A D Journal 1986

    I suspect plotting, I do, did, will always. It’s one of those things that comes with free trade and competition. What is the plot this time? (You having heard it all before in well, folk, let’s call it the continuing saga of Dunkin Donuts and Phil’s ever vigilant effort to trim costs But a plot, you say? How does a plot fit into his schemes? Let me present my evidence, then see what you think. We shall begin with my queries concerning the Hackettstown store, or rather Phil’s negative reaction to my moving to that region. He said it was too expensive, too far to go, and I wouldn’t like it, all reasonable assumptions until you realize that every other baker in his three-store realm has worked there. All right, so I’m not wanted there for some reason. Then, last week Big John, the night guard says, “Your boss is here.” Phil hadn’t come in early, he had never left, and I got the distinct impression something wasn’t right – a feeling I’d been getting from ...

    Guarding the mall at night has changed significantly I first started working here back in 1981. In those days, the doors were always locked and you were lucky if you got out without a 20 minute wait. There was no watch clock then, just a single night guard making the long and lonely rounds through the empty corridors of the mall, guarding closed doors and dark windows. The regular weekday guard was a old man named Gene, who was about ready for a trip south, waiting on the last details. He was an especially lonely sort and used to talk a lot about things he did with me and the born again Christians with whom he fought. The weekend guard was a sleepy figure who came for coffee, who often slept through my pounding on the door and ringing the buzzer to get in, a nice man who had too many jobs. When Jean left, Chuck took over. Church haunted the mall the lonest and suffered the most in the end when he proved to be all too human. He talked a lot, too, but unlik...

  So we've come back to George the night guard, a man is lonely and isolated as any man I've ever met or rather part of that club of men who I often meet and befriend even though I often disagree with their lifestyles and their politics in general night guards at Willowbrook are not liked by other guards and people close to the mall perhaps this is do to the isolation and the envy of others who see them as something special or perhaps is something within the guard himself who is drawn to such duties  I don't remember whether Gene was hated but Chuck was and his replacement Dan as well as Billy and Joe and John and this man George In George's case it is love of power--  not flagrant power abuse like most guards get into--  but a deep seriousness about the uniform and the job that causes him to perform acts of aggression against those he believes unfit to inhabit the same uniform according to others in the night crew his partner and other people,  George...

  it's raining sort of and one of those days when I can hardly think and I want to write as much as I want to think these are Moody Days full of that same sour taste they used to get as a kid sitting protected on a porch as the rain pattern on the roof this and it's cold and I guess too much like a rainy Monday I keep thinking about Bob and all the other disappointments this year people suddenly getting the urge to move on poorly row and three families upstairs even Fran and is always the not exactly how I expected her to go she's still in Clifton working with her father and that almost employment record for her I thought she would head for Texas or at least for points further west instead she seems to have located herself within blocks of her job living I believe with a girl named Sue a superficial soul that friend used to complain about on a semi regular basis recently she and Bob talked largely about me about those things that kept Fran and I from being friends friend ...

  By this time, Bob Adams is rumbling West in a big yellow Ryder truck. his gold German rabbit into like a small child in supermarket clinging to his mother's hand I got to Morristown early yesterday and set by myself at the speedwell watching the water looking over the places where Anne and I had climbed once before. When I finally got to Bob's house I was nervous knowing well that this would be another one of those painful goodbyes Bob has been more than a friend Than many of the others realize. We got high at the neighbors house and waited for the others to begin the slow process of packing Bob's life away. He's less organized than he pretends but then anyone who's worked for him knows this already. But it didn't hit me as hard as this before when poorly and Rick showed up the day became comic snide remarks passed back and forth like bullets in a World War One trench comments mostly about Bob S simple unorganized blind 3 times we tried to pack a plastic bag...

    I talked about Mone yesterday and how she saved me when I freaked out on acid. But she did not long remain our friend, While my drug of choice was LSD, hers was cocaine, and she had more than one freak out of her own -once, when Hank and Bill Capella (the lone survivor of the building the Weather Underground blew up by accident) came visiting. Louise was pregnant, Bill was already nervous because the FBI was looking for him, wanting him to identify those who were in the building when it blew up. He would have hid out in New Jersey, but business forced him to come into Manhattan. Bill was a trooper who had been part of a number of merry Garleyland adventures, including the infamous trip to the shore in 1969. He had not wanted to go into the Weatherman’s building, but a friend and grabbed his hand and practically dragged him up the stairs. When he got there, he saw people sitting around a table full of bombs, and they were smoking pot. He decided it was not hea...