Coming Soon
Originally posted in October 2016, this is the first Bill Wynn outtake.
Bill was on probation. He got three weeks in the workhouse and a two hundred-fifty dollar fine. He actually spent seventeen days in jail and they waived the fine, but he came away from it all pretty broken and with a police record to boot. The police record meant he couldn’t get a job so he had no money, no prospective income, nowhere to turn for help except his probation officer.
Those days, the probation officer determined how often you had to report. Bill reported the week after he was released from the workhouse since that was required. Bailey, his PO, made the next face-to-face for four weeks away and decided regular visits were to be monthly. Bill wasn’t exactly a flight risk or a danger. He was busted at an anti-war protest and still insisted he hadn’t done what they said he did. It reminded him of a character in a story who said they had the papers on him so he guessed he did what they said he did. Then he said he didn’t really remember and it didn’t matter anyway.
That first monthly visit changed Bill’s life. He just didn’t know it at the time. That’s when he met Robert, the guy in workhouse blues who looked like he was going to cry. Bill offered him a cigarette, but he said he didn’t smoke. Bill told him he didn’t have any money otherwise he would have given it to him for his commissary. Robert asked him how he knew about the commissary. Bill told him he just got out a month ago.
Bailey was sympathetic to Bill’s plight. Bill wanted Bailey to help him get a job. Any kind of job, Bill told him. “I don’t care what the hell it is,” he said. “I can’t pay my rent.” Bailey said he’d do what he could.
Bill didn’t have much hope. He didn’t have much hope about getting a job or about Bailey helping him. He lay in bed at night remembering. The judge banged down the gavel and then he was clad in shackles on the bus to the workhouse. He had that sick feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. That feeling would never leave him again, never, although sometimes it would go on hiatus for different periods of time, some of them even longer periods.
“Policemen don’t lie,” the judge said. The judge’s name was Shul. They called him “hang ’em high Shul,” because he was the toughest, most conservative judge they had there in Columbus. The town itself was quite conservative once you were away from the university area. Bill had been walking downtown and a cop singled him out from about fifteen people who were crossing in the middle of the block and not in the crosswalk.
“Giving you a jaywalking ticket,” he said.
“What about all the others who were with me?”
“Shut up you goddamn hippie.”
Bill started to say something but the cop cut him off. “Say another word and I’ll run you in,” he said.
Bill didn’t go back downtown again until he was visiting his PO. By then, after the workhouse, you’d never have known he was a hippie.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
So Mr. Jim made a speech. His wife, also gray-haired, also smallish, stood by his side and held his hand. It was charming to look at and a rather tender moment altogether. Henry Lee stood by Alfreda and held her hand. Marie stood alone. Bill stood by Mary who wanted to hold his hand but wouldn’t reach out for it. So next best thing was to stand close enough to him so her hip brushed up against his. Every now and then she shifted on her feet and made sure that he felt her against him.
Mary had done her makeup in a way Bill always liked. She wore no facial powder except a touch of rouge on her cheekbones. Her nails and her lipstick were deep purple. That purple drove Bill crazy. He wondered if her toenails were done in the same color and when he asked her, she slipped one foot out of her shoe enough for him to see that they were. He was the only man to date that had ever kissed her toes, even licked them and kissed her feet all over. That drove her crazy.
Drenovis looked bored out of his wits. He probably would have skipped the whole thing if he could have, but Mr. Bowman was not letting that happen. Robert stood next to Bea whose husband had come simply because he knew Mr. Jim and his family and he wanted to be there for them. Bea was not happy about Mr. Bea being there, but she had no choice. So on one level, for as wonderful an event as it was for Mr. Jim and his family and even for Suburban, that’s how awkward a moment it was for some of the staff.
Mr. Jim’s speech chronicled his kitchen life. He spoke briefly about being one of the few people of color in those days to graduate high school and be lucky enough to get a job even though it was a beginning job as a kitchen worker on the railroad. He spoke about hard work and perseverance, about simply showing up and being there all the time. He spoke about being the best pot washer they’d ever had and then being the best dishwasher they ever had. He talked about his good fortune when one of the railroad cooks died. While it was not the cook’s misfortune, he was lucky enough to be given an opportunity. He talked about how that opportunity only materialized because he had shown up and done a prideful job all the time.
Mr. Jim spoke in detail about what it was like to be a chef on the dining cars. He spoke about learning all he could from the other cooks around him and from the chefs. He said he was happy in his older age to be able to pass that on to many younger boys who were up-and-coming on the railroad. He said he knew that using the word boy might offend some people, but, he said, being in his sixties meant that kids in their late teens were just boys. He remarked that there were no girls in the kitchens in those days, and Bill could testify to the fact that there really weren’t many girls in the kitchens even into the eighties.
