"Home"

It seems you 'can' go home again. You just can't live there.

I set the unit, and folded time-space,...again. The experience is like passing through warm air. The Shift set me in the shadow of the elm in front of my home.

My childhood home.

This @ 8:46 on the evening of Tuesday December 23rd 1957~CE.

It was snowing. Winters were colder then.
A car with tail fins drove by the street lamps were dim. Sodium Oxide lights were years away. 
There was movement in the windows. Our Tree was going up. Blinking Christmas lights.

I tried to take in this world during the 48 seconds of my Shift.

A woman was on a ladder at the tree. My mother, an aunt? The front door was opening. ...a child!

I Shifted.

"Road Show"

A post or two further down I mentioned I'm working on a story about being a Black Time Traveler,...being of Color one must be profoundly careful if visiting North America between roughly 1600~AD, and 2300~CE.
However there are relative safe spots. If I had the means I would go. I'd quietly visit places, and times long past. As I say carefully choosing when where, and other considerations.
"June 16th 1967 2:28 pm, Central Park."
...other than the cops relatively safe.
I Shift.
My Wormhole unit phases me into the scene. To any watching I would seem to have just wandered from under the shade of a tree. The unit makes your entry as unremarkable as possible.
"A Be-in"
I visit, and observe an actual Hippie Be-in. Which as a very young lad I did experience. Though now with 50+ more years of life I may see with very different eyes.
My next stop Wyoming 36,000~BC.
I was always interested in that culture. Them folks were still somewhat fresh from Pan-Asia.
So may never have heard any Country & Western Music.

"...extreme care"

On being a Black Time Traveler in America's past. One would have to pick the place year season time of day, and location with extreme care. Unlike pink temporal travelers that can bungle into any era anywhere any time, and more or less not get killed.

Colored temporal researchers have to have rather a lot more care. For example I could appear on the above street safely. 9th Avenue/53rd Street in NYC. It's November 18th 1930 9:03/42 seconds pm. I could wormhole there, and explore the area with minor cautions.

Then again the Court House steps in Jasper Mississippi at noon on Jefferson's Davis's birthday in 1926 might be a serious problem. 

Walking while Black in any part of North America from 1609~AD thru roughly 2300~CE. This would be a life threatening though interesting adventure.

I'm thinking of spending the summer working on a science fiction story called "Black to the Future"

Sub-titled "Safety Precautions for the Black Time Traveler".

"Brooklyn Heatwave"

Well summer has air-burst like a tactical nuclear warhead over Coney Island. Which I still haven seen this season. Coney not the bomb. It was 238f degrees, and humid in the Emerald City this afternoon.
So of course I went out for a long walk in the sun. See my 'hood above.

No I didn't end up in the hospital though I did think of going. This as I hung half off a park bench gasping for air, and clutching my chest. The phrase , "...What da Fuck were you Thinking!!" did come to mind.

They were handing out bottles of water outside my local library. With special attention to kids, and elders. I didn't even have to ask. Some nice NYU grad student came up to me as I stumbled by, and shoved a bottle in my hand.

"Are you alright sir?"

Aw crap do I look that bad? Well okay I'm 138, and wandering about on the surface of the sun. So yeah I could see her concern. Actually I wish they was handing out ice cream I could 'a used a hit of that. Yeah that stuff will kill me now, but so what I likes it.

Wait it get's better.

Another NYU, they were wearing the t-shirt, do-gooder comes over, and offers to help me into the library. For those of you reading this in the civilized world. Thanks to the new Hotter Climate in NYC public spaces in summer are now Thermal Shelters. This includes libraries,...just like science fiction.

Also I imagine these nice kids are trained to see folks in trouble, which besides gasping for breath I had no idea I was in. What the heck I let them walk me,...they held me by the arms. Which was sweet. I like that folks are nice to old folks, and kids. The "Baby Snatching" by armed enforcers at our border with Brown people has awakened humanity is some.

Anyway they dump me a nice chair, and I'm good. Wait again,...get's even better. One of the librarians asks me if I would like a book or magazine to read while I got better from the heat.

