life in the midwest He is washing dishes in a big diner kitchen and every so often screams, as if he is drowning. The other workers look on with concerned expressions, shaking their heads. The dishes keep piling up. Now they are all over the place in no order, dirty and clean mixed together, on the floor even: and our boy, up to his elbows in slime, is frankly raving. He starts throwing things. Three or four big guys, co-workers, rush to restrain him. With a sudden superhuman strength he breaks away, out the back door, across a snow-covered field toward the highway, still wailing. A car stops: it is a woman with a small, yapping dog. Our boy, covered with muck, stands in the cold in his shirtsleeves. When the woman asks him what he is doing out in the cold, he smiles and says, "Stinking." Once in the car he starts to cut his hair, the dog still yapping. He does this because it is dirty. He cuts it close to his head, whereas before it was quite long. When the woman sees hair falling on her upholstery she loses her composure, stops the car and tells him to get out, the dog's tone one of furious condemnation. Back in the cold on the roadside, half his head shorn, the other still long: the next car to stop for him is an oily, cheap-suited minister with a well-thumbed Bible.
	location: Bowling Green, Ohio date: Winter 1992–1993 average rating: 6.00 (1 vote) your rating (0-10):