mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | August 7th, 2009
Random Obsessions For The Daily News Writer
This has really been affecting me lately: my obsession with the bizarre. I wake up, roll out of bed. I grab a history book, or find my laptop and click straight to a science magazine website as if the Holy Grail of the absurd is going to suddenly spring to life like an oddly glowing [...]
The Magical Pig Of Akron
I pulled up to the gas station in an old clunker, a 1978 Bonneville that was by far the worst car I ever had to drive or ride in. My girlfriend had that same stupid, sweet smile she had on her face as when we’d stolen some gas a few days before. We were in [...]
El Camino
I never had an El Camino, let alone a 1984 El Camino with a V8 engine. 350. And I still don’t. But my just graduated senior Landen gave me and a six-year-old punk girl named Jai Ann our first ride. Destination: McDonald’s.
It goes like this: We hit Gosford Road and fly like the Furies are [...]
The Dairyland Time Machine
She drove up to Larson’s Dairyland in a 1960s orange VW bug. The top buttons of her shirt were undone and she wore a flirtatious smile. She was around 35 years old. Most of us were 18 or under.
Old Norm Larson, who the dairy was named after, disappeared through a door into the milk bottling [...]
Boats Of Fathers
By Nick Belardes
Her father won a million dollars. He lived in a boat on the California coast that was always moored. I imagine the waves late at night smacking against the side of the hull, and him inside, alone, listening to seagulls that never completely went silent, and the distant motors of boats on midnight [...]
The Telephone
By Nick Belardes
I knew that phone’s trick. You had to put the coins in just right. It was just outside the university library hanging on a wall, smirking. She was struggling with putting change in its bent slot. This was a dilemma that I could solve.
“I can help,” I said. I had to use the [...]
Los Angeles Street Poet Revisited
By Nick Belardes
I was walking on an LA Street with Rich Ferguson: spoken word poet communicator. He once had the uncanny triumphantly sour achievement of having a gun pointed in his face three times. Well there he was in his big Johnny Depp straw hat and scarf, looking like he just taught yoga on Hollywood [...]
The Day My Writer’s Voice Was Born
By Nick Belardes
The first short story I ever wrote was the result of listening to an old wooden radio and reading a history book. The tale was more than 50 pages long and written out by hand in a notebook.
That was 1991. I later typed the fiction “The End of America” on an electronic typewriter. I don’t remember much of [...]
The Lost War, Again
By Nick Belardes
If there ever was a threat, or feeling of doom from the current American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, those feelings are long gone for many, even for some about to enlist.
In talking to a young man who recently wanted to join the U.S. armed forces, he didn’t mention much about war. He [...]
A Bohemian History Of Landfill Chairs
By Nick Belardes
Dr. John Arthur Maynard was throwing chairs wildly into a pit.
I didn’t see him at first. I was throwing my own junk from the back of a pick-up into the county landfill. But then I looked over and saw a chair go flying, crashing, and a puff of dirt lift as if blown [...]
