by Ann Bogle
F.B.I. is not included in agencies served by the Freedom of Information Act, as I noticed in visiting the F.O.I.A. web site. I considered investing in obtaining my own F.B.I record that Girls Write Now reported after my fingerprinting in their New York office on 8th Avenue as "inconclusive." I had successfully raised over $300 on Facebook for Girls Write Now, and as the fiancée of a wealthy poet in New York, I wanted to work for Girls Write Now twenty hours a week for free. As these things tend to go, Experian and Fulbright (where I never applied) may know more than I do about "me." I know only what I did! I know what I was captured as having done and only in my hometown of Minnetonka. I was one drink over the legal limit (approximated as number of drinks without an ability to self-test equal to that of the police's detection equipment) thrice in Minnetonka, 1977, 1997, 2002. Once, in Houston, the police asked for my license after my beau and I had delivered $20 cash to his dementia-ridden and nursing home-bound aunt's backdoor, where Michael Slim Semora - The one man Texas Band's cousin Davy still lived. The cash was for Davy's insulin. Davy was nearly blind. He did drive. He collected S.S.I. and perhaps Medicaid that didn't cover insulin, necessitating that his grandmother's sister, Esther, pay for it out of her own pocket, among other expenses pledged to be repaid by an elderly hearings court in Houston, who had appointed a guardian ad litem for Esther's sister, Helen, to care for Helen's estate. The guardian then in likelihood absconded with Helen's $60K in assets. I said later "for a boob job" and imagined her, a public lawyer, wandering Arizona on foot unable to hide a Playboy-Mansion style rack, an idea we let arrive after we had delivered to the guardian my letter accounting for Esther's receipts for Helen totaling near $10K. I wrote to the guardian in my highest English, thinking as I did very highly of the state of Texas. That had perhaps stunned the lawyer to leave town the next day, as it was reported to us she had. Davy. Davy was young and nearly blind from juvenile-onset diabetes. A neighborhood car shop paid him $2 an hour to work full time. Perhaps that kept him under the maximum earning limit but also, I said as we ate our steaks after our thirty-minute legal detention without charge—Michael's and another of his cousin's (returned as a surfer from California) in a cop car while I sat wrapped in my beaver collar and merino wool coat in Michael's truck—let us say that Davy's earning $2 an hour (Davy is an American-born disabled worker) ought to be honored in fairness. Let us as American-born Americans aim to achieve parity with undocumented Mexicans! One can always ask, and ask is what I do.
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A sampling of my prose on Facebook. Please visit, and if you cannot visit yourself, interest a spy to do it for you.
*, Ann. I read this earlier on Facebook and again here. A fine story. Well-written.
Nicely paced Kerouacesque writing mixing history, factoids, autobiography and the macabre. HIts on all cylinders. *
Kerouacesque is not a bad description. What I like is the combination of density and fluid pace. It looks heavy but reads light. I like this: '.. an idea we let arrive ..'
I love your writing, Ann!
*I read this a couple of times and may well read it again. Wonderful way you have with funny+terribly sad.