us. They buy our debt.

You begin to see the issue.

If one day China or India or Abu`Dabu decides that the checks are no good and she says "Hey Russia, what will you give me for these." "I want to buy Euros." - I will sell these useless checks for a disme on the dollar.

What happens then?

What happens then - is just exactly what is happening now.

The US Treasury franicks and pannics and starts buying its own T-Bills with its own bad checks to shore up the market.

The slide has started ..

Six months from now your dollars will be worth-less - And exponentially less as every year passes until your standard of living is a memory.

The only thing you can do to save yourself is what Gandhi implored his people to do when they wanted freedom from the English.

Make it yourself, buy less, and buy local.

Oh and worry.. worry a lot...

The summer of magic fish

In the summer of my seventh year, a hundred, inch long shiny silver minnows fell from the sky, they flopped and gasped for air and soon died. I gathered a few in my hands and carried them to Pallie at the cookstove. "Grandma it's raining fish." Without looking at me or my tiny cargo she forced a sad smile and continued to push at the biscuit dough...

“Sometimes that happens”

Archie got the breast, Pallie got the thigh and I got the leg. This was a system that worked. Worked extremely well unless company came and my chicken leg got to be a little drumette from the wing.

Still there was always food. Not much by todays standards but enough to make sure Pallie was always having to make bigger dresses.. That flap of angel skin below her forearm that sloshed back and forth like milk in a pail as she pushed biscuit dough.

Butter beans were my favorite. I don't like the big silver dollar beans today ..I don't know if I liked them then. But I planted them and I picked them and I liked to see a big pile on my plate. Tomatoes, cabbage, corn. And we had grapes. Some of them were turning now.

The picking would be soon enough but for now they were just in bunches with an occasional purple prize for the youngster small enough to see them from below. The only other interested party being the black and yellow wasps that one at a time were not such a threat but in mass could set the strongest man a'weeping.

That summer the rain fell so straight and cool that you could walk into the dirt road and stand, one arm in the rain and the other foot kicking dust in the unpaved road that overflowed with six inch long black Texas grasshoppers. They were Japanese Ebony black with a blood red band below their wings that flashed like fire in the summer sun. They were so big that when they messed with the occasional automobile on our dirt road they left a goo that might have been unfortunate roadkill but for the telltale green insides.

Pallie said the grasshoppers came in a casket from Texas after the great war when one of the local confederate boys shipped home.-“ When they opened the casket they had eaten every stitch of clothes and crawled out of every hole in his body.” she said in deadpan.

Hogs will eat you too you know, At least they ate uncle john, Celie's husband over at lost John's grocery. Cellie was Pallies sister, so John technically was my great uncle. Cellie's story was that John went to the spring and the Indians got him.. Pallie just snorted “there t'wern't no Indians.. The hogs ate him”..

I think maybe he just ran away.

She also said the racers, black snakes with cool black bodies like fresh asphalt, could take their tails in their mouth and roll after a boy faster than he could run. When they caught 'em they would wrap around them and whip stripes on their legs. I often saw bigger boys who had stripes on their legs so I knew this was true.

We read the Bible at night and with it open in her lap she said “I knew of a boy once who stole a cantaloupe and hid from his grandmother and ate the whole thing. Ate it all at one time.” She closed the bible and turned it in her hands “But he couldn't go squat for three weeks and died in the outhouse”. A little grin slid across her eyes, but she managed to bring the point home with a faraway look of feigned sadness. I never stole another cantaloupe.

Rainbows formed in the east as sunsets in the west painted gold and orange over a dozen shades of green. Nights so dark that I often got out of bed and felt my way to the window to see a tiny red lamp on the radio tower ten miles away to reassure myself that I had not gone blind in the night. In the daytime butterbean hulls dried and curled around bits of leaves from the pecan tree. Ants pushed inside the hulls and carried out a treasure much larger than themselves. On this day a raindrop the size of a silver dollar plopped in the dust at my feet then another and another... Big cold drops from a cloud so high that it didn't’ cast a shadow on the house or fields around. Then the fish. Falling among the curled butterbean hulls like little silver winged angels one here and there. Hundreds of tiny Angels .

