daybreaks in Ypsilanti. an orange sun rises. red, black & blue birds chitter

in the willow just off Willow Run.

you breakfast on Blind Robins.

you wake @ 4:44 unable to sleep; you experience (the old) insomnia; 2 tablets (twice) & you can write. you pace about in your green robe, use your (borrowed) black Pentel pen to address cards & letters

to the UK, Brasil, Somerville MA.

Chinoy's Auto Workers & the American Dream (1955) proves as true now as it did in '46-51:

boom in war, bust in peace. Big 3= QED.

Riesman uncannily observes:

"One wonders whether another war

would not come as a relief

to many of these workers

allowing them to rise to a challenge

& test their powers against

something stronger than a frightened foreman."

Jay-boy tells of curing oil-rags for months enough

to send them down the line afire

to advertize "the foreman is on the rag." nightshift goofs: his ass is a dragon. one short leg kept him out of khaki

he hopes it (plus soon, sole surviving son) will do the trick again. it might. he's 22, imminently layoffable w/ only 1% yrs service,

a 2nd shift utility man Hydramatic.

you tell him your beat-the-draft story circa '64

& the doings your abortive pre-induction physical, "everybody has a good story on this" he tells Nancy (19). yours proves no exception, with the German-accented M.D.

asking you "are you vun off dese! do no pushups! you may go home." you ear your faggot-4F w/ a few pencil strokes. no such funky fun avails anybody, anymore. you begat a daughter & a son in the intervening 16 yrs both facing the same potential call-up. QED.

today in the permanent weekend indoor flea-market

in the old abandoned site of Arlen's you saw the familiar Ayatollah T-shirt w/ the sub head:

Deport Iranians Import Heinekens

selling like crazy in Dutch-dollared SE Michigan.

you bought old postcards instead.

you continue to record & correspond. you, reader, are making correspondences. we, comrades, are approaching the summit.

Bill Costley