Daily Gratitude List 11.20.22
Airport Edition
I’m grateful for a really great Saturday. I’m grateful for a little bit of adventure. I’m grateful for a trip to see Mom and Dad. I’m grateful for a chance to eat road food. I’m grateful to be sober today.
This coming to you from 30,000 feet somewhere between LGA and ORD thanks to the wonders of in-flight wifi. I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to Episode 27 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic! It’s the first installment of our much-discussed Big Book Study and we cover the first half of Bill’s Story in Chapter 1.
I’m headed to Iowa City for a couple of days to see my parents and I’m kind of looking forward to a walk around the old haunts, see how things look now. Obviously, much different. The Haunted Bookshop moved from the super-cool actually haunted-looking house on College Street a long time ago. The Haunted Bookshop was maybe my favorite place to go—the people who ran it also lived there, I think. They were often sitting at the dining room table drinking tea. I remember paperbacks being in the basement and that’s where I mostly browsed. I never came up empty-handed.
I found so many treasures there. It’s where I found Hemingway and Joyce and Faulkner and John Dos Passos, John Barth and Hart Crane. Every book I would read would spawn a desire to read the five that were somehow connected or should be considered together. I wouldn’t say that reading was a burden, but I put a lot of effort into it. Anyway, it’s not really the same since they moved. The always excellent Prairie Lights Bookstore is there1—and cooly features work of people from the Writer’s Workshop.
So, I’m going to share maybe a weird part of my dream. I’ve mentioned that I always wanted to be a writer. I think at some point, I may have actually decided that I wanted to be an alcoholic writer. I don’t think I willed myself to get here by any means, but I think I definitely grasped that idea as I prowled the streets of Iowa City. I did my first serious drinking at a place called Magoo’s on Linn Street. It’s just down the block from the famous Hamburg Inn—an obligatory stop for every presidential campaign during the Iowa Caucuses. It’s not far from George’s Buffet and the Mill and some other kind of well-known places that the alcoholic writers from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop would do some serious drinking—also regular professors from the English Department who were maybe also aspiring alcoholic writers.
I was the kind of young alcoholic who read in bars. I often brought along books for my solitary drinking escapades. I very quickly determined it was not an accident that the writers who really resonated with me were mostly alcoholics. I saw a certain soulfulness, an element of being lost but not being overly concerned about that and a great deal of almost-bitter wistfulness—that was my writer’s cocktail. Like I said, I’m not sure if this was a plan or a reaction to the realization that I was a budding alcoholic and might as well embrace the whole kit and kaboodle.
It will be nice to spend some time with Mom and Dad. I’m also looking forward to walking around some memory lanes. I have a feeling I’m going to come across some tracks from someone I know while I’m wandering around; I’m kind of curious to see where they take me.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
That’s an addition since I graduated from Iowa City West High.
“Every book I would read would spawn a desire to read the five that were somehow connected or should be considered together.”
And now we need a “Books you should read together” post!
Can’t wait to hear how it all went.