The fish fell on a summer day at the exact moment when I realized that I could not remember my fathers face. I squinted hard my memory and tried to remember any detail. The stubble of his face in the afternoon. The smell of his aftershave.. The deep brown of his eyes or the thin hair of his ever widening forehead. I could describe it in words but I could not see it. How many months had it been. I was near panic when I remembered that I had a small picture in the house. I ran inside and pried open the round tin box that held my worldly treasure. As I fingered the two inch square I tried again to remember his face. I could see the picture clearly but I knew the images that I held of him were gone forever. Even today my memory of my dad is not my dad but the face on that two inch photograph. That summer I saw lots of grasshoppers, cantaloupes, lots of hungry hogs, lots of black racers. Although I never saw one with its tail in its mouth. I am sure it was all true.

Forty years later, at the exact moment I was recalling the the picture of my father, those days on that farm, my own seven year old came running into the house as excited as a child on Christmas morning...

“Dad its raining fish”...

I smiled and tried as hard as I could to keep him from seeing me cry.

“Yeah -sometimes that happens”

Forget your wives and daughters, lock up your credit cards!

Well it is that time of year again.

The most revered religious holiday of North America.

That time when we attend our hundred acre temples of worship.

We go on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday to see if the Mall Gods have left us any "Bargains".

Yes, it is the most revered of all capitalist holidays...

Shopping season.

Thirty one days till Christmas..

Or should I say christmas.
Or maybe just Xmas..
As in X marks the spot like on some Captain Kidd treasure map.

Time to go over that list of people who sent you a Christmas card to make sure you give them one this year. And mark off the deadbeats who left you hanging last year.

Go over that gift list and check it twice.
Make sure you don't leave out one you owe.
Or send one you don't.

As an amateur economist some things just make me go "huh?" Like the fact that most retail stores make all their profit on the two weeks before Christmas. Some chalking up as much in sales in those two weeks as they do in the entire fifty weeks previous.

And all the while the elected leaders, head in hand, say "But if the people don't load up those credit cards the economy will collapse."


Don't get me wrong, many, even most, of the people elbowing that little old woman in the eye for the last Alabama Snuggie are religious believers and for about ten minutes after the turkey and ham is all gone will have a devout religious experience.

Some will even cry out to Jesus late on Christmas Eve after the toys are put together and Santa has left the building.

I hope my cynicism hasn't come through. I really did look forward to Christmas as a kid. I want my kids to feel the same feelings about it. But it was the joy of the season and the surprise of it all that left me in wonder an awe.

That Lionel was still the greatest thing I have ever seen,

But today it is hard to get a gift that impresses a kid that has two PSP consoles, one for each car.

Yesterday I met a man and two kids picking up cans along highway 72.

I remain ashamed that I couldn't do more. I am reminded that my Lord said that whatever you do to the least of men ~ something or other. I drove away knowing full well that on judgment day I will have to answer the question - "Uh let me get this straight - you left me and two kids on the side of the road hungry and you gave us three bucks and a plastic bottle of water?"

The optimistic among you may say that he was probably just out cleaning the highway. That his wife was home cooking a good meal for those kids and they were just passing the time till dinner.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

Yes it is that time. Like "Carnaval" when we wallow in excess while our brothers suffer. It makes us feel better somehow to get it out of our system.

Those less industrious than my friend on 72 rob stores and houses - " 'Cause that's where the money is" In order to get presents. Home break ins and "snatch and grab" is up one thousand percent and will go up again as the season heats up. One man in Muscle Shoals already gave his life for it.

They want their kids to go to school and show their new "stuff" too!

Lets just say it's a good time to be in the pawn business.

