oil  40″ x 60″*

Here you have my mother, Mary, and her next door neighbor, Kay, a bitch on wheels if ever there was one. They’re siteseeing in Car-ack-kus, Vin-iz-zoo-eeela, as my mother, originally from North Carolina, pronounced it. In the seventies, thus the bell bottom pants and wedgie shoes.

Even through the sunglasses, you can feel Kay’s judgmental gaze appraising you. I don’t know what she has to be so superior about, after all, her son Eddie went off to college in the cornfields of Iowa and was caught while tripping talking to a tree, and after being carried off by men in white coats (really), he never returned to normal and was sent home to NJ, where he milked the “now I’m delicate and may have a breakdown” cow to its full extent and so was excused from having to participate in life and instead passed his days writing haiku to which anyone who stood in his path had to listen. In local bars, he became known as “Eddie the Wizard” for his mystical pronouncements, and was such a talker that those in the know hid when they saw him coming, including yours truly, which may be why I left NJ. Not.