Did I just win the humane society lotto or something?
Hey I'm game. I asks if she could find the "Collected Prose of Walt Whitman" the Penguin edition if it was handy. She smiles, and goes. A few minutes later she, and Uncle Walt appear.

I'm figuring this is Candid Camera or whatever passes for that now. Anyway there I spent the balance of the afternoon. In the air conditioned womb of the same library I've been going to since I was six. I moved back to my old 'Hood after some decades of ambiguous adventures.

Today was a good though profoundly hot, and interesting day.

"NSA"

I have a life story here. I mean what the fuck nobody, but old friends are here so I'll tell ya. As ya knows I been coughing my guts up barfing, and walking into the walls for over a week with this cold thing. Well I wakes up from one of my assorted bouts of near-sleep, and crawls to the kitchen.

I fall over alot so I figured I'd save time by going direct to the floor from bed.

I opens my little fridge,...I shut the big one off because that bastard sucked down power like a reactor on Crack. Anyway I opens the little guy, and a squeeze thing of mustard a bottle of Selzer, and a bag of meat balls flies out.

That's all I has in there being a Senior Citizen.

I asked about the prefabricated artificial food product meat ball thing at the check out. I mean I was a little suspicious. Ya know they looked weird came from some former Soviet republic, and had a picture of a unknown species on the package. ...which was laying dead by the side of a road.

I asked the kid if this shit would kill me,...she said "I dunno. You can bring it back if you die.". Everybody's a comedian.

Well as I attempts to stand up I drops the bottle of lemon lime Selzer to the floor. It pops open, and half the damn thing sprays all over the place.

I mean we all been there,...Fuck.

Being a good house frau I immediately thinks about mopping this crap up. However. Thinks I, "...this bleep is just water",...in a way.

I figure it's summer it'll dry on it's own,...less work for mother. Then again it's American food so it's probably full of oven cleaner bug parts plutonium, and bits of human remains.

This could attract squirrels.

Which btw I now have. The little bastards are always on my fire-escape looking in on me. Why who knows. Maybe the NSA has optioned them. Hey I used to be a dangerous commie artist, and might still be up to shit.

So begins my day.

I cleans up whatever that Selzer stuff really is, and all's right with the world. However them squirrels. More on them later.

"Holy Saturday"

"What Saturday used to mean to me means to me."

Another mostly real life story,...Once upon a Time.

Reading comics doing chores. The basic Norman Rockwell fantasy. Which in this case was real. Traditions used to be important. One could tell the time of year by them. Even the time of week.

Saturday Movie Matinees for kids. Once an iron tradition.

I was a solitary lad. Some few pals, but mostly on my own. It was in this state I went to the movies. 'Back in the day each 'hood had a movie house. These in them gleeful long ago days of "duck, and cover" segregation, and the .10 cent comic books. Ours was the "Carroll Theatre". It died the usual death of these beloved places as a porn grind house in the grim 1970's.

A moment.

I'm thinking of our dog "Brownie", and a half remembered cat named "Tippy". Them, and the rabbit we somehow ended up with. She was kept in a wire box under the back porch, and one day was found dead. I'd imagine of a broken lonely heart.

She wasn't given a name I remember, and no one I can recall played with her...she was just there. So died. She has haunted me to this day.

But I digress into unresolved mysteries.

To the movies, and their place in my kidhood. It was a thing we did an experience that we had for ourselves...it was ours not our parents not the nuns just ours. Those brutal, and arbitrary authorities ceded it to us. You can just beat a dog so much, and they turn on you.

So on Saturday they didn't beat us.

We were free to wander to dream of other worlds free to imagine escape. Even free to have what should be the birthright of every kid, but ain't. We were free for one day to have fun. Going to the movies. Wandering around having the weird adventures we should have been having 24/7 365. This through our whole childhoods. ...but were forbidden to.

The next day,... On Sunday we were sent to be indoctrinated into false heartless cosmologies. ...Religions. On Monday the beatings resumed.

'But Saturday our Holy Saturday.

Well I recall watching a profoundly deranged holy film called the "Atomic Submarine". It started out with hundreds of ships mysteriously sinking all over the place, but especially around the North Pole...this back when it had ice.

