I guess everything’s bigger in high school, cause it’s the whole world shrunk down into Abraham Lincoln High.

So you see this guy coming out of shop class, old Mr. Killian’s class, he’s like a god, or a movie star. I noticed his walk, like there’s no hurry, but he’s going someplace and why not come along?

Oh did I want that close up.

We could have nice kids together. Nope, hey, I thought, don’t think about having kids, think about passing English, go to college, maybe. Me in college, wouldn’t that be a trip!

Wrote your name all down the side of the test. Chuck. Ratowitz. My mom said, “Is that Polish?”

Mom, Dad, what I ever got from them. Families, heck, you don’t expect love, I guess, if people got that they wouldn’t have to make movies about it. “Hey guys, if you can’t give me love, at least could you give me the waffle iron?”

Waffle iron says home to me. I wanted that so bad, and my sister got the waffle iron.

Chuck, could we get a waffle iron?

Promise?

Put it in your mouth.

Now spit it out. Just directly down there out of your mouth please.

There’s a lot of history here. Of course there’s history in your kitchen, knives and forks, dinner plates, many tales one might tell, if you knew them.

Although she was eccentric, those closest to her said she was quite sane. Her servants were very loyal. One carpenter stayed with her for thirty-seven years.

He will continue here as a carpenter, he’s a good carpenter, and he conveyed desperation in terms of livelihood, so that is the way it will be. What do you say?

It wasn’t really my father’s murders. It was Tigger, my kitten, her name was Tigger. I didn’t give Tigger her pills.

And so she died. I put her in my closet, I thought she would dry up and fade away. But of course she stank. So what would you do? If you were nine years old.

You’d cry. You’d lie, you’d tell them that Tigger got better and ran away. You’d stop up your nose from the stink. You’d take a salad fork and stab her so she’d appear to have been killed by a rat with a salad fork.

It was an education. More vivid than statistics of many millions dead.

Marty— Chuck. Yes. Chuck.

I would like to ask you to move your family to this house. There are working bathrooms, kitchens, plenty of light, wouldn’t it solve your problems? You need time with your family, and I am very very sorry about that, I know I make demands that are absolutely insane. And I’m calling you Marty. That’s insane.

I need the energy of young people in this house. We build ballrooms where people don’t dance, dining rooms where no one eats, nurseries without babies, and bedrooms—

You have a wife, a beautiful child, you have needs, your family needs you, and there must be energy in this house, where the energy doesn’t die every day at sunset and the soldiers die in these wars that go on and on and on—

I think that’s what you should do.

And a sense of mystery. We don’t find much mystery under fluorescent light, but there is a longing. You read about sacred groves.

It’s up and down. A woman asks where the horses drank. “They had horses, didn’t they? It’s historical.” Outdoors, I suppose. They had people to care for the horses. It’s not necessary to live your life in every detail. You live the highlights.

I did have a tourist who said that his wife had died at Mt. Rushmore. I said, “Really?” thinking this would be an interesting story. But that’s all he said.

It’s one day at a time. Once I start the tour, it always times out the same, and I have coffee before the next tour, and a good pension plan. So there’s no earthly reason why I should have the urge to come in some night and shit on the rug.