Can’t get through your maze to send you this, Jerry Vilhotti at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Byrom Hoover Bush was going to check out the city by the bay in order to further distance himself from his wife living in Neddleman, Connecticut and his two girls whom he knew were his but the last two, his so called sons, he knew almost with a certainty were not his; there never was a red-head in their family that dated back to when his ancestors painted their bodies blue to appease the gods of lightening and thunder according to his late father who was called “The Old Warrior” in his attempt to keep his nation on the right track admiring such men as “The Lone Temper Eagle”, Big T-Model, Deaf Ear Light Bulb ... all of whom had wanted the great leader to have continued his good work at purifying Europe so then able to conquer the Red Menace that so endangered bottom lines.
Getting off the bus from Oakland that had crossed the Golden Gate, he asked the lady at the ticket booth for directions: “(Whistle) can you (whistle) please-”
“You funnen with me?”
He tried to explain without the whistle that his speech therapist back about three thousand miles away suggested he whistle before words beginning with a consonant to control his stutter and what he wanted to know was where he could find the Swedish Hotel.
“Go look it up! Another big shot Easterner going to show the greatest state in the country how to live!”
He heard her say the other words as he was walking away to go out to the street.
“Sir, you looking for The Swedish?”
Byrom just nodded afraid he might also offend this guy who would have taken the state’s governor down in a few seconds yelling at him that he was nothing but a “girlie man” so big the man was. The man held his arm gently as he told him the directions and suggested he take a bus since the hotel was only ten blocks or so away. He even brought Byron to the bus stop and waited for his bus to come in and helped him onto the bus with his four pieces of luggage.
“(Whistle) thanks a-”
“Don’t mention it.”
When Byrom told the bus driver, half with the whistle and half without, where he wanted to go and if he could tell him a block before his stop, he was told: “Hey, don’t worry about it.”
Ten blocks past the hotel a nice passenger who had deciphered what Byrom was asking told him if he walked back ten blocks he would get to his hotel.
Byrom thanked him and begin his walk in a hot sun.
Byrom decided after three cold nights walking the sights with every other incident jolting him from a bad thing to a good thing like for one example he had gone to five restaurants asking for steamed dumplings but was told no and then a kindly person came up to him whispered that in this city they called them “pot stickers”.
He left the next day riding the bus back to Oakland; thinking the people were like their streets: up and down, down and up. He so much wanted to get back to Chicago where people talked like Burywaterians where he was born and thought that city was founded by a Burywater person going west from what was then part of Connecticut - Democracy Ohio - where he would feel more comfortable and then proceed further east.
He tried to shake the image of his Great Decider bringing some civility to a place where once Burt, The Birdman, Lancaster lived lovingly with birds. END 1-25-08
