What It's Going to Take for Me to Write an Award-Winning Hub (Essay)

the dates of Sept. 28 and 29, 2017

from the hours of: 11:30 p.m., Sept. 28 to 2 a.m., Sept. 29

In this essay I am asking for a man, "Kirby" to drive me to various towns in the south in a beaten-up, rented Plymouth from Avis and let me take about eight gallons of black coffee. Folger's to be exact.

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I have this dilemma. Not as serious. Not as unpredictable as Atrox, an avant-garde metal band from Trondheim, Norway. Euro-Trash never impressed me even in my most desperate times. I have been trying to deal with the dilemma and believe me, is a stark struggle when I am alone in my house. I did say, not a serious? But it is. I can be many times too confident of hurdling over a dark obstacle (in one go) that is in my way from understanding my view. I do this just to shield my close friends from worrying about me during this ever-reoccurring dilemma.

Let me tell you about the real me for just a moment. The real me is a different me as opposed to the one when my wife, Pam, is in the house. I know she's there. I can hear her humming her Gospel songs that she loves and can sing far better than most Contemporary Gospel artists today. But she's far too modest and had much rather stand aside to let these NeoChristian Singers who evolved from Portland, back when Grunge was cool. I never liked, much less understood Grunge--being pressured to wear those red flannel shirts that are so hot in the south. That was my one deal-breaker: Flannel.

I have been married to Pam for now going on 43 years this June. And here's a secret for all of you HubPages friends should know: Even Pam, like most wives, like to believe that their husbands know every intimate detail about them, but this is not so. Cat's out of the bag now. Pam has no inkling about the real me who is engineering this keyboard, so whatever you read in this piece, "I" will be glad to take credit for me. Heck, next year I might just win a Hubbie Award, who knows? Shhh! Kenneth already won (an) Official HubPages Coffee Cup that he treasures more than all of the photos of himself he took home with him when he left the Journal Record (the bi-weekly) newspaper in Hamilton, Ala. Pam will be upset if she ever starts to plunder into his one mid-size cardboard box where these photos and a few rolls of negatives reside. Kenneth said outloud to me one night, "every piece of my career is sitting inside this cardboard box. No use cursing. I did give it my all."

One more tip: if you are worried about this hub scaring you or giving you bad dreams tonight, don't. This is a mild rendering that must be told. No way around it. This piece is very similar to marriage: bad or good, the readers will either like it or hate it. But it is still a living organism that came from my spirit and now will cause you (hopefully) to stop and think about what I am saying. I promise to not use as many parentheses as I used to.

I have been glad as a country boy in northwest Alabama to be a member of HubPages. Really. In my soon-to-be-seven years with this fantastic website that has a great cross section of some of the best writers in the civilized world. From Holland to Alabama. What a stretch. But they are there. Kenneth knows his followers alright. I believe that they all pray for him. Especially when one of these ideas that I am making into a person essay. Not asmuch for money, fame, or getting comped at my local Hardee's, but to just have a taste of overwhelming satisfaction from knowing how just ONE member of HubPages relates to what I am saying in this essay.

Some might know. Some may not. It's much like a crap shoot, but I had to write this while Kenneth is watching some late-night, early morning, time-filling feature on ESPN who has really made some bucks this week telling news about the firing of Louisville Cardinals' head coach, the once-legendary Rick Pitono, who has the sad job of letting one of his lawyers meeting and negotiating with the Trustees at Louisville to settle his $40-million dollar buy-out of his contract. I am floored by Pitono's sadness.

Kenneth has written a lot of hubs that I hated. Things like those annoying, nerve-grating lists of what to do or not to do and what some celebrity might say on some holiday. Crap. That's all they were to him. Oh, he loved these hubs and would read them and share a big laugh about something funny that he wrote, but I was only acting as to not hurt his feelings. Kenneth has a fragile libido. Didn't he ever tell you this personal thing about him in the past six years of his membership of HubPages? No? Oh, I can tell you why he didn't. He has always been shy. Very shy. And sometimes, and I have witnesses him doing this, he will speak to a friendly woman waitress who Kenneth who must have some kind of gift that lets him see through their souls, and feel their various burdens to make ends meet. Then before Kenneth and his wife, Pam leave the cafe, he and this waitress are laughing up a storm--as if they were old classmates.

I am so tired. I think that I will do something drastic: I am going to get Kenneth's attention and tell him to start this hub and finish it for the hours are wee: 1:25 a.m., CDST., Sept. 29. "I" need to get some sleep. So does Kenneth, but I am going to bed and leave you with him. Good night.

The dilemma that I told you about in the first of this somewhat edgy piece is that I want to share a few things with you that I feel would really help me be a better hubber. It is possible. Most of you are very successful and content to be so. Whereas I am not. Far from it. I want that one person, experienced or not, to read seven words in the first two paragraphs and even if that one person should miss his/her bus to or from work because they are so engrossed in this one hub, I will be happy.