Mr. Jim attributed all his success to his wife of nearly fifty years. She, almost alone, raised their kids, this because he was away most of the time. In the older days, sometimes when the trains were going long distance, the chefs traveled with the trains. He said he was proud to have accomplished what he accomplished but that the trade-off was being away from his family. He had missed a lot of his kids’ growing up, but, he said, he was happy that at least he could be there to watch his grandchildren grow up.
Well, Bill thought, if that speech don’t shame us all. He wondered if Mary, Bea, Henry Lee and Alfreda were thinking the same thing.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
Bill was washing potatoes at the sink on Mary’s station. He was gonna leave them in the sink, fill up the hors d’oeuvre trays and carry them down. Most of the hors d’oeuvres were sitting on the shelves in the convection oven, the oven where the baked potatoes were cooked. Alfreda stepped up behind him at the sink and helped herself to an immodest feel of him. For his part, Bill tried to but could not quite sidestep her, and as she pressed him into the sink so he couldn’t step away, she could feel him responding to her touch.
“You like that, huh white boy?” She pressed harder on him and tried to work her hand inside his kitchen pants. “Think me and Bea and Mary don’t talk about you? You know I’m starting to feel left out.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bill said. Then an impulse hit him. The water still running, he turned from the sink, grabbed Alfreda tight. He forced his lips over hers and pressed his tongue into her mouth. As he kissed her, he reached under her dress. When his fingers reached where they aimed and he began to explore her, she melted in his arms and ravaged him with her own kisses.
“You know we have to get back,” he said.
“Don’t punk out on me, baby. I’m telling you it’s okay.”
“It ain’t okay.”
“We have to finish this,” she said.
“We don’t have to finish anything. We need to get our asses back downstairs and be at the party with Mr. Jim and his family.”
“C’mon,” Alfreda said. “We got a few minutes and no one’s coming up here. Take me into Tommy’s office and do me.”
“I’ll do you, when hell freezes over,” Bill said.
All this while Bill’s hand was exploring up under Alfreda’s dress. For her it was a mission accomplished. Appearing to have given up the fight since she didn’t respond to what he said, she reached under her skirt and helped Bill’s hand do exactly what she wanted it to do. She was well on her way to getting exactly what she came upstairs for so she closed her eyes and kissed Bill again, long, hard and deep.
It was over when Alfreda had had a nice shiver. She started to get down on her knees but Bill stopped her.
“What’s a matter baby? I can do it real fast,” she said, licking her lips with her tongue.
“Not here, not now.”
“Come on, live dangerously.”
“Goddammit,” Bill said. “Not now.”
Again Alfreda did not bother to take up the fight. Somewhere deep inside her, Bill would find out later, she already knew that she had him and that she would have him and that there was nothing poor Bill could do to stop her. He would find this out on the floor of the Suburban van, while Alfreda straddled him and helped herself to more of him than any woman should have been having except for his fiancé. Only by the grace of God—and a lot of things were happening by the grace of God although Bill could not see it at the time—Bill’s fiancé was up in Cleveland celebrating the new year and the school’s vacation break with her parents and friends.
So they went back down to the party room, each of them carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres to set into the steam table. This they did, each of them, efficiently and deftly. Having emptied their trays, they placed them on a bus boy stand in the corner the party room. Bill immediately went over to the bar and took himself a glass half-full with bourbon. Alfreda followed him and because the bar was open and she could have what she wanted to drink, she had Bebe fix her a vodka and tonic.
While they were both at the bar Henry Lee sidled over. “Been upstairs of my wife, huh?” he said to Bill.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
Originally posted 7/14/17
Somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand military personnel have been killed since 9/11 and the number of wounded is conservatively about thirty-three thousand. Some estimates are a lot higher. But the government-run VA is broken, its leaders corrupt, and the politicians capable of effecting change are inept and themselves more devoted to special interest groups than to the Vets. To think the VA can go on as it is and fix itself from within is insanity.
Even more insane is our having gone into Afghanistan. The Russians fought there for some nine years and we experienced the long, protracted Viet Nam war. Insanity to think we could have done better in Afghanistan.
Ditto education. Our education system is broken. We let special interest groups contribute vast sums of money to our legislators to maintain the status quo. In turn, we throw more and more money into a system that has continually shown it does not work as it is supposed to. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results: insanity.
Our inner cities are broken. From one to the next to the next, they are crime-ridden, drug-infested and steeped in poverty. If one states the facts as they are, one is branded a racist. The same Democratic leadership has run these cities the same way for more than fifty years and it keeps getting elected. Insanity.
