John Prine, you wrote my life - day 2

Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me.  I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."

In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).

I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences.  These are mine.

John Prine, You Wrote My Life

a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),

so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises

Chapter 2 A Good Time© 

---Sweet Revenge

And you know that I could have me a million more friends
And all I'd have to lose is my point of view
But I had no idea what a good time would cost
Till last night when I sat and talked with you

"Hey Meems! You're here! I didn't know if you'd make it in. I told Malone to slow down when we came across the bridge this morning so I could look to see if your socks were in the water."

Frances never would let my depression be a serious subject. I suppose she fought her own too desperately to allow anyone else to remind her. "You've got to toughen up, girl," she always said. And she did her best to be an example.

Picture a petite thirty-something woman standing on barbie doll high-heeled slippers, with long unnaturally permed and bleached hair apparently trapped in an electrical storm, mascara-ed eyelashes, and waving a benson & hedges ultrathin in a short cigarette holder, and you have Frances. She was simply marvelous. One could only marvel. In her flip-flopping barbie doll heels, worn with dress or slacks, she stood all of 5'2". And she was a storm brewing, or raging, or spent...but always a storm.

We worked together in a wild San Francisco law office. I lived on Fisherman's Wharf, and Frances lived across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County.

One day Frances came to work and announced she'd changed her name legally. I wondered who she preferred to be other than Frances, and she replied, "Hell, no. I changed my last name - to Flasshe." Well, it surely did fit. Ms. Flasshe carried with her a carpet bag full of 'necessities', because she rarely went home. Straight from the office to the bar. And from there to who knows where - home with some young guy if he had a body-builder's physique. She never knew where she was going, but she always knew where she'd been. That bag of hers also held a collection of all the matchbooks from all the bars she ever visited. And one time, she even had mementos from a night aboard a Coast Guard cutter in the harbor for the weekend.

Man, she was tough. One day a court clerk called from downtown where Frances' boss was trying a case. She claims the clerk said, "You better get down here, Loofbourrow's trying to hang himself." I don't imagine that's what really transpired, but when he got back to the office, all hell broke loose. Something had been screwed up somewhere, and he was ranting and pacing.

"We could lose our license for this!" he shouted in Frances' face. And drawing her 5'2" presence up closer to his own face, with complete calm, she said, "Not me. They've already taken every license I ever had."

So for a period of time, I was Frances' driver. And more often than not, my adventures turned out to be hollow, rotten, and depressing. I imagine hers were, too, but she just looked at them differently. That's the trick, I suppose...how you view it.

Frances was tough, all right. But inside her was a heart of gold. Last time I saw her, she'd bought her own little house in the East Bay. She had taken in her brother, who needed a place, and an assortment of birds that she treated like babies. One was a little guy she rescued from a breeder who was going to kill it, because it was born without toes on one foot and had a gimpy wing. She just let him roam free in the house - he didn't fly around much, and he hobbled everywhere he went....but he sang real nice.