page 42
Wednesday august 18, 1982
daily nebraskan
& Jolo
mf Ralph Lauren
r
...personal classics with the spirit of today's
lifestyle. For him: hooded poplin jacket
$62.50, plaid sportshirt $52.50, jeans
$42.50, polo shirts solids $31, stripes
$36.50... from one of the Midwest's largest
men's and women's collections.
I V r.Jl
UDOlaj e
HODGDDQ
WtSTKOADS. OMAHA. THl A1KIUM. (13th iN)t GATfWA. IINCOIN
Now's the summer of their discontent
Nobody knows the wino's name. Wc call him Bumpy,
in honor of his misshapen noggin. On any day, Humpy is
around, rummaging for more rubbish to wire to tlic
David Wood
clattering bike lie takes on his tours of the neighborhood
garbage sites.
Bumpy is crazy, though, and couldn't possibly be as
gloomy as the hunched figure I spied shambling through
the weeds toward the dumpstcr. When I recognized tlic
green welding glasses and natty plaid shorts, there was no
mistaking the bum was my old buddy Duncan Drumm.
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1
"World Famous"
44 . . . best damn burger in Nebraska!"
321 S. 9TH ST., LINCOLN, NEB.
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k. A r
6-iO pm
HALF POUND
ATT niV
raw I
2
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24 HOUR
WEDDIHGS
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9
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Wb OJ
27 d
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"Hey, fella. How summer treating you?"
liven an everyday kind of howdy can be a gaffe when
you say hey to the wrong fella, It is like the supreme
idiocy, for example, of saying "How arc you?" to some
body obviously ready to put a pistol in his mouth and
take off the back of his skull.
Drumm's blank face was worth a thousand words. "It
is the worst summer of my life," he said.
"Everyone's, I think. No money?"
"No money."
Once upon a time, my college chums used to return
from their summers away with thrilling talcs of money
come, money gone, adventures had. Now, all the reports
are tlic same - "No money," and "Well, I drank a lot of
beer."
My friends and I incessantly mutter, "It is the worst
summer of my life," as we putter between one another's
homes. Comparing our Plasma Center wounds, our "red
badges of poverty," is a main pastime. Also, watching
any TV show is always hot. Days arc long when phoning
Job Service and reading the want ads arc our only jobs.
The only good thing to come of it is a terrific tan.
No, Mr. Reagan, we aren't poor by choice. We grovel at
your heels, eager to suffer any degradation for a buck, a
burrito, a cigarette. You love good anecdotes from South
Succotash, Mr. President, so jot these on your index cards.
Val Paraiso, a former co-worker of mine, back in the
days of jobs, got work this summer - two hours a day at
the zoo, hauling feces and rotted meat. But, one evening,
police collared him by the bald eagle's cage, where he was
picking up the tails left from the white rats that the bird is
fed. Paraiso was tossed in the slammer for inability to pay
delinquent parking fines. The zoo wouldn't post bail,
being in a snit over the animal tranquilizers Paraiso had
stolen and sold to make ends meet.
Tracy Lines landed the best job and now is the most
upwardly mobile of the bunch. She is permanent part
time at McDonald's.
Anne Archy snagged a food job with a carnival. But she
had to forfeit her earnings for leaving the show - that is,
getting fired - in midseason after she developed a rare and
severe skin allergy to a dye in cotton candy. She hitch
hiked back from Saskatoon and is in Lincoln now, soaking
in salves, wrapped in plastic and accumulating bills.
I am unclear what happened to Nash Rambler. Last I
saw him, he was in his Zen and bad-check writing phase.
But I ran into his shrink, Dr. Coddle, one day by the city
county placement boards. His job, by the way, was cut
from the university budget. Anyway, he told me Rambler
had bought a snappy blazer, two ties and some shiney
shoes, burned the rest of nis checks and moved to Omaha.
Went Thathaway swears he saw Rambler scooting about
the back offices of a bank there.
At the time, Thathaway had a scam going based on his
theory that, if he opened a network of accounts in several
cities, he could float checks over all of them for money
that was in none of them. The flaw was that when a check
was early, deflating the account, soon three, 10, 40
checks were bouncing wantonly through the many banks.
That was exactly what happened. Miss Happ evicted
him from her bomb shelter, and Thathaway moved in
with me in the abandoned school bus near Salt Creek
where I have squatter's rights.
Drumm grimly sat in the shadow of the dumpster. He
had trudged miles through the cruel heat with the
apparent reason of cadging cigarettes. We huffed the
putrid menthol ultra-lights I bought two-for-one at the
7-Eleven and unavoidably talked of hard times, like a pot
and kettle discussing the finer hues of black.
He told me Duncan's Famous Relaxation Spa had
scored a few monied hypochondriacs. It was a going con
cern until it got busted for its fraudulent use of tax
exempt religious status. Drumm already had several resi
dual cases pending from his previous enterprises - suits
concerning We-Park-It's predatory business practices,
illegal kickback and selling to minors charges from his
days as 24-Hour-Delivery, plus a paternity rap from his
Dial-A-Party venture.
He always had been the prince of the paupers. "So I'm
depressed. I don't let it bring me down," he used to say.
To see him at last beaten is the surest sign I have seen yet
of our nation's economic calamity.
We numbly watched the sun sink into the humid haze
and awaited the swarms of insects. Bumpy, our bum,
showed up, wearing a cap whose ear flaps pointed
outward like cockeyed wings. He scavenged the two TV
dinner tins I had discarded into the weeds. For Bumpy, an
avid collector of TV-dinner and pie tins, it was a mother
lode that had him fairly skipping back to his armored
bike. I think both Drumm and I felt a tinge of ehvy.
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