Dispatch From An American Roadside

 

An American roadside in Madison County, Georgia between Comer and Carlton. Photo by me, September 2026.

Last weekend the weather was ideal with overnight lows reaching forty-eight degrees at home and afternoon highs only in the lower seventies. There was a bright blue sky and the golden light had that cinematic California quality that occurs here in the fall. 

We were out in Madison and Oglethorpe counties, an area I particularly like for its fields and woods, on the last weekend of September. The area is known for the former country estate of singer and actor Kenny Rogers, covered bridges and rock quarries, some abandoned and some active. 

The poster for the film Breaking Away starring Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Screenplay.

The area, east of Athens, makes me think of the 1979 film Breaking Away which featured a scene where the main characters, townies known as The Cutters, swam and sunned on the rocks in an old quarry. The film was a coming of age tale centered around the American class system, friction between locals and college students and the changing of America in the 1970s. 

Breaking Away was a critical and commercial success and was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Screenplay. It lost the Best Picture category to a lesser film in Kramer VS. Kramer and was nominated among Norma Rae, Apocalypse Now and All That Jazz. Imagine a time when serious films were made for adults, people read books, dressed better and that was the late 1970s. Imperfect as those times were, they were better than today.

Looking back and comparing it to modern life in the United States, we did not understand nor appreciate how well we had it in the seventies. The big shift that would set the country on the path we are on today of runaway capitalism through deregulation, attacks on public education and wider class divides was only two years away in the form of Ronald Reagan. The election and the breaking away from the American dream through responsible governance that came after this movie created the debt we are paying for today and the decaying society in which we live.

I write this as a non-partisan: If only the country had made a better decision in sticking with President Carter. If only... 

The film's success spawned a television series based on it for the fall season of 1980-81. Though the film was mostly shot around Indiana University and Bloomington, the 1980 ABC television series starring Shaun Cassidy was shot in Athens/Clarke County and at the University of Georgia. The local quarries and the traditional college campus of U.G.A. made it the perfect location with better weather and there was no discernible difference in how the film and show appeared on screen.

Breaking Away the ABC television show 1980.

 

Breaking Away the ABC television show 1980. Filmed in Athens.

Despite the star power of Shaun Cassidy, known at the time for his role on The Hardy Boys and his singing career, the show was short-lived and was canceled after only eight one-hour episodes. While the film is still remembered and highly regarded, the magic of the movie did not translate into a successful television show and became a forgotten afterthought. The ratings were so low that the eighth episode was never aired by the network.

I watched the show when it aired, but I was only seven years old and all I remember is it being mentioned in my house that it was shot in Athens. That memory stuck with me as at the same time there was a big hit show on CBS that was set in Georgia and the first five episodes were filmed on location, that show was The Dukes of Hazzard. 

Today, people remark on the film and television industry in Georgia and how popular the state became over the last two decades, but it was actually in the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Burt Reynolds and then Governor Jimmy Carter that Hollywood started coming here for productions. Burt was a big believer in the state and filmed many movies here.

Shaun Cassidy on the cover of Dynamite Magazine Issue 77.

Part of the accompanying article in Dynamite Magazine promoting the Breaking Away television series.

Two shows in Georgia and two very different sets of boys, one was a group of townies finding their way as outsiders in a university town and the other was a pair of down home and uncomplicated outlaws outsmarting the bumbling law. Whatever was in the air in America in 1980 that was poisoning its mind, it chose the outlaw boys. It is likely blasphemous to many of my generation, but Breaking Away was the greater show and represented my home state better. I watched the Dukes for the first three seasons and as a young country boy at the time there was plenty of entertainment with the fast cars and stunts, but as a young gay boy too, Shaun Cassidy in short shorts and on a bicycle in Breaking Away was way more appealing. I had harbored a secret crush on Shaun since his time on The Hardy Boys.

Dominique Dunne in Breaking Away.