Social Security funding was supposed to be tucked away and left only to fund Social Security. Nevertheless our leaders have dipped into those dedicated funds repeatedly. Any wonder the system is going broke? Insanity. Even if we refund it, would it be reasonable to expect our leaders not to break it again? Have our leaders ever shown themselves to be fiscally responsible? If we believe they suddenly will become so now, aren’t we being insane?
There’s no limit to the insanity which abounds today. You have to sign it to see what’s in it was a new height in crazy. Hug a terrorist, however, seems to give it a run for the top position. Yes, that’s what we should do. We should offer the terrorists who are hell-bent upon destroying our way of life hugs, money, jobs and counseling. Insanity.
Dare we talk about the bathroom laws? the identity laws? the medical laws? A doctor is now expected to treat a patient in accordance with the gender s/he identifies with on the day of treatment as opposed to the biological status. Beyond insanity, honestly. Apparently those self-identification rules are all good except on April fifteenth when one wants to identify him/herself as being poor to avoid paying taxes. They break down there, when it comes to paying taxes. Even if you identify as poor you still have to pay up.
Ditto HHS. Ditto CPS, IRS, Medicare, Medicaid and on and on. These days, even the FBI is broken.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. One would like to think that the government really does want to take care of our veterans and that overall it has good intentions toward its citizens. But in today’s United States, that thought reflects a certain insanity. With the advent of career politicians and their overwhelming support of virtually unregulated super PACs and lobbyists, it is clear that our leaders’ goal is only reelection. Taking care of the country, even particular constituents, is merely a by-product, and more often lip service.
We are now locked into a government comprised of politicians whose only purpose is sustaining their position and maintaining their power. This is Social Darwinism (On Social Darwinism). And that has led us to insanity.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
This was originally posted on July 11, 2017.
How stupid are we?
Talking about America, there seems to be no limit to the depth of our stupidity, the depth of the pit of stupidity we have fallen into. It’s rather amazing actually. Think about it. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin wall came down, the United States was the only world power. In the thirty years since then we have allowed Russia to regain its world-power status and we have allowed China to become a world power. China’s economy has overtaken ours and just recently, for the first time ever, the dollar is no longer the world currency.
So how stupid are we? Well, how stupid can you be?
The war on poverty has been going on for fifty-two years, since 1965. We’ve poured twenty-three billion dollars into it. That’s 23,000,000,000. For that money there has been no real noticeable change in the poverty rate and no real change in the demographics of the people in poverty. Yet we continue down the same road. Stupid?
As regards education, we spend more per capita than any other country and yet we rank a whopping twenty-seventh in the world in education. Now that’s a big bang for the buck. Furthermore, segregation was outlawed in 1954 and yet our schools are becoming more and more segregated. The rate at which segregation is occurring continues to increase.
Stupid?
It gets better. There are those who fought against segregation who now insist they have a right to their own spaces, or they insist that whites not be allowed into certain spaces. Well then…
Stupid? You bet
Just as stupid and actually most dangerous to our society is the disregard shown for logic and facts. Replacing logic and facts are feelings and subjectivity. The gender identity laws exemplify this. But that raises a controversial issue and God forbid that should happen. So let’s put it this way. Mr. X doesn’t have any cash and can’t buy that five-dollar super mochaccino he wants because he left his wallet in his Porsche. He feels poor. He identifies with poor people at that moment. In accordance with the gender identity rules, he is poor. He identifies himself as poor, ergo, by the new rules, he is poor. If that happened on April 15th, Mr. X should be eligible for not paying taxes and even getting an earned income credit.
Stupid? Beyond stupid. How stupid can we be?
Let’s see. Remember “you have to sign it to see what’s in it?” Stupid? Well, what’s even more stupid is that she’s still in office and the head of her party. She’s not stupid. She didn’t have to read it because she doesn’t have to deal with it. She and her cronies voted themselves an exception so they could stay on the government congressional plan. That’s the Cadillac of Cadillacs plan.
Stupid? Not them! Us. More than half of them are millionaires And they way their positions work, they don’t really have to pay for anything. Our tax dollars pay for everything. Or, they’re having a great, self-enriching time on our dime. So how stupid can we be?
Russia. Russia’s goal is to create chaos here in America. Well, look at what our media has been pushing for the last eight months or so. Look at what the party of opposition has done. How stupid are we as a people and as a nation? Haven’t we played right into Putin’s hands? Stupid.
Well, aren’t we stupid for allowing all this to go on? Aren’t we more stupid for continuing to fund it?
