Apologies for all the Facebook posts, today.  For some reason, the juices seem to be flowing.  I’ve had two nights of restful sleep here in Liberty.  I spent the weekend with the Wife, and that means the cats.  I woke up Monday night, fighting off bedspreads and bedmates, vowing to return to Liberty.  We laughed about it the next day, but this has become a frequent thing.

When I moved out the first time in 2014, the Wife, who runs a women’s clothing store like a Swiss watch, went a little nuts in attention to our three ferals.  The last one had been through RadCats to eradicate thyroid tumors and they saw the vet as often as we saw the doctor.  Their diet was highly regulated with lots of supplements for aging joints and kidneys.  About a year ago, she began dispensing pain relievers and anti-depressants.  She also hired a maid.

Needless to say, the Wife has a very nice home and some very happy cats.  Everybody seems to miss me, and we spend most evenings with at least one cat on our laps and in bed.

One of the reasons I go to Liberty for a few days each week is the Wife is always on a diet.  When not talking about the cats, it’s protein, fat and carbs.  She eats what she wants and so do I.  She watches The Voice, checks out her website and I do what I do.  This might work.

I love Oscar and the girls at the lab in Liberty and ply them with beer so they put up with me.   I learned long ago that when I tried to be good, I only ended up regretting it.   So, I hit the liquor store on the way home and looked at the older black lady at the register:

“Do you know why Liberty is the worst town in the nation?  Because the liquor store is beside the police department.  What good does it do me to stay out of the bars, if I’m seen here?”

I asked her last name, did a little math and said, “Randy Shoffner and I started Liberty School in 1965, the first year of integration.  I’m well spoken today because I was raised by Shoffner women who did our ironing.”

Of course, she replied that Randy was her nephew.

“We asked our parents if we could play together after school, they all got together over the phone and agreed everything was gonna be alright.”

Never mind that the Shoffners had a perfectly good school right across the road from their house.  Some fucking do-gooder decided integration was the way to go and it was abandoned.

Pop’s job with the Liberty VFD was pulling burning furniture out of houses, often finding puppies and kittens, so my brother and I got along with the other kids.

She asked me my last name and I told her.

“You may remember my uncle had a store downtown.  On one wall, he had a series of black and white pictures of barefoot black men playing cards.  I despised him until the day he died.”

Another customer approached the register and I made my goodbyes.

Time for leftover black beans, rice and broccoli w/cheese.