The show also featured Dominique Dunne in four episodes. She played the role of an Italian speaking university student who becomes intertwined with The Cutters. Her character had a more prominent part by the last episode and her acting had improved. On the night of November 4, 1982 and after her breakthrough role in the summer blockbuster Poltergeist, at the age of twenty-two, she was murdered. Her death was due to strangulation by an ex-boyfriend in the driveway of her West Hollywood home. She was the daughter of writer Dominick Dunne, sister of actor Griffin Dunne and the niece of writer Joan Didion.

The very end of the seventies and the early eighties were a pivotal time along the American roadside in how we got to where we are in 2026. It was if we straddled a double yellow line and were faced not with which direction to go, but on what side to step. There is a valuable lesson that needs to be learned, I am not red nor blue and neither are you.

Carlton, Georgia. Photo by me, September 2026.

 

We stopped in Carlton and browsed in the detritus of times of gone. It is a place you can in the middle of a Sunday afternoon straddle the double yellow line and ponder your direction.

Photo by me, September 2026.

 

I like coming here and it was the first time returning since last February.

 

The countdown cover of David Atlanta Magazine. Photo by me, September 2026.

Way out in Carlton, upstairs in one of those old buildings, ninety-five miles and on a good day an hour and forty minutes east of Atlanta, was this framed enlarged cover of David Atlanta Magazine. It was an odd find as David is a gay magazine as if that might not have been obvious from the half-naked man staring at his own crotch on the cover. It was the final issue from 1999 and that fluctuates in my mind from being two days ago to twenty-seven years ago. It was funny to see, but it was not something I could ever imagine wanting. The Barbie doll behind it was a nice pairing. I wonder if those items came out of the same house in Ansley and whatever happened to the queen who owned them? 

Dennis Christopher from Breaking Away. Photo by Andy Warhol and included in his book Andy Warhol's Exposures.

Perhaps, he is watching Breaking Away and pining after Dennis Christopher, who was rather cute in the seventies and was once an assistant to the legendary Halston before his big acting  break.

Piano rolls. Photo by me, September 2026.

 

Player piano rolls were stacked high on a shelf next to a yearbook from 1979. I was surprised to learn that QRS still manufactures piano rolls. Clarinet Polka must be exciting. Wringle Wrangle by Fess Parker was rather catchy. 

The jukebox from my last visit here when it was playing Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue was gone. Whatever played in the background from a stereo was from the seventies. Is it not funny that so many across generations love the music and movies of the seventies? I firmly believe that the seventies were the peak of American culture and freedom. You have to wonder why the country was so dissatisfied then with President Carter and made that fateful, impatient step that set up everything today. Are Americans capable of regret and have we lost the clarity of hindsight through the numbing haze of nostalgia?

Photo by me, September 2026

 

Photo by me, September 2026

 

Outside along the road and under that California quality light, the funky and the junky collection was piled. An old Bluebird bus rusted rested under an oak. The bus may have once served to ferry tubers and rafters on their way to the nearby shoals of the wild Broad River. That river is one of the few and last free-flowing rivers in the state. It was during the 1970s, when the country was becoming concerned about the natural environment, that the river was protected the same as how Jimmy Carter helped protect the Chattahoochee River.

Watson Mill covered bridge. Photo by me, September 2026.

A handful of miles away, two and a half if it matters, is the South Fork of the Broad River and surrounding it is Watson Mill State Park. We stopped in as we had last February to walk. It was a masterpiece of an early autumn day and people fished, picnicked, walked and practiced photography. All of us shared what we had in common, the steps of responsible governance made to preserve this scenic landscape the year I was born in 1973. The covered bridge built in 1885 was restored that year and you can still drive across it today.

Photo by me, September 2026.

Photo by me, September 2026.

Photo by me, September 2026.

The bridge is the oldest of Georgia's covered bridges and is the centerpiece of the park that covers over 1,100 aces of protected land across Madison and Oglethorpe counties for the enjoyment of campers, hikers and nature lovers. If America lacks the clarity of hindsight in modern times, at least we had the foresight in the seventies to do right in terms of preservation. Much of what we enjoy today in terms of historical places or nature came from the spirit of the seventies before the wrong step was made on the American roadside.

