-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

July 22, 2015

For days, I have watched the fawn munch on greenery. It stands as high as my waist and is flecked with white, its fluttery tail a third of the size of my cat’s. Occasionally, the fawn is accompanied by a doe; mostly it is alone. But it is not afraid. It needs to be afraid.

The world is so overpopulated there are mere traces of woods in which deer may walk. Biologists have introduced the concept of wild corridors, strips of land in which wild animals may travel in safety. It has come to this.

Oh, it gets better. Republican Ohio governor John Kasich has announced that global warming is God’s plan. Some plan.

Why are morons coming out of the woodwork like termites? (I have just insulted perfectly ethical termites.) Why, in a country Continue reading →

July 20, 2015

I heard it last night while driving home, the car windows open. I drove down to the river and parked. And listened.

A waltz played by a massive orchestra filled the night: cicadas, crickets. And there were the soloists: barred owl, screech owl, night hawk, bat. Beautiful music played on a stereo, filtering through an open window: “Symphony #3,” by the great Philip Glass.

Male cicadas’ tymbals, thin, disk-shaped membranes, vibrate in and out, along the sides of their mostly hollow bodies, producing clicks. Crickets make music though stridulation, wing rubbing wing.

All of this music is about sex. One imagines ladies of the species Continue reading →

July 17, 2015

As with so many words in the English language, “bluff” has multiple meanings. I live on top of a limestone bluff, a miles-long tower of exposed river rock, the stones studded with 300,000,000 year old Devonian fossils: trilobites and crinoids and sea worms and shells. And I bluff my way through life—an actor’s trick.

It is quite hot here; we’ve had several days with heat indexes near 110 degrees. So I’m walking early in the morning at the base of the bluffs, when it’s a cool 86. This am, after bathing in Mississippi River steam and climbing Stroke Hill, I saw Mike and Kathy of Mike and Kathy’s Fruit Stand on Delmar and Clifton Terrace, and Kathy advised me to walk over about five pm and she’d hold some Calhoun County peaches for me.

For you unfortunates who live in other states and hold to your myths of Georgia peaches and California peaches, Calhoun County, Illinois, peaches are better than any favorite thing you can name.

So I walked to the fruit stand at five and talked with Kathy and Mike, and the Calhoun Peach guy drove up with tomorrow’s swag, and I helped carry the peach boxes to waiting tables. The smell was sensual, fecund, maturescent.

Two substantial women in summer dresses were talking to Kathy about buying a bunch of watermelons. I walked by, my arms laden with peaches, and I said, “If I ever meet a woman who smells like this, game on.”

The women exploded with laughter, then of them said to Kathy, without missing a beat, “Quick—sell me enough peaches that I can rub them all over my body.”

Kathy fell against a wall and laughed like a crazy person. The bold woman’s friend laughed and sneezed. I laughed—to cover my embarrassment and the fact that my bluff was being called in spectacular fashion—and sat in a lawn chair and hoped my speech would return to my mouth.

Meanwhile, Mike came over and Kathy told her version of it, and Mike roared and started walking up to customers’ cars and carrying the story forward and pointing to me, the shriveling guy in the lawn chair. The bold substantial lady smiled sweetly and, sans peaches, walked to her car. Kathy headed for Farmer Orville’s place across the road, to tell the story with which Orville will torture me for months to come.

I am a man of superabundant words and few actions. I live in my imagination—not a bad place to be—where fantasy women indeed, rub Calhoun County peaches on their peaches. Ba-dum-bum! (Thank you, Quest Love!)

In real life, I am the caterpillar not the butterfly. If Jennifer Lawrence had showed up to the fruit stand and said, “Sell me enough peaches that I can rub them all over my body for  . . . you, Gene.” You-Gene: Eugene, get it?

I would have run for my life.

July 17, 2015

The mayor of Airway Heights, Washington, Patrick Rushing, noted on his Facebook page: “Gorilla face Michelle, can’t disagree with that. The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. LOL.”

“It’s just playful back and forth banter our friends and us do,” the embattled mayor’s pals said, clearly surprised that his constituents were not amused.

Rushing, whose metal-rimmed glasses and excrement-colored hair frame an intelligent, Neanderthal-browed face and deflated cheeks (his own ears hang from his eyebrows to his upper lip) make him look “pioneery,” was not available for comment.

“Cadaver,” said local coroner “Magic Mike” Corcoran, of his client. “When his body came in on a stretcher, he was so pale white he scared my Hispanic intern Raul. We had to rouge him up like a ten dollar whore.”