Meanwhile the rich kids are playing around the tree with the box the expensive stuff came in.

My holiday prayer?

"Jesus, let this temple fall"

The debt, the deficit, and the balance of trade

I heard a recording of some lawmakers on Capitol Hill this morning discussing the financial crisis and became aware of the fact the people driving this bus don't know there front end from the back up gear. This of course comes as no surprise to you. How many of our lawmakers know the difference between the debt and the deficit? How many of our voters who vote them in? And more importantly, how many Americans know the relationship between the debt, the deficit, and the balance of trade.

As a good republican I am not allowed to speak kindly of anyone named Clinton. However, in the Clinton years I agreed with the man on a couple of things. One was that we should not spend more than we take in. Granted, it was because of what has come to be called the "Clinton TAX" but it is a fact that during the second term of the Clinton budget our deficit actually went down.

This has been the battle cry of the TEA party. Spend no more than you earn. Of course, they (I) want to reduce taxes but doing so without reducing spending is a problem. A fifteen Trillion Dollar problem.

Which brings us to the point of this Blog. The current "debt limit' for the US of A is 14. 3 trillion dollars. We are fast approaching that number with the expected cost of the foreign wars we cant win and the domestic programs we can't afford scheduled to push Uncle Sam's credit card debt beyond Fifteen Trillion Dollars.

This coupled with the funny way we calculate gross domestic product. ( Katrina boosted our GDP by $20 Billion) means we now owe seventy five time the amount of goods we actually produce in the US of A.

I remind my gentle reader that gross product includes things like selling a mule to your neighbor and then buying it back next week when you need to plow is putting the price of the mule into GDP twice. In reality only the plowing is value added production!

And that only in the fall when the Punkins are ready for the pickin.

If we put every punkin we can produce into the pot for the next 75 years we can't pay the debt.

This should be heavy on our mind if we allow our lawmakers to raise that debt limit again when Congress Reconvenes next year.

Some fiction litae'

“You look like you just lost your best friend”

Said the voice I almost heard.

The instrument technician repeated himself.


I almost heard it again.

Thirty years before my dad and Leon Sr were friends. Leon and Loyce.

They had grown up as friends in the days when entertainment was taking a few guys down to Russelville and whipping up a good fist fight in the A&P parking lot. Our best guy against their best. A few dollars held on the side. Bare knuckles, Mano-e-Mano..

Leon placed the bets and my father was the one in the ring.

It was a time of leather football helmets and uniforms sewed by your mother. Then they got married and had a kid or two and jobs. Leon went with the phone company, my father stayed with grandpa's gin. much to smart and good looking to climb poles for a living. And so by the time Leon Jr. and I were born they were two up and coming young men building lives for themselves in the new space age.

Leon Jr and I literally grew up in the same playpen. We became men, and took wives, and got jobs. Leon was more like my father in that he was the talented one, the one much to smart and good looking to get a real job.

As kids we used to walk at night across town between our houses, slipping between the chain link wire at a slit in the hole at the town cemetery. “This is creepy” I always said as we slipped inside. and Leon always replied “Those folks are the least likely to bother you as anybody” and laugh at my big eyes and ashen face.

I can't drive by the place today without hearing his voice repeat those words.

Every time I say to myself “ no Junior.. you are wrong.

There is one guy in there that bothers me.

Bothers me a lot”

As we got older I flew into my work. Leon flew into his guitar and girls and drugs sometimes he would call but the voice on the other end was almost like a radio show. I couldn't call him. Even minor show people have people who build walls. He often sang “Desperado” in his stage show and when he looked at me I knew he knew he was singing about himself. He knew even then where this would end.

The voice on the lab phone said “Have you heard about Leon?" ..

“If you are calling me at three am I guess he is either in jail or dead”

I replied in a quiet calm.

“Dead”

The voice replied.