In the summer of 1979 and two days after Breaking Away was released in movie theaters around the United States, President Jimmy Carter entered the Oval Office and made a sobering speech live to the nation on the night of July 15^th.  He was behind in the election polls to Reagan, former President Ford and Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. His lead from the previous winter had faded.

Carter spoke for thirty minutes about the path of self indulgence, over consumption and how materialism was undermining the country's confidence. He said his speech was a warning and that the country needed to take the first steps toward true freedom. Carter balled his fist and said, “The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers.”

My grandfather, a Navy combat veteran and aeronautical worker, age fifty-six that night and one year older than Carter, would have sat on his large plaid sofa in the living room of his Victorian house in the country two houses from mine. He would have leaned forward, sipped coffee and watched his wood cabinet Zenith television in silence. By the time President Carter ended his speech by saying we needed to work together and that we cannot fail, my grandfather would have nodded in agreement.

That same summer, his mother, my great grandmother, would travel the American back roads to Georgia for a rare visit from Decatur County, Tennessee. I was six years old and waiting to start first grade that fall. It was the last childhood summer that I had true freedom before I understood what school meant. It was a time of eating fresh cut watermelon at our picnic table and avoiding being stung by the aggressive yellow jackets. The only memory I have of my great grandmother is of her standing in my front yard and saying how pretty and green our grass was that day under the hot sunshine. 

In 1976 Andy Warhol was hired by The New York Times to photograph then Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. He flew to Plains in southwest Georgia. Just consider Andy Warhol in Plains for a few moments. It was a different time, it really was. Photo from the book Andy Warhol's Exposures.

Fall came, the light would have been beautiful and I entered school. My great grandmother died that fall and I never saw her again after that day in my front yard, but that was also for the first time ever, I saw something I had not seen before. My father sat at our picnic table in a side yard under a tulip poplar outside my bedroom window, buried his head in his hands and cried. 

The 1970s were over and my grandfather supported President Jimmy Carter until the end. In the next election, the country chose easy answers. Carter misjudged the will and stomach of the American people. No President has been honest since. 

The false myth about Carter spread in the subsequent decades was that he was weak as if being President was a masculinity contest. The truth was that he had the strength and courage to be honest. No sitting President since from either side of the double yellow line has ever dared to do that again.

 

The early fall light in Georgia woods similar to the ones I grew up playing in. Photo by me, September 2026.

If only... 

Of Course, Warhol

 

This week I watched the first two episodes of the HBO docuseries Bring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult. I am eager to see how they conclude the series in the third episode and what is left out as plenty has been left out in the first two episodes which have focused a little too much on the former model John Hoyt, a.k.a. Hoyt Richards, and his perspective on the cult Eternal Values run by Frederick von Mierers, a.k.a. Freddy Meyers from Brooklyn.

Mierers was a social climbing fraud who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of forty-three in Manhattan. After plastic surgery and illness, he looked to have been much older like an orange candle that had been lit, allowed to melt for a time and blown out before becoming a puddle of wax. His cult combined aliens, healing gemstones, tanning beds, poor interior decorating choices, fraud, a god, astrology and sex, which all cults eventually devolve into, including Times Square hookers and dildos on Fifth Avenue. There was also a lake house on Lake Lure in the mountains of western North Carolina, which too, seemed to have been designed by unicorns on acid.

There is much poor taste and poor decision making on display in 1980s New York in this series than you would find in a small town gay bar in Kansas.

Frederick preyed on the gullible, young and allegedly intelligent people who graduated from Ivy League schools,  came from posh families and a few models of both sexes. They were preppy clones and undoubtedly each had copies of The Official Preppy Handbook from 1980 under their pillow. Frederick used the models and their connections to further recruit more members to worship his messages spread from piles of teal and pink throw pillows in the 1970s and 80s. The goal was money and power for himself, of course. And trips to Studio 54 too.

Given the time period, the social climbing, Manhattan and the connection to Studio 54, I said to myself that Andy Warhol must have been connected to Frederick von Mierers in some way. As much as a star fucker and as connected as Warhol was to anyone with money, glamour and some sleazy people too, he had to have known Frederick in some capacity. I grabbed my copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries and began to search.

My copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries. June 2026.

It did not take long.

Wednesday, May 9, 1979

The Du Point twins came in and Brigid told them that Freddy von Mierers had called and put out of the word that he was going to send the police after them if they didn't return his two sweaters. They turned bright red, and she told them not to come around anymore since they steal. Dropped Rupert (cab $4).

It is interesting that he referred to him as "Freddy" and not Frederick. Freddy was his real name. Warhol was not dumb and I wonder if he knew all or part of Freddy's less than aristocratic background from Brooklyn? It is also possible that Warhol was friendly and familiar enough with him to call him Freddy and not by the more proper Frederick. Freddy was also knowledgeable enough to check Warhol's Factory in his search for the Du Pont twins who were socially connected to Warhol.

That was the only mention in Andy's diaries. He loved to gossip in them and to find only one mention of Frederick von Mierers would suggest that he was not close to him or was around him briefly. Warhol as odd as he may have been was not one to join a cult, but he did get into healing crystals in the mid 1980s. He mentioned them several times and referred to them as “Harmonics.”

On Tuesday, December 18, 1984 there was this one funny entry:

Ran into one of those kids from Harvard in the sixties, one of Edie's friends, I can't remember his name. And I showed him my crystals and told him about crystal power and he was just standing there with his mouth open. He said he couldn't believe that someone as smart as me would start believing in crystals after I made it all through the sixties and everything and laughed at all the hippie stuff and that this is just the recycle of it. But really it's not the same, and you do have to be positive, not negative.

Warhol did a lot of rationalizing and had peculiar habits, but at least he was not a cult leader in the 1980s. 

Cult leader Frederick von Mierers on Hard Copy.

For more on the Eternal Values cult you can watch the original early 1990s Hard Copy tabloid show report which is partially used in the HBO docuseries. Back at the time, everyone considered Hard Copy, A Current Affair, Inside Edition and all those other syndicated afternoon tabloid shows to have low journalistic standards. In retrospect, they produced hard-hitting reporting when compared to what passes for news today at the local and network level. 

The March 1990 story on the cult in Vanity Fair.

And you can read the original Vanity Fair story, East Side Alien, from March 1990 that was the first to expose the cult.

Cee Farrow

 

The album cover of Red and Blue by Cee Farrow.

Listening to the 1983 synth-pop album Red and Blue by Cee Farrow I feel like I am sitting with a cosmopolitan or martini in one of my old Atlanta haunts, Red Chair a long, long time ago. Red Chair is ancient history and I faded out of the nightlife scene ten years ago this year. I had my fun, have no regrets and I am grateful for having my fun when bars and clubs were different.

Today, there does not seem to be a sleek, stylish, moody and masculine decorated gay bar (not a club) left in Atlanta that just plays music and pours drinks. A bar that is fashionably slick, not trendy, and it feels like you are wearing sunglasses indoors in the middle of a Human League or ABC music video.

Halo, in the basement of the Biltmore, fit that mood many years ago, but the music tended to be more ambient and trippy lounge (think Hotel Costes) which was cool too. Halo became something very different in its last years before it was finally put out of its misery. 

One of those blurry nights at WETbar. Photo by me, August 2006.

Oh, there was the sleek and long bulldozed for student housing WETbar too. I spent many a night making that short walk from 6^th and W. Peachtree to Spring and 8^th. We had it pretty good in gay Atlanta in the 2000s. Everything changes and they label it progress. Well...

Yeah, happy gay pride and all that this June 2026.

 

Cee Farrow.

Cee Farrow, real name Christian Kruzinski, was a Frankfurt born model who emigrated to Los Angeles in the early 80s and recorded one album. Red and Blue was a commercial flop, but the single Should I Love You? reached number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It did not help matters in terms of sales and promotion that the record label, Rocshire Records, was seized by the federal government in 1984 and shut down.