Finally, as the liberals push left toward the welfare state and socialism, history tells us that capitalism and the free market pay for the bulk of all charity work done throughout the world. It also tells us that no socialist government thus far has ever managed to succeed. Why would we push toward that which we know will fail?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Really, how stupid are we? Pretty damn stupid.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
We were the only remaining super power in the world in the late 1980s. Ronald Reagan did that, a Republican. Of course it wasn’t just him. It was economics as much as politics. The Soviet Union was going broke, yet another sign, even back then, that socialism didn’t work.
It’s thirty years later. We have let ourselves be surpassed economically by China and we have let Russia return to world power status. Really, how stupid are we? Like him or not, President Trump is right. The world is laughing at us. It should be. As a country, the United States is acting like an idiot. Our leaders say and do the stupidest stuff and then tell us how great they are. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
So let’s get a couple of things straight. The news and news media are no longer unbiased. A simple look at who owns what there and what their political leanings are demonstrates this. Any paper who hires twenty reporters to get dirt on President Trump clearly has an agenda.
Next, to listen to the Hollywood elite and believe those elites are looking out for anyone other than themselves is at best naive and more likely simply misguided. That’s putting it nicely. Those who know anything about socialism know it really sounds great on paper. But in reality there are only two classes: the rich (very few in number) and the poor (the vast majority who pay for everything and do all the work). Which ones are those Hollywood elites and what do they get from their positions? Easy for them to promote strict gun laws. They have armed bodyguards and live in gated communities. Easy for them to promote conservation and green energy since not only can they afford green energy, but they are exempt from their own preachings. It’s like Obamacare. Good for us, but not for Congress who snuck in their exemptions.
So we, the regular American people, are the laughing stock. Look at Al Gore’s carbon footprint. Look at DiCaprio’s. I’m really glad Geraldo’s family in Puerto Rico is okay, truly, but the regular people who don’t have that kind of support got decimated. Same hypocrisy. Did Whoopi leave yet? She’s worth about 80 million. She could afford to go. Why should we believe any of them? If we do, we’re worthy of being laughed at.
Capitalism and the United States pay for almost all the charitable and philanthropic work throughout the world. While we give, give, give, they laugh, laugh, laugh. Excuse me, but I haven’t heard the Clinton foundation doing anything for these latest disasters. You know, Obama and Clinton, those who would move us toward socialist ways: sixty million dollar book deal for Obama and more than 250K per speech to Wall Street, and Hillary’s book deal isn’t being disclosed, but she and Bill have earned 250 million in about ten years. Yeah, they were broke.
Iran deal? They’re laughing at us.
Paris Accord? UN? TPP? Obama’s trade deals? They’re laughing at us.
Our Congress? Schumer, Pelosi, Ryan, and McConnell, they’re all laughing stock. In fact, it would be funny if it weren’t funny. And we’re laughing stock because we keep them in power.
So look at The Hunger Games and Resident Evil. That’s where we’re going unless we take our heads out of the sand. The world is laughing at us, and we keep acting stupid. We let Hitler take all of Europe before acting. Haven’t we learned that appeasement doesn’t work? We let China surpass us and Russia come back. We let North Korea and Iran get nuclear weapons and funded Iran so it could fund Radical Islamic Terrorism. We are the laughing stock of the world and we are truly stupid.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
Revenge is sweet. That’s what Jenny thought. She was intent upon making Peter pay for coming on to her cousin Pam, who happened to be Bill’s girlfriend. Not only did Peter make a pass at Pam, but he did it on the same night of the day Jenny had a coat-hanger abortion and lay bleeding in Pam’s bed. That was the night Pam and Bill were throwing a party which they didn’t cancel because they didn’t know Jenny was having an abortion.
It’s a dish best served cold, is how the saying goes, and Jenny got it that way using Bill to achieve her end some two months later when she was all healed and Peter was just coasting along thinking he wasn’t getting called out for what he’d done. Jenny was near dying and he was busy feeding his male ego. No, Jenny was not letting that slide by.
In her own way, Marie was doing like Jenny had done, except she was having a full-blown affair-like thing with Henry Lee. It wasn’t exclusively with Henry Lee since she had fooled around with Bill too. That, of course, was not quite what Bill had wanted, but surely what Henry Lee had wanted. Any way you sliced it, it was messed up.
Paybacks. Always paybacks. Bill had thought about finding the undercover cop who was in his Paddy wagon, catching him sometime in a dark alley and doing him in. While the thought in itself was serious, the notion that he could actually do it was laughable. Except for one time, he had never hurt anyone and he wasn’t sure he could hurt anyone now. That one time, so long ago, way back when he was all of sixteen, he had lost his head and nearly killed the boy who had started with him. That incident had scared Bill such that he could never, he thought, hurt anyone again.
