May 25, 1966
Amarillo
Dear Mom and Dad,
I now can write to you with the news that I’m employed and didn’t dare proceed until I was sure that I had a place to live. Now reduced to an eight-hour day, I have time to make my poems, but have no fear, I’ve not withdrawn, nor am I feeling abandoned. In fact my landlady and I are planning to hike in Palo Duro Canyon on Saturday. My studio apartment is completely furnished and shows the taste of Elaine, my landlady. The bedroom and the living room, as you may imagine, are one and the same, with the sofa converting into a bed when I feel ambitious enough to pull it out. With a small kitchen and bathroom, I actually have more room now than I did in the dorm. I think I can supply myself with all the entertainment that I need, until I have a better understanding of love with all of its sorrow and joy. Most of all I want you to know that I’m happy, happy being myself and that I’m getting along just fine. There’s no reason for you to worry about me, though I know telling you this doesn’t help much because parents always worry about their children. .
Yesterday they had me make cement bumper bocks. They’re heavy, strong and should last a lifetime. As part of my tour of Gage, Uncle Henry showed me a cement fence Daddy Hayes built more then sixty years ago. And here yesterday I made with my hands something just as useful and just as permanent. I hadn’t done that before.
It is good. Against the cold I had Daddy Hayes’ parka. I didn’t starve and instead of staying at the Salvation Army I slept in a motel. You would’ve been impressed at how well I did. I hope you’ll come see me sometime.
Don’t expect me to write to you every week like I did in college. It doesn’t mean when you don’t hear from me that I’m in trouble or that I’ve stop loving you. After work I’m dog-tired and sometimes I don’t even have enough energy to cook. Yes, I cook. Your loving son, Tom
So we can assume that Tom thought a lot of Elaine. But did he really think that he had a chance with her?
Tom, poet and follower of Whitman, primarily worked as a laborer pulling cured block off of autoclave trays and stacking them on pallets. He condemned himself to working outside in the lot when he told the company that he planned to only work there for a year. He would come to view this mistake as suicidal. He also was obviously over qualified for the job. His boss said as much during their first meeting: “You won’t like it here…you’re a fish out of water and won’t last a week.” Well, he lasted a year to the day. He did his job, and when he resigned the impression his boss had was totally favorable. “Here,” he thought, “is a very smart kid who for some reason shot himself in the foot.”
It had been very cold in Amarillo that winter, and for someone not used to working out in cold, it was brutal. Out of fear of ruining it, Tom didn’t wear Daddy Hayes’ parka to work. It meant that he didn’t stand around and amuse himself by pretending to be working. And he dared to call it heroism.
Drinking and talk of drinking was the major occupation of the men Tom worked with. The cowboy bars where they drank were scattered along the highways leading into town. In the center of town there were none. Instead there were cafes, stores, theaters, office buildings, and parking lots. From the top of Santa Fey building one could look out upon a vast plain.
Tom could remember going with one of his coworkers into a cowboy bar and ordering a coke. He could remember its labyrinth of tables, and its hardwood dance floor with its obligatory stage, and its smell of cigarette smoke and stale beer. It had a splendid oak bar where regulars vied for stools and where the happy-hour crowd lingered on their way home. Tom could remember, too, the friendliness of the barmaid who when she wasn’t busy was stationed at the end of the bar. As a boy he had been taught with dire predictions to stay away from bars and to never take that first drink.
It had been one of his mother’s loudest cries, but now he wasn’t near her. An evil as bad as any, and he had to admit that in fact that it wasn’t evil, though drinking could be very destructive…all very tempting and new…and he was now on his own and was tempted. Without religion, it could be a beginning. It was being offered to him in pitchers and with a smile; still he ordered a pitcher of coke. And to offer a reason, he’d explain that all of his uncles were alcoholics.
As explained he just was as evil as he was good. And it was as important to him as anything. This explained why in a world almost entirely dominated by drinking that he’d go into a cowboy bar and order a coke. “Whatcha doin’ in there, son?” Our boy had rebelled and had proudly shown himself to be the master…even then, though he heard his parents’ admonitions.
Randy Ford