Commercial success is not an indicator of talent or lack thereof and I like the album for what it is and not what critics thought it should be. My favorite songs on the album are Touched, Wildlife Romance, Should I Love You?, Paint It Blue, Backwards, Lost and Memorized and Think of Me. These are all songs that fit within the context of being played in my favorite type of gay bar where one could sit alone, think and drink, mingle with friends or pick up a stranger on the way out the door.

With his music and modeling career over, Christian did what one does as a former singer and model if one wished to continue a glamorous lifestyle and became involved in the club scene. He was associated with The Apartment, Maxx and Arena in L.A. up until 1990. He released a final single in 1991 called Imagination and it too had no success.

Christian Kruzinski.

 

Cee Farrow, Christian Kruzinski, died in 1993 of an AIDS related illness. He was only thirty-six years old. He is one of the too many AIDS victims who should be remembered and celebrated this June.

Dispatch: Accent In My Pocket

Sometimes the world is so flat it feels like you could slip free of Earth's gravity and slide off. Early February on the road. Photo by me, 2026.

 

The tail end of January and the beginning of February was two weeks on the road, sometimes dirt roads, of the south. It was the winter thaw for the mind collecting new sights, sounds, scents, tastes and discarding the mental plaque of the previous year. I wore my accent when needed, gave nods of indifference to strange politics of strangers and found myself shooting the shit in the middle of the road with locals. I wandered for hours through another history museum, watched water flow and listened to the birds in the trees. There was lots of bad coffee in gas station travel cups too. Some of the experience might end up in a book or maybe in a blog post. I thought a lot about the death of an old best friend between the mile markers and the hash marks on the speedometer. I wanted one more stupid teenage argument with him for the fun of it. This is how life and death go as the inseparable pair that they are.

Columbus, Georgia. Photo by me, February 2026.

I came home to bulbs waking up from winter and sat behind my desk. It was time to get back into the rhythm of writing my next novel.  

Golly gee. Tell me about them lyrics son. You are one pontificating rascal, that's what you are.

Somewhere I was in a bookstore and noticed in the prominent displays by the door a stack of poetry books with the bedraggled face of the hammy actor Matthew McConaughey. He is the actor/renaissance man who straight guys of my generation have crushes on and secretly wish they were. As you can tell by the sepia toned cover photo Matthew is a man with deep thoughts with his half open shirt and is surely in the running for a Pulitzer. Poems & Prayers is exactly the book that the world does not need, but it is what it gets. Traditional publishing is on a mission to destroy and humiliate itself in the most shameless ways. I hope he publishes a cook book next. Maybe something called Corn & Coca-Cola.

I read this Atlantic piece on Rod Dreher. It was interesting as the writer attempted to portray Dreher as some noble romantic fighting to save the soul of Western culture from Budapest, but instead he seemed miserable in a fantasy world of his own making. I have only read a few pieces by him over the years, though I have known about him for a long time, and Dreher is a peculiar one. The slipping in of the line by the brilliant and highly regarded atheist Richard Dawkins about him being a “cultural christian”, which I am familiar with, is intellectually dishonest with the usage of “declared” as if it were some major proclamation from on high (it wasn't) and it is very troubling for the use of “ally” (it is laughable to suggest he is, since Dreher is anti-science) and there is zero context given. I remember Dawkins saying that remark either in a debate or interview and it was not a grand gesture as it was a reference to how he was raised during his childhood without a choice on the matter. I respect and agree with Dawkins more than I ever could with Dreher. The tone of the article seemed to be a weird attempt to launder the ideas of Dreher and position him for future shadowy political influence in the United States.

Most of Carlton, Georgia. All five of these storefronts are occupied by this one antique store. Photo by me, February 2026.

One day well east of Athens in Madison County near the Elbert County line we stopped in the tiny community of Carlton clinging to life next to the train tracks. It is the kind of place you have to pull off the main road and intentionally seek out or you would never have a reason to pass through. Few people do as evidenced by the population change from 1900 to 2020 that was a loss of fourteen people in one hundred and twenty years down to two hundred and sixty-three. I find it charming that communities like this have managed to survive safe from Atlanta's sprawl. I remember when places like this were the norm in North Georgia outside of metro Atlanta in the 1980s.