I slipped the phone into the cradle. The earth voice became clear. “ I said – you look like you just lost your best friend” Repeated Max for the third time..

“I did” I replied. but it was a long time ago... “lets get to those instruments”

The gravity of discontent always pulls to the right

In my travels I note what people say.

The most common phrase before the election was "Vote'm all out".

The Republicans all revel in the fact that most of the newly elected were of their party but fail to note that the tide was not necessarily anti-party. It was anti-incumbent. The post election phrase seems to be "Lets see if the new crop does any better". The TEA party does the "eyes on you!" two finger move to the newly elected.

As they should.

Skepticism seems to be the order of the day.

One distinguished gentleman sat quietly humming the ancient tune made popular by The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again" which ends with the line "Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss"

Look up the lyrics if you have time.

People have been conditioned to believe that the job of the elected official is to bring home Pork. No matter who I talk to or what the topic the phrase " Brings us almost all our tax dollars home" comes up.

Like the parable of the man Jesus spoke of who buried his one talent in the ground.

WWJD with these elected officials?

The Republican shield will not save them if they keep taxing the people then using the money to make little girls and old firefighters fight like squealing piglets at the feeding faucet.

It will not save them if they "bring back almost all the money. "

I scratch my head in bewilderment.

Bewildered because any tax should be considered an investment. Any investor will tell you that when you make an investment you should get an return "of " your investment and a return "on" your investment. In real estate it is getting back the cost of the property, plus additions before you count your profit. In loans it is principal and interest. In public taxation it is the visible asset that we bought, the overpass, or the school, and the benefit to the public that we get from having that asset.

Many times we see a new building going up, or a get a grant for a new rug for our office and never once ask, "Is this a good deal?"- " Is this the way public money should be spent?"

Of course the benefit is sometime hard to see. Especially things like PreK and first grade textbooks because the benefit is somewhere in the far future when that child becomes the new rocket scientist. (Some of you are saying - "What benefit to me is a rocket scientist?)" If our new crop is to be returned to office in four years they must invest our tax dollars for a return of our investment and a return on our investment.

Like most of the things we rant on as citizens. The burden ultimately falls on us, the blame squarely at our feet. If your politicians misbehave then try to remember that you elected them. And if they are not the people you voted for then you had a chance to shake the bushes and put out the signs and attend the meetings that I am sure the winners of the contest did attend.

Sorry, the first step in change is to accept personal responsibility for the way things are. Then and only then can you believe that you have the power to change things for the better.

It's up to you.

World Trade 102

Both of my readers have pointed out that my last blog threw us into deep water without much explanation.

I just assume that everyone is as attuned to current events as I .

The 600 billion the fed "infused" into the economy was different from the previous two bailouts in that the Bush bailout was essentially loans to companies backed by the sale of Treasury Bills. The second was gifts to banks of your tax dollars backed by the sale of Treasury Bills. Both were, as it were, "checks" written on money in the bank back in DC. It was also different in that it did not require a vote of the US Congress.

The FED infusion was something else entirely. It was a printing of money to buy T-Bills. The exact opposite of selling T-Bills to raise money. I don't know if there is a lay person analogy. At least not a legal one. But our system is built around a balanced bookkeeping system that requires that money spent must be matched by a like amount of money raised, by taxes or by sale of T-Bills, .. which is like .. humm... borrowing money on your signature at the credit union. This new infusion is the same except you don't have to pay it back.

Kinda like counterfeiting.

Well -Actually a lot like counterfeiting.

What this has done is allow the Federal Government to spend more than it has and more than it can borrow by simply printing more money.

I am not sure what this will do to our Uncle's credit score.

Take a look at the triangle above. If the imaginary part is small, that is to say that if the real economy is 200 billion dollars and we infuse, say 2 billion, then the real line and the apparent line are very close to the same amount. But if the infusion is close to the real economy it becomes a 45 degree angle and the apparent line is larger by almost half again.

