1.
What Took You SoLong?

My first serious, steady girlfriend moved thirty miles away, as soon as we started showing any genuine affection for each other. Most people would have taken the hint, but I was not one to let the Hand of God in your face, decide the course of human affairs, so, being too poor to drive, I bought a bicycle.

It wasn’t like I had a lot of money, even to spring for the bike. I was working a couple of odd jobs, fixing bicycles in a co-operative run by a bunch of bike-loving hippies, and making furniture in my spare time. I was on the way to getting a union card as an apprentice cabinet maker, a road I’d traveled down because my guardians were a couple of childless teachers, and the “Dad”, Darwin “Swede” Fredrickson, taught shop at Washburn Trade School. He had a fully equipped woodworking set-up in his basement, and from the time I was twelve, he’d been teaching me how to cut and plane unfinished hardwood, mostly black walnut, cherry and Honduras Mahogany. We’d go down there most nights and sand it, cut it, miter it, glue, clamp and screw it into place, and slowly build tables, cabinets, and, where the real money was, mantle and grandfatherclocks.

Molly Fredrickson, my guardian “Mom”, was an English teacher at the local high school, where I was soon to graduate. I always thought the most interesting thing about her was that her parents, as Irish-Catholic immigrants moving into their mostly Protestant, suburban neighborhood, had crosses burned on their front lawn when they arrived in1922.

Swede was an un-apologetic Commie. He wore his Socialist-Worker’s-Party, Vladimir Lenin, Workers-of-the-World-Unite cap all the time, as he chain smoked and rambled on about how the working man was getting screwed. Swede and Molly were both raging alcoholics, but they were the good kind, functional, non-violent and employed—they just got slowly schnockered every night when they came home, and so I had to keep Swede away from the power saws, miters and routers as the evenings wore on. We’d go down into the shop, he’d crack open a beer, and while I woodworked, he’d ramble on about all the injustices in theWorld.

“Tell me something,” I’d ask. “If Communism’s so great, then why are they building walls and barbed-wire fences just to keep people in, and folks are still getting shot, trying to getout?”

Swede would swish his beer can. “That’s beside thepoint—”

“Why is that ‘Beside the point’?” I’d ask, as I sanded away on a black-walnut grandfather clock. “When was the last time somebody got shot trying to ‘Escape’ over a wall from here, or from Canada? And while we’re at it, I got about two hundred bucks in materials and a couple hundred hours of labor in this clock. Why should the Government tell me how much I should charge when I sell it, or what I should do with themoney—”

“Because you’ll charge whatever you can get for it, so you’re liable to price gouge some poor worker who really needs a grandfatherclock—”

“Whoneeds a grandfather clock?” I’d ask, as we jabbered on and on into the night like this, Swede smoking and chugging beers, then moving on to whiskey on the rocks. He looked like Santa with a bad shave, a ten-dollar haircut, C.P.A.-style wire-rimmed glasses and really baggy pants. He was full of beans, but he meantwell.

Sometimes I’d take a break and go upstairs, where Molly would be reading and getting plotched on her own, usually on hardstuff.

“Swede getting to you?” she’d ask. She looked like the almost-retired, white-haired, once-upon-a-time leprechaunish s