At long last documentation

[J.David Moriaty]

Mother broke her back last July while driving her car—front disc brake 
seized, wrenching the steering wheel and her T7 vertebra (that's the 
one between your shoulder blades) imploded like a crushed beer can.

After putting 5000 miles on my car in the next month commuting to Port 
Arthur, I moved her up here.

Cleaning out the Port Arthur house I discovered they had saved all 
personal letters—theirs, all the way back to the thirties—as well as 
the ones I wrote to them beginning in 1959, and the ones I brought back 
from college in a roach-infested box from the Ghetto, and the smashed 
archives from the bottoms of my motorcycle pack and Marine Corps sea 
bag.

Letters to parents leave much out to maintain civility;  letters from 
friends with their litanies of busts, lusts, fornications, 
infidelities, pregnancies real or imagined, desired or accidental and 
major and minor felonies often will not bear the light of publication 
even at this distance, but they could be useful in settling timeline 
disputes and jogging memories.

And I can't help but reflect that the Information Age has really 
dropped us into a black hole of history with its e-mail and digital 
photos, none likely to survive the next advance in technology or even 
the next lightning storm. I only have three actual letters from Laura 
in six years of college, the rest are e-mail.

First one out of the old box is dated July 6, 1965, from Jaxon. We had 
gone to Europe together but got separated in Spain when his Matchless 
fouled a plug in Barcelona. I am still in Germany, but he is back in 
the US after getting ejected from Gibraltar by the Brits and having to 
abandon his bike in Spain: "...I hit NY with 25 cents and Joe Brown's 
address. Joe and I got a "drive-away" car deal to Texarkana which 
refunded our gas and oil. Gilbert, Pete and Don met us there in Bill 
Brammer's car—thus to Austin.

"Looks like the THE won't come out for awhile because nobody gives a 
shit anymore...Santos has a million-dollar motorcycle rental business 
on the Drag. He's got about 25 little Yamahas renting for $2.90 / hour 
to frat rats and high school kids...the old scene's busted up pretty 
much, just about everybody's moved out of the Ghetto...

"I was a virtual stranger when I got back, i.e. 'You remember Jack 
Jackson don't you? He used to work on the THE...No?' By August no one 
will know who you are—at least none of the people who count i.e. 
girls...I'm thinking about going super straight for a few months and 
getting a job in some God-forsaken place like Lubbock or Midland where 
they pay you a trillion dollars...
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my miserably leisure-ridden life will last an summer, since I've still 
got $400 in the bank. Woe is me..."

Much more about his European adventures, but no names or dates of note.

He includes a drawing, which I've attached.

Dave