From what I recall the last time I was here in Trenton, New Jersey, the skies are normally pleasant this time of year.

    Bear with me as I try and recall those quite remarkable days. I beg forgiveness from my listeners; if at any time it seems I have lost my reason and have wandered into uncharted lands, well it comes with the territory.

    I suppose after a lifetime of misgivings and tortured sentiments, a fella finds recalling his fondest moments harder than the joy of his own birth, a vanity affair that appears briefly before leaving the land of the living-or so I am told anyway.

  Now that I have reached the unforgiving age of 72, it's not hard to recollect the amount of dust that has settled on my life, one I wouldn't trade in for a trolley token, even if I could buy a ride through happiness. After all, what is a fair price to pay for being who you are and what you have become? Kind of a defeatist attitude on my part, but all things considered, there is a lot to be said about nothing, Well let me begin.

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   I had a hard time keeping my composure and poise. As I glared starry eyed at the storm clouds moving in over the city early that morning, I could tell by the darkening brew Trenton was in for it. The Gods where going to put on one heck of a show, but not as good as the one I had in mind-or out of mind, depending who's doing the telling.

   I could see the old long bed model T with what use to be an ice wagon welded on the dilapidated frame, long before its occupants could see me. The old rickety contraption thrashed its way along the roadway, that had become nothing more than a hog holler from the deluge forcing its way across the Delaware.

  For the first time that day I had a little real peace of mind, watching that manufactured holding pen for drunks and thieves wallow towards my lamppost. A flat metal cold tomb rattling and rusting its way off the chaise, a real honest to goodness paddy wagon so-called by the Bobby-boys, a Londoner’s nickname for those dully sworn rubber hosed authoritarians of rehabilitation.

  Quite the spectacle, watching it dodder from side to side making its way through the pouring rain and whipping wind. I would have spent a month of Sundays in a nickelodeon watching this sight over and over again.

  I kept a watchful eye on that perplexing means of transportation as it headed down the mud-rutted road, its wire rim tubes bouncing, tossing the two Bobby-boys around the cab like heads of cabbage in a German shooting gallery. Their navy blue Billy-boy jackets with brass buttons made for quite the show, as lightening streaked across the sky, revealing more of the two then they understood was possible, from another’s man’s perspective that is.

   The elder of the pair held his tattered visor cap in place with one hand. His free appendage was flopping around like an inebriated conductor, fruitlessly trying to point out directions to a blind violinist, in this case the younger Bobby boy.

   The younger one, more worried about losing the battle between the paddy wagon and nature, tried everything he could to keep the truck from sliding off the once hard packed road, now a quagmire from the anger of the gods and poor management. It was a remarkable scene; slowly they made their way to where I was hugging my gas lamp post starring out and up at the rain.

    They say everyone’s got a breaking point; I had reached mine, after thirteen months of dodging the grim reaper across what use to be called France, from 1917 to1918, and before that working quite unnoticed for Heir Wilhelm, bugging around Serbia for the devil in an Austrian top hat.

   For what: to create a better world. Impossible! A world I never would understand even if I could. I did succeed in helping define the nature of man as totally unacceptable for either man or beast.

   However, I am nearly certain the animal kingdom already reached that conclusion long before I thought about giving up on the world. I just hope history is kinder to me than I was to her. Well, let me fade back to when my life began to take a turn for the worse.

   My two Keystone cops are moving in for the kill, not as jerky as an old film reel but just as unsure never the less. Let me continue to paint the sky with yesterday’s blessings while they make their way a bit closer to my lamppost.