Portage

The land became rugged about fifteen miles from the Mississippi River (more important to America than the constitution) and the little border town of Pairie du Chien was quaint and looked like a nice place to settle down. I would have bought a summer house there if I had any money.

I arrived in my grandmother’s town Portage about a half hour outside of Madison in the middle of the afternoon and stopped in a tavern and had a little glass of Pabst. I would have had a few more but I wasn’t sure where I was going and didn’t want to get caught drinking and driving so I set off to find my grandmother’s house with the vaguest sense of where I was going.

Thirty minutes and a couple of U turns later I knocked on my Grandmother's door and my Aunt Sally’s husband Jerome greeted me warmly. My grandmother was laying on a hospital bed in the living room taking a nap, Jerome asked me how my trip was and I told him pretty damn long, but I saw some pretty cool shit, I whispered.

I walked to the golf course, smoked a joint and a couple cigarettes. I wanted to go to a bar but no one wanted to go with me, and that made me miss my brother and sister.

It was nice to see people that you like but rarely get to see. We talked a lot and read books and I probably watched a baseball game on TV with my grandmother who always kind of liked baseball. She used to take me to Brewer games when I was a kid and she always had the game on the radio while she was messing around in the kitchen.

The next afternoon I played golf and the humidity was worse than the Arizona heat I left two thousand miles behind and the horse flies and mosquitoes made the bad holes feel as bad as any hole in the world. I played poorly and thought I’ll get this fucking golf course next time but I never did.