Page 73 - MN

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There's a Swedish pro here name Ken Nillson and he's on a big kick of playing golf rather than playing golf swing. He thinks most people are wasting time on the range trying to develop a pretty swing when they should be on the course learning to score. I'm sure he's got a point, but then I think of range rats like Ben Hogan and Lee Travino and go back to hitting balls. I think the biggest difference between pros and amateurs is the fact that the pros make better contact with the ball. Amateurs are hitting it fat or thin and there's no way you can be consistent doing that.
I love hitting balls.
I like playing golf too, but it's expensive and you have to socialize. For a loner like me, the range is a perfect place to be. I know, it's laughable. An 80- year-old trying to get better at golf. But it beats sitting in bars.
I spent a awhile at the range and Jintana and her mom still weren't done so I drove over to get coffee. In the car I listened to a Jeffery Deaver mystery, "Garden of Beasts". It takes place in Nazi Germany and again I'm amazed how an intelligent country can slip into fascism. I listen to books because music doesn't appeal to me any more. Maybe I was around it too much.
I drove back to the hospital and picked up Jintana and her mom and then we stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant on the Canal Road. They had a couple of dishes that would've set my tongue on fire, and I had prawn fried rice and some fried pork with a really good sauce. Jintana and her mom talked while I read more sports news on my iPhone.
We got home and I parked down the street because workmen dug a six-foot deep ditch in front of our house and we couldn't get in the driveway. I assume it's a new sewer. We walked to the house, opened the electric gate, and went inside. I went upstairs to our room, put a yoga mat and pillow on the floor, and lay down on my back again. The driving had made it sore. I fell asleep.
I woke up later and did some writing about army life while Jintana did her ironing. I also got a nice surprise when my brother e-mailed me about a $600 royalty check I'd gotten for the Haircut Song. The checks go to Tim's address in Oregon and he deposits them for me. The Haircut Song? Well, when I was playing bars all over the northwest one of my major hassles was getting haircuts in strange towns. If you were a semi-hippie folksinger trying to get your hair trimmed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, it's a challenge. This was back in the sixties and seventies and long hair was not popular with barbers in those cowboy towns.
They wanted to chop it all off. I dealt with it for years and finally thought the hell with it, I'll write a song. It's about a poor bastard getting a haircut in Butte, Montana, then in San Francisco, and then in L.A. It was filled with jokes about redneck barbers, gay barbers and punk rock barbers and I used it as a closer in my shows.