12/27/05 Tuesday
This is a rough morning. I am pretty slow, probably from the stress of this funeral. I worry about what people think of me, what they have heard. I wonder about my brother and what he tells others about me. I suppose it is a little paranoid. I hope I am a little sharper when we go to the funeral home. Always hate being in public when I am slow and it is worse when it’s family. Don’t want to look stupid.
Cherie is carrying my stress along with her own. This is hard for her and I feel bad putting her through this. She tried to cut my hair but I was not helpful at all. Worried with every uncertain cut she made and finally told her to quit. She is finishing hemming the pants now.
I am afraid, something I am not used to. I don’t do well in unfamiliar situations. I don’t know what this day will be like. We had problems going online at this hotel adding to the frustration.

It is 3:56 Texas time. We just got back from the funeral. It will take me a while to process everything so I can write about it. I was real real slow this morning. It got worse as we got ready to go out to the funeral home. I had to get out and drive doing what I can to distress. Didn’t work but I got the car washed.
Because I was so slow and some times testy this was hard on Cherie. She doesn’t handle pressure and time constraints much better than I do.

12/28/05 Wednesday
It is 8:00 in the morning here in Texas. I was going to do lots of writing last night but just decided to Zombie out with the television because there was so much bouncing around in this brain. Last night I told Cherie I was going to go drive around. In her protective mother hen way she asked “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” That would have required her to get back dressed. I told her no because I just wanted to look around this town I spent so many years in.
This turned out to be a real experience. I always thought my older memories were fairly intact but as I drove it was a kind of déjà vu. When Cherie and I got back together she would drive me around Toledo to help me recover memories. I would not recognize where we were until we would run across a building or location that would release a flood of memories. The memories are mostly there in my brain but my ability to access them is the problem. Now, as I drove around Big Spring I would get lost and not have a clue where I was just like in Toledo. I would keep on driving, randomly taking one street and another while I looked for anything familiar.
I ran across a school and thought it might be my old high school but it wasn’t. As I kept on wandering I found the high school. It didn’t look at all how I pictured it in my mind and the only way I knew it was Big Spring High was it said so on the building. I circled the building and then the memories came. Here was where I raised hell. I saw the ditch I would ride through on my motocross bike I would ride to school. One time I had some one hold a door open and rode the dirt bike down the hallway during class. Nothing like a loud dirt bike revving its motor as I slipped and slid on the waxed floor to get teachers and students running out of class. With my helmet on they couldn’t see who I was but the bike was distinctive with it’s racing numbers on the front and sides. They knew but couldn’t prove it was me. Of course I removed the numbers.
Then I looked for the park we would sneak out to so we could smoke pot. It took a while, I think because a road was changed or something but of course I don’t remember. I did find it and as I drove up a hill saw the place I had been pulled over and arrested with the ground up Alka Seltzer and aspirin I had been selling as cocaine. This put me in prison with a ten year sentence.
I kept driving and got lost again. Now I wandered into an industrial? section. Of course in Big Spring industrial is not at all like we have in Toledo with the exception of empty falling apart buildings. When Cherie and I were coming into town we saw lots of these and I was reminded of the words from a Simon and Garfunkel song “Nothing but the dead and dying in our little town”.
I thought I found the church Linda Hollingsworth said I had been baptized in. It looked familiar so I drove along, confident I had found it till I ran into another church that said Trinity Baptist. That’s the one. Linda had invited us to go there today for the evening service. We might do that because she said Ricky Adams went there and he was the friend I had been close to when I moved to Big Spring at 14. There is much he can tell me about that section of history in my life.
I got lost again so decided to go back to the hotel but didn’t have a clue which way to go. Again I just kept driving around waiting to see something familiar. As I drove down a three lane one way road I had what I suppose could be described as a revelation. Suddenly I recognized this road and was taken back to 1970. This was a path I took almost daily when I would go to the Wagon Wheel Drive In to meet with fellow partiers looking for something to do. The Wagon Wheel was where the “Long hairs” would hang out and the Sonic drive in was where the “Rednecks” (the cowboy type kids) would hang. On occasion one group or the other would pile into their vehicles and go to the other drive in to start a fight.
Knowing where I was I realized I was almost to the hotel so made it there. Walking in the room I was abuzz and talking non stop to Cherie about all this. I told her that I always thought the older memories were fairly intact but now realize how much is missing.
There is so much more I need to write but it will have to wait. Cherie and I make a good team because she helps me with these memory lapses. We had met Peggy Creech at the funeral. She was a long time friend of my mother and had kept up correspondence with her over the years. This morning I was going to call her because she had told us that she had many pictures Lee had given her and wanted to give them to us. I told Cherie we needed to see her and get the pictures so Cherie held up a bag saying “Honey, she already gave them to us. Here they are”. These are the little glitches that make things confusing for me. We tried to explain this to others before but it is hard to get across. Parts of my memory work and parts don’t and it always changes. There are always fragments that come up missing or show up.
Cherie is pacing and just standing patiently. I asked her what was wrong and she said she didn’t know what to do. I need to get out and do some things so maybe we will go take some pictures. I think we will go visit the Pinkerton’s in Stanton.

This is a shot of Stantons business district.