So Bill didn’t stay too long inside the party room. He said hello to Robert and all the other cooks and to Mr. Jim and his family. He stopped by Mary and told her he would go upstairs to make sure that whatever needed replenishing was done. He said he was gonna take a minute to wash and tray up the potatoes for baking for the dinner and see whatever else he could do ahead to make sure that she wasn’t stuck there late.
Mary had slipped out of her kitchen uniform and was wearing a dress. She had also slipped out of her work shoes and was wearing heels. She had done her makeup and taken a moment to paint her nails. Bill took a moment to enjoy a long look at her. She was gorgeous, he thought, and he could’ve jumped her bones right there if no one else were around. Jesus Christ, he thought.
Alfreda followed him upstairs. Having checked out the buffet and made a mental note of what was needed, Bill thought he had slipped out quietly. Unfortunately, Alfreda had been watching and took the opportunity to follow behind. She told her husband that she had seen Bill heading up the stairs and that she was going up to see what she could do to help him. Henry Lee, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, didn’t seem to care. He loved Alfreda. He told Bill this all the time and when Bill asked him why he fooled around he said one simple word: pussy. But then turnaround was fair play and Henry Lee had asked him how he, about to be married, could do the things he was doing. Bill had answered with the same word.
“So,” Alfreda said when they were alone in the kitchen, “really, man, when you gonna give me some?”
“When hell freezes over.” Bill said.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
At the party, Alfreda was downright brazen. Skinny and trim as she was, she wore a mini-mini that was very low cut on the top. She was mini on the top and mini on the bottom.
She came into the party high. Nevertheless, first thing she did was corner Bill and make him take her into the deep freeze to smoke a joint. Once they’d done that, on her own she went into the bourbon drawer and helped herself to a long pull from Bill’s and Henry Lee’s bottle.
“Damn, Alfreda, can’t you wait till you get next door into the party?”
“Why I gotta wait?” she said. “Give me a little kiss, baby.” She stepped close to Bill.
Bill moved back away from her but she cornered him against the counter and kissed him. It was just by the grace of God that Henry Lee did not walk in at that moment and bust the both of them. Not only did she kiss him, but she reached down to help herself to a long, intimate feel of him. At the same time, she grabbed his hand and pushed it up under her mini. Bill fought her, but even as he did so she still reached up and kissed him again.
“Goddammit,” Bill said.
“Goddamn what?” Alfreda asked.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with me,” said Alfreda. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
A long moment they stood with their hands on each other, much to Alfreda’s happiness and Bill’s chagrin. But finally he was able to step away from her.
“I don’t need the trouble with your husband,” Bill said.
“Won’t be no trouble,” Alfreda said. “Don’t you like me?”
“I like you fine. That’s not the point.”
“You only live once,” Alfreda said. “What’s good to you is good for you.”
“Maybe we should get into the party,” Bill said. “Sooner or later they’re going to miss us.”
“Wait,” Alfreda insisted. “I gotta know,” she said. “You and Mary have a good time at The Upper Room?”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “We had a good time. Ain’t the first time, and won’t be the last.”
“When you going to take me?” Alfreda asked.
“Never,” Bill said. “I told you, I don’t want a problem with your husband. We work together every day and I ain’t stepping into that.”
“You’ll change your mind,” Alfreda said. She kissed him again, another long kiss, tongue and all, all the while Bill hoping Henry Lee would not step into the meat room. Again, only by the grace of God, they did not get busted. “He ain’t the only one who could fool around,” Alfreda said. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Inside the party room, music was blasting from the stereo, Bebe was behind the bar pouring drinks and people were out on the dance floor having a good time. Mr. Jim seemed kind of awed by the whole thing. He stood with his wife, and while not all his kids could be there, several of them were along with several of his grandchildren. Eddie was there. He was hanging out with Henry Lee. Henry Lee was drinking heavily. Even though they still had to work the night, he didn’t care.
Alfreda stepped up into Henry Lee’s arms as if nothing had transpired in the meat room. Bill walked in a moment after her and the first thing he did was check out the buffet to see what needed replenishing. He was convinced it was better for him to work than to hang out at the party where Alfreda seemed intent upon causing trouble.
Once again, and not for the first time, Bill remembered Pam’s cousin Jenny and what she’d done to get even with her boyfriend Peter. Alfreda was on that same path.
Pick up a copy of my published works here: Books by Peter Weiss.
Coming Soon
Bill Wynn: The First Hundred
Another Spring Snow
We thought belated April Fool
Just New England Weather.
