Four

I called my grandfather to wish him happy birthday. Ninety-two. Holy crap.

I have little illusion I will last that long, despite having roughly a quarter of his genes.

But he didn’t smoke. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him drink, and that was only beer, mainly while fishing.

But I’ve pretty well decided that I’m not working tomorrow. I probably should have taken today off, but I really didn’t think I had anything else to do today.

Other than shiver. After I finish writing today, I’ll call the maintenance for the fourth time today to see about getting somebody out to fix the heat in our apartment.

Unacceptable.

So, prompt….

Name a book that you never forgot about

I’ve been thinking lately about The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

A classmate an I, being the two new kids in our advanced English class, had it as one of the make-up summer reading assignments to start school in Bad Newz. (Yes, I saw both Vick brothers play high school football…)

One of the things we hit on, even though I don’t recall seeing it in any of the analysis materials we found, was that it was a piece of Socialist agitprop.

Obviously, the two of us had spent considerable time as kids in Germany worrying that the Soviets were going to come through the Fulda Gap at any moment.

But the main character’s life was absolute hell in the meat packing plants in Chicago (and all of the health concerns for which the book is famous), but his life improved when he joined a union, and became a Socialist.

This was the mid-90s. I’d seen recently-liberated Eastern Europe. The workers’ paradises there, well, weren’t paradises at all.

But that was different, of course. It could be Slovakia, but it could also be Denmark.

Not so much.

I went to Denmark, too. Denmark wasn’t at all similar to Mukov. Not even close.

So I guess there’s an example where in-person experience outshines the academics’ stories.

I’m trying to think of some of the particulars of the book, but few of the disgusting particulars are coming to mind. The joy of Jurgis after finding the opioid of the academy, on the other hand, does.