The real danger is when the real becomes smaller than the imaginary. Road and pyramid builders will tell you that if the angle is greater than 45 degrees she will come down.

And my reference to the WTO .. Well check out this NPR story where they explain why we pay Brazil not to grow cotton.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/09/131192182/cotton

If China gets wind of this she will want to be paid not to grow cotton too. After all they have more land and more people. China could not grow a lot more cotton than Brazil doesn't.

Maybe the WTO should be called the WTF.

Fed Kites 600 Billion. (if you are a math atheist skip this blog)

The Official US GDP is currently 15 Trillion dollars.


One can immediately cut that in half because if I buy a car from you and you sell a car to me the price of the car shows up twice in the GDP. So on the high end we can say the actual Gross Domestic Product is 7.5 Trillion dollars.

Now to take a lesson from the Economics textbook the ratio of "real" dollars to "apparent" dollars. {i.e. reference the electricity textbook AC Trig section} is defined by the ratio of the federal reserve to lending.


The amount of a deposit that a bank is not allowed to re-lend. This amount was 20% in 1970 but a sheaf of laws and special exceptions has lowered that to an average of 3% {best I can tell}

This means the apparent dollars in the economy is somewhat larger than the real dollars. 7.5 Trillion times 3% is 225 billion.

Compare this to 1970 when the GDP crossed one trillion for the first time with a 20% reserve and we see the real dollars in 1970 to be about $100 billion dollars. (1/2 of one Trillion times 20%)

Adjusting using the BMI {big mac index} the popular sandwich cost $1.70 in 1970 and $3.19 in 2010. Giving us a real dollar inflation figure of 1.9 so 100 Billion times one point nine is $190 Billion dollars..

So we are looking at a low end estimate of $200 Billion dollars of "real" GDP.

If it feels like you are treading water there is a reason.

What all this means if you care to look at it is that we have a real economy of about 200 Billion dollars in this country and we always have had. If you throw a 600 Billion dollar "infusion" it can have no effect except to drive the value of the dollar to 1/3 of its previous value.

33 cents for 2014 dollars vs 2010 dollars.

Now to make you feel better the stock prices will go up .. Possibly even double. The ignorant and uninformed will look at that newspaper and say wow! I doubled my money in that GM stock! (well GM may be a bad example now that China is buying most of the IPO.) But, fail to notice that the electric bill has gone from $300 to $900 and the cost of a big mac is now near $9.

The result of course is all those plastic whitchamcallets you buy at Wal-Mart will now cost three times as much imported from China which should make our American products more competitive.

Provided of course that labor can be held to current levels with prices at three times the 2010 levels.

But the end result .. International goods .. ( energy is an international good) will triple in price. Domestic goods .. (homes and land are domestic goods) - will remain stable in inflated dollars.

In my humble estimation monied nations and individuals will seek the shelter of hard currency forcing gold to stabilize at $2000 USD and Platinum at $3000 (2014 dollars.)

The same result could be achieved by simply withdrawing from the WTO and putting huge levies on imports forcing Americans to buy American. Without all the inflation and drama. And, with the pleasant side effect of eliminating the federal income tax.

Of course the American public could just choose to buy American but that would be asking too much.

The election is at an end. Unfortunately I will likely have to return that $2 check and the forever remember the grip of the gentleman in Fayette who asked "Can I trust you?" ..

I suppose so.

One or both of us will likely to be dead before a perfect storm comes like this again.

I haven't called to congratulate Roger. After all we were running for different jobs, I ran for district wide economic developer, he, for chief sports commentator and your tax money distributor.

As it turns out, I may have gotten my job.

I don't think he got his.

Perhaps I should offer condolences.

I had no way of knowing that the newly elected Senate leadership would be so heavy republican. No, that is not right, I should have known - I should have been more articulate to the voters of Franklin County that without me the key jobs in pork packaging and distribution would be to our South Alabama Senators.

