ANNIVERSARY (THE MONTH OF AUGUST)

 

I got back to Austin August 1, 1973.

Janie brought me up from Brownwood

where I'd been staying, for no apparent

reason. I had twenty dollars in my

pocket. Bob Bryant put me up and I

went to work for a place called Texas

Temporary Placement - day labor. It

was hot. It was dirty. It was un

inspiring. I was forty five. I was

on the verge of becoming a nobody.

Haunted by my failures, sweating out

my bodily fluids on construction sites,

Mayflower vans, delivery trucks, I

pondered my future again. Sweating

and stinking, I told myself over and

over, "I'm too old for this shit!"

Maybe I was too old for anything. I

had one skill - language. I'd never

understood how to parlay this into a

living. I had a gene missing. It

was a gene called How to Find a Decent

Job and Stick to It. The August sun

bore down on me like doom. I was

incompetent. I was ashamed. Looking

back along the road of my life, I

beheld a line of corpses, all of them

me. I worked hard. I was desperate.

Woodward Furniture hired me away from

the day labor office. I had a job.

It was as hot inside the factory as

outside. All my workmates were

Mexican Americans. We loved each

other. They thought I was funny.

My mother died. I flew back to

Florida for the funeral and came back

more depressed than ever, my last

refuge gone. My sister gave me $500.

I quit the furniture factory, wandered

around lost, looking at the ground.

All this time I'd been trying to

write. I was always trying to write.

It was the only identity point I

had in my whole chaotic world. I

met Valerie. I went broke again.

Back to day labor. My friend Cogswell

told me, "If you want to keep your

writing going, you've got to get away

from the pressure. To get away from

the pressure, you've got to get away

from the profit motive. Get a job

with the state, the feds or the

university. The university's best."

 

I narrowed my focus, kept applying

at the university till I got a job.

I told them I was a writer. That meant

I could type. Clerk Typist. The

rest is history: I stayed at the

university - with a couple of long

sabbaticals - and I wrote and narrowed

my focus to poetry, spent my vacations

in New Mexico and dreamed of moving

there, escaping to those wide, haunted

spaces but always came back. I had

a job here. I had an identity. I

kept writing, had back surgery,

emerged crippled, struggled on. I

learned what I'd always dreaded

learning: how to do the same thing

every day over and over and over. I

hit depressions, spaced out, I kept

writing, I kept working. Some days

I didn't know who I was. It didn't

matter. I was at work. Everybody

else knew who I was. One day, to

my surprise - and everyone else's -

I retired with full benefits. Today,

this very day, at 71, I sit on the

bench in front of the bakery, idle,

content. It's hot. I don't have

to work day labor. I don't have

much but I couldn't work if I wanted

to - Thank God. But I'm writing.

I'm writing because that's what I've

become, a writer, a poet. It's

enough. It's all I can do. But

a part of me is still back there

somewhere, sweating it out on a

construction site in the August sun

as lost as any human can be. He

looks up, sees me watching. He nods

wipes his forehead and, face contorted

with anguish, says, "Don't ever

forget me. I'm always here, always

a part of you. Forget me and

you die."

 

 

Albert Huffstickler