But happy may be a relative term here. The brand of happy I want to be very soon, (for I am 63 and not going to be any younger) is the hub written in the style of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I beg you to get online or visit your local library, they will be glad to have you, and read just one or two of Thompson's work that led him to be very popular with those of all ages and die very wealthy. I would settle for the wealthy and just be moderately popular with all ages.

I think that this is fair. Of course there are those who would disagree with me. That is one of the many things that made America grow to be the greatest nation on earth. I really believe this. I couldn't sit in the wee hours of any morning in Red China holding my laptop staring into the screen for fear of whatever police they have over there of busting down my front door and conviscating my written works published and not published. I hate to be a butt, but it's none of their Commy business!

I want to go on a late-night trip of my own choosing, maybe let someone who can use his fists, drive me to the dark side of Memphis or Birmingham and just let me sit and not talk, but listen to whatever people of the late hour are yakking about. Seriously. If a few of the "Night Owls" were to be curious about who I am sitting in this rented, beaten-up Plymouth from Avis, and what I am doing at this late hour, "Kirby," my ex-Martial Arts Expert now making side money as a chaeuffer would tell these folks quickly the same thing that he would say to them if they were from Communist Red China.

I truly believe with that move of faith, stepping out of my comfort zone (in my own living room) add my adrenaline from a potentially-dangerous scrap from late night yokels in the dark side of Memphis to this fear from leaving Alabama to research a hub idea, would propel me to the Top Tier of HubPages. Maybe a book deal if someone with book publishing/editing just happened to be reading THIS essay at the right time. I have always wanted to be one of those people who went from rags to riches just for being at the right place at the right time.

Then I would politely ask "Kirby" to drive us to the shadiest part of Columbus, Miss., which was once well-known for fights, drinking, gunfire at all hours, and more fights, but not study these social events, but sit in a Waffle House if they have one without bars on the windows--sip black coffee and eat t-bone steaks with scrambled eggs. A wealthy Samaritan is footing my bill and "Kirby's" bill. Confidentially, I have to watch him for he has an appetite that I would not challenge in any hotdog eating contest.

And while we sit, sip, and eat, I would be taking notes on what the people in this Waffle House would be talking about--not to us, but to their friends. We would have to use a lot of discretion for we would not want the manager to toss us to the parking lot before we finish our meals. Then again, being tossed out by an angry Waffle House female manager, a middle-aged divorcee named, "Peggy," who has two teenagers at home whose husband, "Henry L." a rounder and gambler just up and left her.

That might get my creative juices to start flowing so much that I could know for sure if taking this tour with "Kirby" was worth it. I'm sorry. This sounded like that I was closing-out this piece, but I have a few more things to talk about to put me in that place where Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and his entourage (who also wrote things for Rolling Stone--but Thompson was the only writer who got paid). I do not want a truckload of cash--just enough to give Pam and me a comfortable living. A secluded living. But I am not going there.

The last place that I would ask "Kirby" to drive me is a strip club. But for this essay, I will use the term, "Gentlemen's Club." And what "Kirby" and I will do to be fair. We will park, make a list of the strip clubs in Memphis, Gulfport, Miss., and maybe Biloxi, Miss., Then we will tear up the names of these clubs and put them in "Kirby's" expensive Fedora hat, and let him draw out the one strip club for us to enter, pay the cover charge, and watch the evening's dancers. At the right time, I want "Kirby," who incidentally is a good looking, muscular guy, to invite one of the dancers who is on her break, to sit at our table and let me ask her a few probing questions about what it feels like to work as a dancer. Of course, I would pay for all of the drinks for "Kirby" and the dancer, but I only want a lot of black coffee, I prefer Folger's.

When "Sa Sha," we'll call her, goes back to work, we both stand up for gentlemen of old days would not let a female sit or stand from anywhere without them standing. "Kirby" who is not anywhere near being intoxicated, and me not with any liquid in my veins but coffee, sit in this strip club and compile my notes about this week's worth of shady places in the wee hours tour that I know in my heart will give me the experiences that I need to at least live 10 to 25 more years with Pam and her not ever having to cook for me or anyone.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once spent one year with the Hell's Angels and wrote a best-selling book about this experience. But in an interview on some TV station in London, Thompson must have agreed to give the bikers a few cases of beer for allowing him to travel with them and be used in his book. The biker, whose name was never mentioned (by his choice), got very upset at Thompson's segment of this look at the Life of Hell's Angels and (this) one Hell's Angel beating his young wife and dog during a drunk binge. Thompson if anything was not afraid of controversy. And in his last few stories he was very honest about facing death about foreign incidents and those of his own invention.

So now all I have to do is search for "Kirby," rent the beaten up, rented Plymouth from an Avis that I may have to beg Pam to drive me there, and spent a week or two from home while "Kirby" and I scout the wide world of dark hours and seedy places where souls of that walk of life live just like everyone else.

I think that I am onto something. No punch-line needed.