Dad rested in his chair in the assisted living center. It was morning and we discussed current events.

Then, out of nowhere, he said, “I was wondering if you could get me some gizzards?”

What the hell? Gizzards?

I asked him why of all cravings, gizzards?

He had no explanation. But when a 93-year-old man wants gizzards, then get him some goddamn gizzards!

But what in the name of god did I know about procuring gizzards? I knew some gas stations sold them. Gas Station Gizzards (hot country rock band name!)

That wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to murder my father.

I also recalled that several OTA joints served gizzards. In fact, in one North Bend dive, they were legendary.

So I went to a dive bar near me that advertised gizzards on their web site. Nothing doing.

A friend at the dog park suggested I hit a Chinese restaurant; gizzards were often on the menu.

I didn’t want to go searching for gizzards in Chinese restaurants. A better idea emerged.

Visit an Asian super duper supermarket out in East Portland. They stocked everything weird meat and weird fish!

On a cold morning, I drove out to a massive Vietnamese mall, parked, and entered this exotic cultural universe that is ten million times more interesting than Fred Meyer.

Past the nail shop, past the real estate office, past the tea shop, past the noodle shop, past the jewelry shop, past the kids dentist. The Vietnamese have created their own retail and cultural world in this area of Portland. Bravo to them. More of that from newcomers to American and more newcomers please.

I walked in and headed toward the meat section. Asian-sounding music played. I passed a wall where bags of rice the size of sandbags were stacked five feet high and could have held back the Willamette River at flood stage. I passed food and drink items I had never seen before.

A minute later after some wandering, I stood in front of the packaged meats section and made my way down the shelves. Pork uteri, pork ears, pork intestines, pork bungs. I felt my stomach lurch on that last item.

I kept moving and then, LO and BEHOLD! Chicken gizzards, a huge package for $2.29. Christ, Dad couldn’t possibly eat all of then and the last time Elmer the husky ate gizzards (from Thanksgiving) he shit the living room.

I made my purchase and walked to the car. Three fentanyl zombies were nodding and leaning just outside the parking lot. I suspected they wouldn’t eat gizzards and here I was going to cook them up for my old man!

But how do you cook gizzards?

When I got home, I’d google the living shit out of the question and AI would supply with the perfect pan fried gizzard recipe.

I’d bring them to dad in a day or two and he would chase them down with a little shot of Maker’s Mark.

Gizzards and Whiskey for Breakfast. (Great title for a Gas Station Gizzards album.)

Two days later I fried up the gizzards and winged the recipe from my brief look online.

I took them over to Dad and he said he liked them cold so into the refrigerator they went. He would eat the gizzards later and report back the next morning. I told him not to lie if he didn’t like them.

The report: tasty but he was used to larger gizzards. Larger! He thanked me for my effort and Elmer got most of the leftovers.

I have completed the manuscript of my mother’s book of letters written during my family’s Church of Christ missionary service in Brazil from 1968-1970. The project evolved into something so much richer than the letters as I edited and wrote the footnotes. I hope to release the book in the spring and promote it heavily in Christian literary circles.

In a cafe the other day, I paid $6 for a croissant. The price wasn’t marked on the display or anywhere else for that matter, and I was shocked when the barista rang it up. Six bucks!!!!!! It certainly didn’t rate as a $6 croissant, whatever that is.

On a similar note, a friend treated me to lunch and I felt like drinking a bloody mary. It cost $14. No thanks.

I still haven’t decided how to promote the Prefontaine book this coming spring.

Dad is still doing well in his assisted living center, although the cost is going up another $300 a month. It still shocks and saddens me to see elderly homeless people shuffling the streets around the center with all their possessions in tow.

Elmer and I continue on our early morning walks through the parks in the neighborhood, but haven’t walked into a story about the homeless in months. They just ended.

We also visit the dog park every morning and I enjoy my time there with other dogs and their owners. It’s a great way to begin the day. One of the regulars recently gifted me a set of pens he made and they are excellent.

I plan on a week long visit to the Oregon Coast some time in March to explore a few places I haven’t explored. There aren’t that many left.

I haven’t written anything about Oregon Tavern Age in a long, long time. It truly is dead as a topic for me.

I read most of the postmortems on Harris’ campaign in the liberal print press and they all felt off to me. None of these writers wanted to really get at the main points of why the Democratic Party can’t speak to working class people of all colors. It’s that simple.

As for the prospect of Trump’s second term, I feel almost indifferent; the Republic and the Constitution need drastic overhauls (or outright scrapping) and he just may be the right amoral man to do it, no matter how many people suffer.

I continue to write letters in longhand.

I drove past the striking Providence health care workers picketing in the rain and wind and cold. I honked my horn and gave the thumbs up. I never had to walk a picket line in my professional career.

My most recent visit to a certain small independent bookstore will be my last. Kids were running amok, screaming, tearing stock off the shelves and the parents and staff did nothing. In fact, one parent was playing hide and seek with her brat in the aisles. It was absurd.

My father in assisted living told me the other day he had a craving for gizzards. Gizzards! So I am on the hunt for gizzards.

I heard Rush and Queen while shopping in the grocery store. Dead. Dead. Dead. That music is so dead to me.

A December afternoon. Light rain fell as I walked to my neighborhood convenience store to purchase a condiment.

Christmas was two weeks away. I was feeling good about it. Must have been having Elmer the maniacal husky sharing the holidays with me for the first time.

Before I entered, I noticed two bicycles rigged up in homeless survival mode leaning against a wall. The ingenuous improvisations rendered to these bicycles to survive homelessness in America never ceases to astonish me. No two are the same. Some border on works of art fashioned by the artist refugees from our shattered culture.

