Jay Wrote

  Memorial for David Walker Wilkinson David had the run of a neighborhood that included woods up behind Proctor high school,  past the playing fields and hill side that served as bleachers for baseball games.  The woods passed the skating rink, log cabin warming house, rope tow and a road closed off in winter for a quarter mile of sledding.   A stream suited to children’s hydraulic experiments came down the same slope.   Southward the woods ran up towards the swimming pool, a tree-ringed, engineered pool with cat tails, beach, docks, diving boards,  strings of men’s and women’s changing cubes.   Further east, the rutted trails ran up East Mountain, somewhere along which hid the town reservoir he’d encountered on a hike with our dad.   David wasn’t given a boundary for play and adventures, solo or in a gang of brothers, in and up through those woods. Out the back yard though and up the hill we encountered the steep edge of Otter Creek’s m...

  Our brother, David Walker Wilkinson, died this week at his home, Brownway Residence in Enosburg Falls, Vt.  David was 66 years old and was receiving hospice care for the last several months. David’s life was hard.  He was born with developmental troubles, later in life identified as cerebral palsy.  CP caused his death.  Our mom, Betty, and dad, Jim, worked with him so that he could speak, even though muscles in his mouth were not working right. He received special education help and graduated from Spaulding High School in Barre.  With the assistance of vocational specialists David got a job cutting meat  in Norwich University’s kitchen and did pretty well there for a few years, eventually doing his work without a job coach.  He lived at home and bought a VW bug to commute to and from work. He enjoyed fishing on the Otter Creek in Proctor, though we seldom caught anything.  Running about in the woods and playing in the streams in Proctor an...

Fontaines DC at 1st Av the other night. They were supposed to be here in fall 2019 but canceled due to a nomination for best new band or album in Britain.  Other successes since then including the featured quote in my end of the year sum up for 2020.   The song I quoted is: A Hero's Death with the refrain "Life ain't always empty."  The band is a hard rock outfit from Dublin with social commentary, punkish and poetic tendencies. Clash. U2. Patti Smith. Sex Pistols.  They played the best songs from their 1st 2 albums and what I assume are songs from their brand new album. I think the earliest are the best. Boys in a Better Land, Hurricane Laughter, Television Screens, A Hero's Death, I Don't Belon g.  The show was notable for the lack of band-to-crowd communication. Lead singer Grian Chatten's voice gave out 10 days ago and so Fontaines DC cancelled some shows. Chatten understandably saved it for the music. He prowled the stage between ...

I expect that “Life Ain’t Always Empty”, my 2020 report’s utter failure to update people on COVID, politics and such will be forgiven. As will, I hope, this year’s failure to entirely avoid those topics. Plus forgiveness for the travelogue feel of this report. Karen and I drive up to the Duluth area every month or two to see Molly, Mara, Courtney and Matthew and the dogs. They are in the scrub forest about 20 minutes out of the city. We are charmed and bowled over by the girls every time we see them. Matthew is now doing security system installation work and Courtney is helping families with challenged kids. She has a much harder job.  We stopped for gas and coffee near the Black Bear Casino south of Duluth on the way home this summer. A big white Dodge Ram pickup truck parked next to the entrance of the store. Running. No-one inside. MN license plate was white and first two letters on it were “WW”. These are issued to drivers with DWI convictions. A bumpe...

 My last paid job was working as an election judge for the spring 2020 primary election. It was thirteen hours of civic service and there was no trouble. When was my first job? Was there any trouble? How about the next one? I’m referring to “trouble-trouble”, not John Lewis’s “good trouble” - maybe another essay to be written.    Misaligned.   My first paid work was mowing the family lawn in Proctor, Vermont, probably when I was 9 or 10 years old. The mower was a manual, boy-powered push mower with two wheels at the end of a reel holding four curved, spiraling blades that sliced grass off against a metal piece mounted at the bottom rear of the mower. A wooden roller followed behind the cutting platform, probably to keep the mower balanced and rolling forward or back. The handle shaft was well-patinated wood with a T handle at the top. It seemed old at the time. It was surely manufactured but it was easy imagining a blacksmith banging away at iron to ma...