Photo by me, February 2026.

This is the kind of place you have to dig, maybe get a little dusty and you will be rewarded. Two buildings down to the left next to the post office is a local branch of the Hell's Angels. I suppose they will not bother you if you do not bother them.

Photo by me, February 2026.

You do not know the smile and warm feeling I had when this jukebox played Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle. I skipped by like the small child I was in 1977 when my mother would play this record on our living room stereo which was near the same size as this jukebox. 

Photo by me, February 2026.

A cat strolled through on its rounds as I flipped through a copy of the photo book Warhol and Friends.

Photo by me, February 2026.

It was digging paradise where prices are rough ideas. 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

Another day I attended a festival in downtown Athens and tried to shake loose a ghost. That old best friend of mine who recently died lived there in the early 1990s while he attended UGA. He went off to New York afterward to work in historic preservation. Athens of the '90s was a different place from the Athens of today, kind of like most of the state. It was one of the hot music scenes at the time like Seattle.

This is REM performing live in their hometown at the 40 Watt (pictured above) in 1992.

 

And so it goes... 

Me. February 2026.

on the road with an accent in my pocket chasing those sunny days.

The Half and The Whole

The 1980s. Photos by my mother.

 

He would have made fun of me for this with a sardonic grin slashing his face. The quip would have been witty and mostly meant in good fun. He would have said that I could do this better than I am. That is okay, I would have deserved it.
 

I would have called him a pretentious snob and he was sometimes. In a moment we would have argued about which Japanese car was the best. He always said it was Mazda, he had one of those before the Mustang. The Mustang that stomped me racing down Marietta Highway. I would have defended my Datsun Z, it was prettier, sleeker and it was mine. Teenage pride and stupidity in a double helix. We thought we knew it all and we knew nothing.

Saturday morning, I put the peanut butter jar in the kitchen sink instead of the pantry. I made coffee without water. It was that kind of shock that cracks up the icebergs of sleep and messes with the timeline of waking life. Who cares about a winter storm on the way or whether your socks match?

He went on to a great life and it is terrible for his family to lose him. His life and happiness were too short and that is not okay. What do you say? The longer you live, the shorter your time seems to become?

This feels like an epilogue at the end of a book and it sort of is. He was half the character of Elliot in my books. He was also a real whole person in my life and many others. 

The last time we spoke was too long ago, when he was in New York and it went poorly. Our problem was irreconcilable. I should have left the last memory of him at graduation on the football field, not that that was great either, when I turned and walked away after that conversation. That is okay too, it has to be. 

I cannot be selfish or possessive of an old friend. This is not about me. What thoughts I have are the equivalent of memories shared in the dim passages of a funeral home with neutral wallpaper. Have a seat on the imitation Victorian sofa next to the dusty fake flowers, it might comfort you. A man in a suit with a carnation pinned to his lapel will fetch you a paper cup of water. It was his life that was lost. I just picked up the echoes. It mattered, his life and death, it mattered a helluva lot. I could say more, but most of the important words have already been written and were hung in the warm air of a June night on a Paulding County football field. There are no regrets. I remember those stupid times, those great times. I remember him as the best friend I did not deserve, but he was lost long ago between the couch cushions of time. 

"Chris, don't be as maudlin as an NBC after-school special," he might have said while opening his trombone spit valve on my shoe. "Now, can I borrow a dollar for the concession stand?"

He died on a Wednesday. He was 53. That is not okay and that is the whole of it.

 

2025 Review: Preppies In The Snow

Naughty and nice are not mutually exclusive. Photo by me, Greensboro, Georgia.

More people I have known died in 2025. Is that too blunt or too obvious? It is not a mystery that the older I become, the more it happens and that is the logical and detached way to approach it. The longer life lasts the more it resembles a classic BMW in need of repairs beyond the routine maintenance, but the backfire of death is no less of a surprise each time it is heard. Preppies in the snow put their hands up to cover their ears and wait.

Too many people have died too young. Dear Generation X, what are you doing ?