Mayor Rushing died three years ago but remained seated—well, laid out—as mayor. “Hell,” a local bartender remarked, “a corpse can’t spend money. The country’d be better off with more dead guys in office.” Continue reading →

It began two weeks ago today: a crushing headache to the back left of my skull. It felt like someone was driving a railroad spike into my brain. Since I’ve been prone to allergies this year, I assumed this was the logical extension of the problem.

By that Thursday, I surrendered to the ultraistic pain and went to see my doctor. Using an instrument, he peered into my left ear and diagnosed an inner ear infection. Solution: take an antibiotic three times a day and Demerol-codeine.

By Saturday morning, no pain relief in sight, and with my sister Antoinette visiting me and expecting me to be her tour guide, I went to Alton Memorial Hospital. I was given a C.A.T. scan (no tumor—yay!) and told there was no sign of an ear infection. A much stronger antibiotic was prescribed, and I was given a shot in the butt. Thirty minutes later I felt no pain, though the narcotic of the shot was making me woozy to the point that I couldn’t drive that night.

The pain returned the next morning. The spike in my head gnaws at me, as if something were chewing on my bones. At night, I lie awake in the dark and listen to my house being eaten. Who knows where this will go tomorrow.

I saw my doctor again last Wednesday. He said the infection was deep down in my mastoid bone and would take quite a few more days to heal, come see him yet a third time in a week. More antibiotic, more narcotics, until today.

Meantime, I’ve been researching antibiotics. For years, prominent doctors have warned, our society is overmedicated, making us increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Meanwhile, drug companies are focusing on “sure fix” healing drugs and much higher profits. The university medical schools that were doing antibiotic experiments have had their grants pulled. Guess how many institutions are now working on super antibiotics? None.

What is it about human beings that warnings come and we ignore them? We were in big time global warming denial and only now are we reacting, when global warming began in the 1800s. We are in it, not waiting for it, as massive storms of various kinds are striking worldwide. We were warned about antibiotic dangers and we punted and gave little Sally a megadose to clear up that earache. And now nothing is left.

Have you heard the news? Water is running out, in the major holding basins of our country. Sand—sand, for god’s sake—is running out, making workers with concrete to scramble for supply. Half of the wild animal species on earth are dying out and CANNOT be saved. It has happened.

So I deserve my pain and you deserve yours. We have been gluttonous, and now we pay. I hear countless people my age smirking and saying at least we won’t have to watch it—the Athropocene epoch we made, the age of human-based extinctions. Those same heads-in-the-dirt—sand is endangered, remember—post their grandchildren’s photos on Facebook and boast.

“Looka that! Fine and healthy! Have you a soda. Eat some French fries!”

Tomorrow used to never come. Today it came and went.

July 8, 2015

You can’t make this stuff up. Well, I can, but no need this day.

A guy drives up to the new Dollar General Store on Route 3. He reaches for his sidearm on his right hip. He intends to hide the weapon while he goes in and shops. He pulls the gun from the holster and shoves it under the driver’s side seat.

You know what happened, don’t you. Don’t you? The gun goes off, shooting him in the right kneecap. In writing, this is known as poetic justice.

An ambulance takes the chump to St. Anthony’s Hospital. One can only hope that the over-zealous nun with the huge ta-tas who works the E.R. prayed over and lectured him before or after she asked him about his bowel movements.

White dumbassery is breaking out all over the country. Several thousand people have shot themselves as a result of conceal carry. It is the logical result of fear. Continue reading →

July 8, 2015

Well, back in the day, you know, the 40s, time seemed to be speeded up. Everybody—the soldier boys—getting killed in the war. And here at home we was anxious, before the Nazis took over, to have experiences.

So dating was not the thing as much as mating. And mate we did. You said you have a friend my age told you young folks didn’t do the deed back then without a license. That just ain’t true.

I remember me and this friend, we took a couple gals over to Indiana for immoral purposes. There was this lake there and some cabins. And we holed up for three days, and we sure as hell wasn’t goddamn dating. We was drinkin’—and some other shenanigans.

So on the day we was going to come home, I looked out the cabin window and there was this car that I recognized, belonged to a neighbor lady of my folks. What in thee hell was that fat old bat doin’ over Indiana way? I told them gals and my friend, no way we could leave until that neighbor lady leave. She tell my dad what I was up to, he whup me raw.

We had to spend a extra night, out of money and booze. That was a slow night.

I served in Korea. There are always enough wars to go around—mine was Korea. And I’d be hidin’ my ass in a trench and wonder who was mating up my fiancé back home. Of course, I was foolin’ around with South Korean girls—what’s good for the goose.

I dated my wife, mind. She was a good Catholic girl. Kept her legs closed ’till afterwards. Hell, she didn’t mind the hair growin’ out of my ears. If I could harvest the thick hair in my ears and from my hairy ass, I wouldn’t be bald.