That district six would remain barefoot and pregnant for another four years. Had I paid attention to the screaming crystal ball and seen the future I would have tried harder to make sure the people of Russellville understood that the days of backing a truck up to the field house to hand out cheerleader uniforms were over.

With me or without me.

However, as I expressed to the new Goat Hill leadership on Monday night;

"With your help there is little or no reason that I cannot do what I set out to do from my present State Office just as well as I could from the State House in Montgomery."

After all my goal was to get a highway from Barton to Tuscaloosa and industry, jobs and careers into district six.

Although district six has no representation interested in real economic development, our new Governor has made a pledge to not take a salary until Alabama reaches 5.2% unemployment.

It works in our favor that District six has counties what have the highest level of unemployment - by extension we will be the first counties considered by the Governor for real planned job growth.

$100million dollars for a highway project is not out of the question. $12 million for a Chinese lighting facility is not out of the question. $50million for a 2.5 million square foot solar power plant, a green diesel assembly plant and an electrical generation plant is not out of the question.

Repeal of the severance tax and the associated pork handouts is not completely off the table.

Heck .. a Browns Ferry sized Nuclear plant is even on the table.

So the electing the new leadership, of which I was not in a small way responsible may in fact lead to something good for Fayette, Winfield, Sulligent, Haleyville or Hamilton Alabama and maybe even a road tying those cities to Corrordor X.

As one gentleman from the State Republican Executive Committee said to me, "Son you didn't win your battle - but you certainly helped us win our war."

Change is coming to parts of District six, but if you live in Russellville Alabama, don't wait up.

The Alabama Legislature

As the leaves turn yellow/brown most of the smells and sights of winter/fall seem to mix the reality of the present with the memory of the past. The afternoon chill and rustle of the leaves turning in the wind as if making music to the great unseen conductor bring a feeling of nostalgia to me.

This feeling slips through me almost as a TV which can't quite decide what channel it wants to present. Present/Past fades in and out.

I choose to rotate the antenna toward the past for a clearer picture.

This picture is from 1961. My mother and her friend take us to the movies at the Norwood theater in Florence to see "Breakfast at Tiffany's". For company I invite my friend Leon and we take to the balcony as my mother and Jackie settle in to watch the movie directly below us.

Most of the movie was pretty boring to a couple of eight year olds but I recall spitting peanut hulls over the balcony rail without any thought of the people below. I recall the Tahitian Treat machine, the only talent of which was to take your nickle, dispense liquid directly into the drain then offer an empty four ounce paper cup. I put my nickle in and Leon laughed as my drink went down the drain. Then he put his nickle in and it did the same thing. I, standing there with an empty cup in my hands while Leon's red sugar water flowed down the drain. Leon immediately burst into uproarious laughter knowing his cup was to fall out after the fact. That is what I loved about Leon, his sense of irony was such that a good joke, even on himself, was always better than a cold drink.

Myself not so much.

We ran back upstairs looking for some string or ribbon to make a bit of use of our expensive paper cups and watched as the subtle nuance of Tracy Hepburn taking money from dirty old men in her apartment was completely lost upon us.

But not upon my mother.

The ride home was pretty quiet, Leon and I working out how we would use the treasured T-T cups and my mother's dry wit about it raining peanuts inside the theater. I do recall her saying that It was a pretty rough movie for us to be watching. Prostitutes and thieves - hummmp. Of course that caused Leon to burst into another fit of uncontrollable laughter.

It would be many years before I would learn that the film was written by Truman Capote about his own prostitute mother and the thief and charlatan transient that was his father. I suppose to spin something good from an otherwise intolerable childhood.

Turns out mother was right. Holly Golightly had to do some nasty off screen stuff for those fifty dollar tips. If in real life Holly the hooker had married Paul the thief/rentaboy, if in fact John McGiver had truly engraved their love on a plastic ring, what would their offspring have been?

Alabama Legislators?

Leon is rolling in his grave.