The good guys that is the United States fucking Navy sends in one of their brand new Atomic Bleeping Submarines...hence the title, to deal with shit. One thing leads to another, and the Navy guys find a giant UFO hanging out under the ice!

Intermission or where the Theater makes their real money.

Oh the prices. A hot dawg with a coke .25 cents. When it went to thirty it was like the Great Depression again. We had to hit up our folks for an extra five cents...a hard negotiation! Anyway loaded with candies dead meat drowned in plastic mustard, and bubbly sugar water we were ready for anything them space Alien bastards could dish out!

Well the flick grinds into action, and we gets a good gander at the Alien boss.
Good grief!
He looked like a deep fried rubber ducky! ...with gravy.
The space maniac immediately starts melting sailors...the black one first of course. Yep that tentacled ham sandwich had the traditional heat ray going like crazy. He even takes out two other subs...both British. Some sort of message there...I think.
Of course in the end the smart yanks figures everything out, and sends them Aliens packing.

They try to escape by taking off to get back to "Planet X". This so they can tell their guys how weak stupid, and over taxed everybody on Earth is. That, and they better get over here pronto to wipe us out before we wise up, and come knocking on their crib. Youbetcha that we blows them fried duckies to hell!

Anyway after having a swell time watching that film classic. Drinking several gallons of soda pop, and ten pounds of candy off to home I go to tell my mom that the Earth is safe.

I told my dad too,...he was much relived.

My dad was a kindly neat guy that loved us almost as much as he loved the electric train layout he constructed to my mother's horror in the basement that he also finished. Not with that pine-board crap. Which as most know are just roach, and mouse motels in waiting.

Rather he being strong smart, and cool smoothed off all the walls with plaster, and re-cemented the floors installed panel lighting built a giant railway system that was the second home to all the kids on the block, and got us ice cream when the damned truck finally came.

He was a good guy, and an island of calm in my otherwise hellish childhood.

Holy Saturday.

"Time, and Again"

Because of the 1963 Court ruling on time travel that oil company had to send their Dino's back into the past where they got them. ...too bad most kids including me really loved them folks. In fact that's me there second from the left in that family group. There in front of the "Sinclair Brontosaurus".

It was a real surprise to the family when I grew up to be a Black guy...a Queer one at that.

Anyway these are tourist photos of live Dinos at the old 1964 NYC World's Fair. Sadly as I say they had to be sent back to the Jurassic. This after the Supreme Court decision on the commercialization of time travel put the nix on all the stuff.
However there's still Black Market Raptors to be had if you got the cash. Michael Jackson during his interesting life is rumored to have had ten of them roaming his estate.

(...of course these things are from parallel earths so all that transporting of "Hot Dinos" didn't disrupt 'our' timeline. As for folks in the other universes,...sue us.) 

Btw the big surprise was how tame the Dinos turned out to be. 

In the two years the T-Rex was at the Fair he only ate maybe 30 or forty people. As I recall the Bronto spoke Mandarin, and Esperanto. No one knew where or how she learned it.

"...holyholyholyholyholy"

Me at 90. Which is just 20 or so years away.

Ain't that some shit.

Well by then I could be a bag of dried pet food. 

That or some holy guy somewhere. I always had the calling. 

If things work out I'd be happy running some sort of mish mash hippie Buddha commie store front in urban hell somewhere.

Yeah I'd have a few cats, but the robot sort.

They don't shed or shit all over the place.

That, and you can put them in a box, and shove them into a closet when you get fed up with them.

This so one can get on with all the holy guy jazz.

It's a plan.

"Life is But a Dream"

A dream it was all a great strange dream.

Long ago I imagined that all my life was a dream. A brief dream I was having as a child. Even my posting right night on a rainy night in June 2018 is part of the dream.

I'll awake. I'm in a bunkbed. My brother asleep below me. 

It's winter I can see snow in the back yard. 

I'm seven. It's January 1958.

I dreamed in fine detail a whole history.

I hear my dog "Brownie" padding about below. 

My dad getting ready to go to work. 

School I have to go to school.

I have the experiences, memories of a lifetime.

 60 future years.

This is going to be interesting.