I read the obituaries and tried to reconcile the adult to the kid I knew. I am often surprised to read the twists and turns of what people became. People do change, or maybe I never knew some of them that well past the superficial observations in a red brick school in a country town. A boy pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, twirled his number two pencil and did multiplication on his fingers. A teenage girl leaned back in a rocking chair and laughed too hard on the wrong beat as she tried to grasp the conversation of adults. What did we learn?

Funerals are the wrinkles on the face of a life. Gray hairs in the mirror are the honest rebels stealing from the self-image that mistakenly thinks you could still pass for thirty. Forty? Not even. Whatever the kids are listening to and whatever slang they are inventing is whatever the kids are listening to and saying. Translators are not made for that duty. You still think 2006 was a week ago as you tune into 99X or River 97 and drum your fingers on the steering wheel to Everytime You Go Away by Paul Young. You squint at the red light that is poorly timed and notice that the restaurant that was there on the corner your entire life is now a vape shop and tattoo parlor serving burritos without a permit and when did they build that Dollar General? Only yesterday your child was six and you were late for soccer practice.

The end of a year always makes us consider time and where it went. The mind has difficulty with time's salamander slick and slippery nature.

 

Andrew McCarthy in 1987's Mannequin.

Damn the changes, damn the politics, damn the numbing disease of cheap nostalgia and damn it all to hell, but I am thankful that my waist size is still a thirty. Now the light is green, the radio plays Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us and you want to believe it. You are convinced. Traffic flows like it did before millions moved here to ruin paradise and Andrew McCarthy sure was pretty in Mannequin. You strain your voice singing, “We can build this dream together.” You swear you did not once tell that minor piece of trivia in a Thomas Drive bar in Panama City that the lead singer, Mickey Thomas, was from Cairo, Georgia. That is Cairo pronounced like the syrup and not the city in Egypt.

My 2025 was like sitting down to eat at a favorite restaurant, eating my favorite foods and leaving full but not satisfied. I do not know what it was about this year, but it lacked novelty. There were new sights, sounds, places and aches in the joints. I was not bored; that seems to be a condition I never experience, but perhaps I became immune to the news, the messed-up weather, confused flowers and the next batch of woods toppled for luxury apartments over a Panda Express. Gas was cheaper and I spent an hour looking for the ear hair trimmer. The year was over before I knew it.

At fifty-two, I noticed my age like a phone notification that I could not swipe away. I felt a little slower, less nimble and it took me longer to recharge. It now took me two cups of coffee and a handful of Costco supplements before my brain began to percolate in my skull. Silence for the first hour of a day was a requirement or I became the grumpy old man who I never wanted to imitate.

Home Away From Home in Fort Lauderdale. Photo by me.

The secret “home away from home” in Fort Lauderdale was sold this year. It was a unique and special place for sixteen years. I will miss talking to the lizards on the patio, curious stray cats and morning coffee walks to Sebastian Street Beach. I doubt we will find another place like it.

Novel 4 (it really does have a title) came along nicely from January to December. It is something new, something current and has nothing to do with me. There are always so many miles in my year, on foot and by car and do not think that has not been an influence on me. Novel 4 is the first book I did not begin writing in Fort Lauderdale. I had a notebook of ripe ideas and then sentences formed in my head on a cold day on the square in Gainesville in January with a stomach full of barbecue. The characters Adam, Hastings and Evan were born without the need for painkillers.

Weirdest moment:

Standing on the shady side of a street in Warner Robins outside a restaurant. That middle Georgia heat and humidity had stolen the birdsong and my patience. A car creeped up to me and with the sun reflected on the windows and I could not see inside. A scratchy voice called, “Hey white boy.” I looked without looking and gripped my phone a little tighter. The voice called out again, “Hey white boy,” and again I ignored it. My eyes moved behind my sunglasses and I widened my stance. I was not a boy except for maybe in the way some southerners mean it. Three more times the voice called with the same words. Trouble and I was no fool. The car went into reverse and backed away with the possible intention of hiding the tag.

