Who needs a DeLorean with a flux capacitor?

I bought a new book today. That in itself is not a revelation. The fact that I am reading a book is not, in itself, a revelation. In fact, the actual book is not now and never was a revelation. Whew...now that I got that out of the way! But it is a step forward for me. More accurately, a step back in time for me.

The book is titled, Run with the Hunted, by Charles Bukowski. It's kind of a collection of the best of Bukowski's autobiographical stories, novels, and poems presented somewhat chronologically. At any rate, that is what I am reading now...having found it for $7.99 in the bargain rack outside of our local Borders stores, I couldn't resist since Borders does not have Ham on Rye in stock and I will have to find that used on Amazon.com. It's new, but it appears to have been thumbed through many times and has a lot of dust on it from sitting outside in the bargain rack. Moving on...

So why is it a step back in time for me? Well, Bukowski was a prototypical starving artist/Beat Generation/alcoholic/writer/mailman in the 50's and 60's. His hundreds of poems, then thirty plus books weren't published *for money* until the 70's. The 60's saw his work published in underground newspapers and other less-than-mainstream venues. To this day, you may not find too many people our age (50+) who even know the name Charles Bukowski. Or, maybe they just don't want to admit it. Me personally? I didn't know who he was until, 1) There's a line from the movie Sideways that mentions his name and a quote from, him, and, 2) I watched a documentary on him recently at 3:30 in the morning when I couldn't sleep. End of that story...for now.

My high school reunion is one week from this Saturday. Not only am I hooking up with my two best friends from that era, I may come face-to-face with folks who have, up to this point, only been images in a 40 year old high school year book.

Unfortunately, in a graduating class of over 940 kids, we only have about 50 or so coming. So what? That's O.K. I'm still looking forward to the whole thing. We will participate in a tour of the school earlier in the day, presided over by the school historian. And, we (my best friend and I) will host a "Meet and Greet" thing in the afternoon at our motel, across the street from the reunion site. Sounds like a blast from the past to me!

Details and photos forthcoming. Unless, of course, I had too much fun and ended up in the Calabasas Sheriff's jail.