I waited in line behind a man and woman in their 30s or 40s. The man had long red hair, glam metal hair. The woman had short hair the color of a rainbow. They were in no way addled. Presumably they were the owners of the bicycles. I’d never seen them before.

Their transaction was taking forever. I detected the reason: redeeming four winning scratch off tickets and the clerk unlocking the safe to produce 80 bucks.

No need to become impatient. I utilized the time to eavesdrop on the homeless couple’s conversation as they split the winnings. It was quite loud and animated. They told themselves to refrain from buying cigarettes or malt liquor or more tickets. She was more adamant than he. Take the money and ride away.

They shuffled out of the store. I bought my condiment and left.

The couple was readying their bicycles for transport, adjusting loads, strapping possessions down. They embraced and smiled. They said “Merry Christmas!”

Where would they go?

Where would they spend the night?

What would they spend the 80 bucks on? Something special, something pedestrian, something frivolous, something dangerous?

Would they squirrel away the dough?

I watched them ride away.

Two weeks later, the day after Christmas, I stood behind the same couple at the convenience store as they held a discussion with the same clerk who previously paid off the winning tickets.

No one else was in the store. It was two in the afternoon. Earlier that day, the federal government released their annual report on the number of homeless people in America, this one for 2023. The total was taken from a count on the night of January, 24, 2024. The report stated there were approximately 770,000 homeless people in America, an 18% increase from the previous year.

That figure represents an amoral farce and national disgrace. The real number is probably triple or quadruple that amount and growing. I could write a 3000-word polemic why this report is a fraud but journalists and experts in homelessness (am I one?) have debunked this annual lie repeatedly over the years. My own particular beef with the count is that it totally omits all homeless people living out of tents, culverts and vehicles in public forests, mountains, wetlands, dunes, beaches, deserts all across the country. I’ve seen hundreds of these people in my travels around Oregon. I’ve met more than a few. No one has ever counted them and ever will.

The discussion between the clerk and the couple was hushed and taking forever. So, I stepped a little closer and eavesdropped again.

Lo and behold, the couple was there to confirm that a particular scratch off game the woman held in her hand was indeed a $100,000 winner. Yes, one hundred grand!

When I heard that, my body tensed up and I felt giddy for them.

Then I composed myself and thought this must be a hoax of some kind. A homeless couple wins a hundred grand gambling the day after Christmas?

I continued to listen.

The couple told the clerk they had visited the store earlier that morning and the manager on duty confirmed the winning ticket. They were now returning for double confirmation and the clerk had just provided that.

Neither the couple nor the clerk reacted with any kind of normal emotion I supposed would accompany such incredible news. Then I reminded myself that somewhere I read: if you win the lottery, don’t shout it out to the world because the sharks and vultures will show up within seconds.

Well, I hadn’t won so I didn’t remain quiet and the store was empty except the four actors in what was rapidly turning into a real Christmas tale.

“You two hit the jackpot!,” I said.

The couple turned around slowly and sized me up. They didn’t appear threatened at all. They were in fact smiling.

“How are you so calm?” I added.

“We’re trying to keep it quiet,” said the woman.

“Good idea.”

“We’ll have to go to Salem to get the money,” said the man.

The clerk interrupted and said the Oregon Lottery had a place in Wilsonville where winners could collect. That was still 20 miles away and I doubted they’d be open the day after Christmas.

I assumed one of them would need valid ID to claim the winnings. I assumed one of them would need a bank account. After slicing off taxes, it seemed absurd to think the State would give them 80k in cash and they would walk right out the door. To a homeless couple! What if the one with the ID was wanted for some probation violation, which countless homeless people are.

But what did I know.

I congratulated them again and said, “What are you going to do with the money?”

“Dawg,” the man said, “we’re going to get off the streets and start over.”

No one had ever called me Dawg before. I kind of liked it. He made it sound so friendly and sincere. It felt like when my homeless friends call me brother.

“Good luck,” I said.

They began to leave. The woman then turned to me and said, “It was our lucky pants. She patted her thighs and I noticed maroon velour sweats.

“We were both wearing the same pants!” she exclaimed.

And indeed they were. The man slapped his thigh.

A homeless couple wearing maroon velour sweats had just won a hundred grand the day after Christmas.

They left. I walked up to the counter to make my purchase—a bottle of wine.

I asked the clerk what game they had played. She pointed to Crossword Cove—a ten buck ticket.

Why not? It was Christmas after all and I was living an honest to goodness Christmas tale. Oh what positive work I would do with a hundred grand!

I bought the ticket. A loser.

Outside the store, I saw the couple rigging up their bicycles for departure. It occurred to me that I was looking at a potentially otherworldly feature story about homelessness. All I had to do was race over, introduce myself as a writer, and make a pitch. I would even drive them to Wilsonville and redeem the ticket for them if they didn’t have ID or were on the lam.

Then I thought otherwise. Sometimes a writer’s conceit overwhelms me and clouds my judgment.

This was their tale to live and not mine to tell, at least for now, beyond this short piece. If I saw them again, which I doubted I would, maybe that was the time to make a pitch.

This year I hope to:

Publish my mother’s collection from her missionary service in Brazil in the late 60s.

Publish my own book of homeless Christmas tales.

Help a client publish his memoir of being a criminal defense attorney.

Stage a reunion with my friend Andrea.

Visit two places in Oregon I have never been.

Visit Forks, Washington.

Effect some minor repairs on the house.

Keep helping my best friends maintain their house.

Read some histories of Asia.

Help one more homeless person get into housing.

Play some tennis.

Continue to help my father with his assisted living experience.

Run on a different ocean beach with Elmer.

Somehow get the word about the Prefontaine book out there.

Help an old friend out of distressing domestic living situation.

See the beaver who has been enlarging his lodge on my local creek.