Favorite moment:

Watching the fog in Normaltown in February. Yes, it is more than just a lyric in the B52's Deadbeat Club. 2025 was still goo, shapeless, untethered and iridescent. I could have been in any moment in my life when winter was spooling off into a gray pile of yarn. Maybe I was drifting in the early 90s with a hole in the sleeve of my sweater and wearing a barn jacket and boots. There was a whiff of Polo from the green bottle in the air. A water tower was the appearing and disappearing UFO down the street. I was happy.

Worst moment:
Sitting in a Johns Creek Hospital room and waiting with my grip on the arms of a plastic chair. Helplessness bred in hospitals is the worst.

Best Festival:

Flannery O'Connor's grave. Photo by me, October 2025. 

I went to too many. It was a tie between Athfest and that one down in Milledgeville where I hunted down the grave of Flannery O'Connor. Death was on my mind at every turn this year or so it seemed.

My favorite movie:

Eddington. It satirized the times better than any other movie that tried. It was smart and the only movie that made me laugh out loud.

My favorite new to me music:

The White Birch album by Codeine. It may have come out in 1994, but I had not listened to it until this year. I found it by way of Slint and Shipping News.

 

Cheap nostalgia at $20. My actual Bon Jovi ticket from 1989.

There is no singular defining moment to a year, the same as there is no precise moment that defines a life. To follow a path in the woods, return a smile, accept an invitation, or jump from a window and roll to the ground, life equalizes the regrets and the joys. News readers, nervous funeral orators, biographers, politicians, historians, TikTok influencers and novelists will lie to you. Maybe, if I am going to lie, then it was the Bon Jovi concert at Lakewood in 1989 when I held a flickering lighter in the air like a torch held in my sixteen-year-old hand to I'll Be There For You, but I am drowsy from the decades of remembering those tight jeans and how he was not. A previous lesson learned and only reinforced. All of life goes into the dryer the same as all of it went into the washer. Moments are agitated, churned and rinsed in the same spins until it is a soup of consciousness. They lived, they died and some of it was good, better than it should have been and what more can anyone want besides more time?

What do you do with a used-up and expired year? Nothing really. You go to bed, wake up and open the next year. The Christmas tree comes down slower than it went up and goes back into the attic. The mind and the hand learn to write a different number. In a year, the preppies in the snow will come inside and gather around the fireplace again cradling whatever is the trendy drink.

 

Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, September 2025.

2025 is the sunset on the hood of a car speeding faster than it used to; you cannot have it again. 2026 is a missed call from an unknown number.

Jump scare. Yours truly. I keep Rabbit Tobacco Field dim to avoid scaring myself. Mood lighting is your friend. December 2025.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and have the best 2026 that you can.

And finally it is Preppies In The Snow. Ralph Lauren and Vidal Sassoon would be proud. Last Christmas by WHAM!

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Addendum 

All dressed in black, he won't be coming back
Save your tears, you've got years and years
The pains of seventeen's
Unreal they're only dreams...

As I was putting this post to bed and proofreading I learned Chris Rea had died. He was not a household name, but there are not many of them in the days of niche entertainment and the absence of a shared cultural reality. If you are a Gen X kid/fortunate 70s child you would have heard Fool If You Think It's Over in the summer of 1978 on Top 40 Radio. I first heard it on Atlanta's Z-93 in my mother's Camaro and sliding around on the cold leather backseat of my father's Cadillac through the eighties on B98.5. We had a copy of it in our music collection. I filed the song away as a meaningful one of my childhood. I loved the song then and still do.

When I was writing Dweller On The Boundary it was one of the primary songs I used to manipulate myself into the emotional headspace needed to go there. My books always have a soundtrack. I listened to it on repeat along with Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes (for the worst memories), Bread's If, Boz Scaggs' We're All Alone (probably one of the songs for my funeral - just sayin'), The Greatest Love of All by George Benson (the best version and it will make you cry), Sailing by Christopher Cross, King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger from The Police, Steal Away by Robbie Dupree, Supertramp's The Logical Song, Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind and others before writing and during breaks. I abused the hell out of myself to write that book.

Thank you for the music and memories. Chris Rea was 74.