"THE MAN IN THE WHITE HAT"

Now, wait a minute.  Wasn't the "man in the white hat" the cowboy hero of lore?  Isn't the "man in the white hat" supposed to be a John Wayne type, the uber-stalwart American?  The "good" guy?  The grizzled ruggedly handsome get-it-done-er who takes on the guys in the black hats and saves the day in the nick of time, riding in on his steed Silver, guns a-blazin', rescuing chillun and elderly women and sweeping the blonde-haired beauty with heaving bosoms into his arms as he rides off into the sunset, another good deed done, another day saved?

Fiction, of course.  Pot-boilers.  Spaghetti Westerns.  Real life, of course, doesn't work that way.  Real life is ironic as hell, sometimes.

There is a gargantuan manhunt underway for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, an attack which left scores injured (many "traumatic amputations"--that makes me wince to even type those words) and a few dead.  Boston-area police and SWAT teams and the FIB have already taken out one suspect, and now they are searching for another, the dude in the much-viewed pictures that have circulated on the Internet and have been shared copiously on social media (by the way, when did "social media" become a part of the lexion? seems recent)...the "man in the white hat".

I wonder...I wonder that if this is indeed a terrorist attack, which it assuredly seems to be, and if this youngish guy is part of the Martyr's Brigade or Al-Quyeesha or Muslims for Jihad or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves...I wonder if maybe he chose to wear a white hat on purpose?  I wonder if the white hat has a relevance in and of itself.  Maybe it's a matter of perspective.  Maybe he sees himself as a John Wayne-type.  Maybe he sees himself as a freedom fighter.  Maybe he views us Americans as infidels that must be terrorized and crushed like las cucarachas that we are.  Maybe he wore the white hat as a statement.  Not to get all Project Runway, here, but maybe he accessorized whilst he terrorized....

But, with all that said, if he truly is part of the team that detonated the bomb and maimed innocent people and killed a few, too, and brought us all smackdabback to 9/11?  All that said?  He'd be better off dead.

A flowering red bullet hole, stark contrast to the new white of the hat, would be a nice accessory, too.

A PRETERNATURAL SHOUT-OUT?

I don't think about my dad all that often.  Sometimes he crosses my mind, most times he doesn't.  I hope that I am making him somewhat proud wherever he is.  Through my jack-assedness I am not doing what I used to do for a career, but I am working two jobs--kinda working my ass off (quite literally, actually; I've lost ten pounds and feel trim).  He was always a hard worker; I think he'd appreciate the effort.

So, anyway, I don't think about my dad too much.  But sometimes I pause and think to myself, Damn, he's been gone for more than four years, now, and it kind of hits me in the stomach like a whooooof.

I took an order on the telephone yesterday at the pizza parlor for an address on West Coy Street in Hazel Park.  The manager on duty informed me that that street was out of range and, sure enough, when I looked at the map on the wall, the street was just barely out of our store's delievery range, two streets into the grayed-out area.  What the fuck, I said, I took the order; I'll take the delivery.

My dad grew up on Coy street.  I think he might have grown up on East Coy, but, regardless, it was his childhood street.  I delivered the food--got a thirty-cent tip; whatever, I made  sixty dollars on ten other deliveries--and got back into the car where, on the radio, "Let It Be" by the Beatles was playing.  Whenever I hear that song now, I associate it with my dad--when he was dying of cancer, I wrote a blog and hyperlinked "Let It Be" into it.

So, anyway, being on his childhood street and hearing the song...well, it got to me a bit.  I turned up the song as loud as I could (on the transistor radio dangling from my rearview mirror; don't ask) and allowed myself to be whooooofed.  I allowed myself to think about him and his life and his passing and his work ethic and his legacy.  I allowed myself to let the tears of our loss well in my eyes.  I allowed myself to miss the hell out of him and pray to him that I hope I'm doing all right by him.  I miss the son-of-a-gun; I really do.  He left way too fucking soon.

On the way back to the store, I stopped by the house to wipe my eyes and blow my nose and kiss my girl.  Because, I mean, seriously?  Who the hell wants to walk back into a pizza place with tears in one's eyes?  Pizza's supposed to be fun!

Happy Easter, Daddy B.  I miss you, man.