Anniversary

ANNIVERSARY (THE MONTH OF AUGUST)

I got back to Austin August 1, 1973.
Janie brought me up from Brownwood
where I'd been staying, for no apparent
reason. I had twenty dollars in my
pocket. Bob Bryant put me up and I
went to work for a place called Texas
Temporary Placement - day labor. It
was hot. It was dirty. It was un
inspiring. I was forty five. I was
on the verge of becoming a nobody.
Haunted by my failures, sweating out
my bodily fluids on construction sites,
Mayflower vans, delivery trucks, I
pondered my future again. Sweating
and stinking, I told myself over and
over, "I'm too old for this shit!"
Maybe I was too old for anything. I
had one skill - language. I'd never
understood how to parlay this into a
living. I had a gene missing. It
was a gene called How to Find a Decent
Job and Stick to It. The August sun
bore down on me like doom. I was
incompetent. I was ashamed. Looking
back along the road of my life, I
beheld a line of corpses, all of them
me. I worked hard. I was desperate.
Woodward Furniture hired me away from
the day labor office. I had a job.
It was as hot inside the factory as
outside. All my workmates were
Mexican Americans. We loved each
other. They thought I was funny.
My mother died. I flew back to
Florida for the funeral and came back
more depressed than ever, my last
refuge gone. My sister gave me $500.
I quit the furniture factory, wandered
around lost, looking at the ground.
All this time I'd been trying to
write. I was always trying to write.
It was the only identity point I
had in my whole chaotic world. I
met Valerie. I went broke again.
Back to day labor. My friend Cogswell
told me, "If you want to keep your
writing going, you've got to get away
from the pressure. To get away from
the pressure, you've got to get away
from the profit motive. Get a job
with the state, the feds or the
university. The university's best."

I narrowed my focus, kept applying
at the university till I got a job.
I told them I was a writer. That meant
I could type. Clerk Typist. The
rest is history: I stayed at the
university - with a couple of long
sabbaticals - and I wrote and narrowed
my focus to poetry, spent my vacations
in New Mexico and dreamed of moving
there, escaping to those wide, haunted
spaces but always came back. I had
a job here. I had an identity. I
kept writing, had back surgery,
emerged crippled, struggled on. I
learned what I'd always dreaded
learning: how to do the same thing
every day over and over and over. I
hit depressions, spaced out, I kept
writing, I kept working. Some days
I didn't know who I was. It didn't
matter. I was at work. Everybody
else knew who I was. One day, to
my surprise - and everyone else's -
I retired with full benefits. Today,
this very day, at 71, I sit on the
bench in front of the bakery, idle,
content. It's hot. I don't have
to work day labor. I don't have
much but I couldn't work if I wanted
to - Thank God. But I'm writing.
I'm writing because that's what I've
become, a writer, a poet. It's
enough. It's all I can do. But
a part of me is still back there
somewhere, sweating it out on a
construction site in the August sun
as lost as any human can be. He
looks up, sees me watching. He nods
wipes his forehead and, face contorted
with anguish, says, "Don't ever
forget me. I'm always here, always
a part of you. Forget me and
you die."


Albert Huffstickler

Posted over on Nerve Cowboy