I reckon bald men got higher libido. I only watch now, of course. Take more money that I got to get me a gal. The highlight of my day is when them young waitresses stand by me at my table and take my order, me looking at their uh, middles. A good middle can set up a man for a whole goddamn day.

Life at eighty-seven: Soap operas, Cardinal baseball, Spanish language TV—they got the best gals, bouncy flouncy brown gals.

That is how I see heaven: bouncy flouncy brown gals and coconut pancakes.

June 29, 2015

I may the only person who runs a tab . . . on blackberries. Farmer Orville and I set up a system where I can sate myself without money. This may be a bad thing.

I picked a pound of berries this afternoon, enjoying rare sunshine, popping plump samples, petting Reba the dog, grooving on the baby birds nesting in the berry patch, swatting mosquitoes. Berries hang seven feet in the air where only I can pick them.

Oh, I’ll floss tonight but right now my teeth spaces are filled with gritty seeds. I pry out some with my tongue—I have excellent tongue skills—but others nestle and rile my gums.

It is a miracle there are berries to pick. There have been two sunny days since June 9. We had four inches of rain last night. Tornadoes danced around us and tore off some roofs and brought down trees. But the berries stand.

The River Road is closed; the Mississippi and Missouri and Illinois rivers are flooding. There is no traffic on Clifton Terrace. My neighbors and I could play dominoes on the pavement and not fear a racing car.

“We are discussin’ gay marriage,” Orville said. Oh boy. He meant he would do a monologue on the subject. I asked whom he thought was gay in the Bible. Nobody. Not even the Apostle Paul? Nope.

Reba and the barn cats had no thoughts on gay issues. They rubbed against me and licked my bare legs—Reba thinks my name is Salt Lick. And they smelled. The rain, the swamp are wondrous things to domestic animals, and they wallow and they carry poison ivy.

“Only thing better than blackberries,” Orville said, “is tomatoes and blackberries.” He doesn’t eat tomatoes, but never mind. I have been known to eat ten tomatoes in a single day.

It had been a stressful day. The Telegraph deadline for all stories for Homestyle Magazine was this afternoon. I have three stories in the next issue. My editor Vicki and I went back and forth about the word “wend.” “Use everyday words,” Vicki wrote. “Wend is an everyday word,” I countered. “I’m wending my way to a nap.”

Where: I wander and wonder and wend my way and watch and willfully get wet and waylay and willy-nilly with wisdom and whim and workmanlike will.

And I have blackberry breath.

June 20, 2015

The woods were alive with insect songs, and frogs the size of a fingernail hopped across the road. The swamp below was filled with coffee and cream water, and the houses on Scotch Jimmy Island were flooded. Black-crowned night herons perched along the cottonwood treetops and squawked. Hummingbirds were out in numbers.

Now that I’m in mountain climbing shape, Stroke Hill on Stanka Lane seems less stroky. I bounded up the slope past swooshes of orange tiger lilies and trumpet flowers, past black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers and blue cornflowers and rows of perfumed Queen Anne’s lace, headed for Farmer Orville’s house to tell him and his wife Quilt Queen the news: This morning the Genehouse garden yielded five red cherry tomatoes.

And last night’s bag of Fritos Roasted Peanuts had a surprise inside: a piece of fired clay pottery from Georgia, from ancient pot makers. I landed quite a few Cracker Jack prizes back in the day, but this was the prize of prizes. I reached for a peanut shell and grabbed the pottery shard.

The talk turned to bees, and Orville told this story: “I was mowin’ by the neighbors’ house and they had an old rusted car next to their driveway, and when I passed that junker on the mower, a wasp rose up from the front window and eyeballed me, Continue reading →

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

It has rained every day since I’ve been back from California. There is rain under the rain, over the rain, around the rain, through the rain, behind the rain, in front of the rain, rain on rain.

The ground is rain. I mowed the grass yesterday and walked in rain. It is so rainy, the mosquitoes are using umbrellas. The bullfrogs have been displaced and moved to higher ground. The birds eschew birdbaths because they’re already soaking wet and their babies are cranky. Robins are joining the obesity epidemic, as all they do now is stand in one place and catch the escaping, drowning worms.

I watched last night as the trees of my forest lifted themselves out of the ground and shook their mushy roots. And all of my vegetables pulled themselves out of the garden and were on my front porch, begging to get in where it is dry.

The rivers are swollen with rain. The Missouri is out of its banks and flooding the shore trees. The Mississippi has widened to capacity and is still rising. Piasa Creek is eight feet deep.

My shoes are wet, my boots are wet, my shirts are wet, my socks are wet, my cowboy hats are wet, my underwear is . . . well, that is a separate issue. Continue reading →