wound / wound wind / wind

brianmlatimer:

Image by Rebecca Werkmeister.

My aunt still lives with her father. My Grandfather. She’s 40 years old, has a 9 year old daughter and has been populating the same 300-square foot structure, with an ever shifting roster of scumbags, derelicts, and the occasional well-meaning ignorant stranger, for the past 2 score and some odd months.

My grandpa’s old. 74 years on this earth, survived the Korean war, plays the meanest banjo you’ve ever heard. I’m not shitting you. The man’s got fingers made of lightning. Heart of gold too, but he’s at the point in his life where he just wants his retirement check in the mail every two weeks. I’d say he’s earned it.

My grandma was a hell of a woman. She had class, you know? and I’ve never met a better judge of character. She could take one look at you and know half of who you are. She’d offer you a cup of tea and how you answered told the rest. I have no idea how she did it, but to be honest I don’t remember as much about her as I should. I feel like shit for it. The cancer got her a few years ago and that’s a damn shame.

My aunt will never grow up to be a woman like my grandmother was. Neither will her daughter. I hope to God I got the same grit under my nails that my grandpa has when I’m 70-something.

My dad’s an ironworker. He likes to hit the bottle after work. My mom owns a bakery in town. They don’t talk much. When they do it usually escalates to slamming doors and speeches about whose income matters more to keep the house running.

My parent’s have these friends: half of them have already shoved their parents into retirement homes. They host cocktail parties and sip wine and ask one another about their stock portfolios. It’s shit. It’s shit and they’re the halfway point between whatever it is that my grandpa has and whatever it is that people my age don’t have.

It almost feels like we’re coming into - or possibly have already entered into - the last era of an age of ‘Great Americans.’ The last generation of people who are (and have been, their whole life) proud to associate their identities with that 9 letter word. I don’t know anyone under 25 who feels that way. That’s kind of scary. I mean, who wants to root for the away team all the time?

It’s like his generation - my Grandfather’s, I mean - really had to live, and we don’t. They had to figure out what was going to let them survive. They had to learn how to exist, and we just kind of glide by. I don’t know too many people that are growing up right.

That’s a strange thing for me to say; it’s the kind of thing you overhear out of disgruntled 60-somethings in public. It feels strange to have to say it too, but it’s the truth. I look around at people my age and I see a bunch of liars and slobs. I see laziness, and sickness. I see them walking past one another and watch the filth permeating between them. I’m up to my eyeballs in the shit and it’s getting tough to figure out where everything’s headed.

Hearing the voice I used to write this is pretty embarrassing.
Worse still is that this is only two years old.
All the same, I now stand witness to the end of an era.

R.I.P. ya old galoot.