Zeke:  It’d be a kick to be able to just wander his orchard a coupla times a week & listen to him versify & help him tend to the lot of it, ya know?  …We had a neighbor for our time in Green Valley who had years-ago defected from the Czech Republic back when it was a no-no to go.  He was a naturalist/survivalist to some extent as well…but far less lyrical and …well, far less likable than ol Zeke.  Lovable, yes, but…not so much likable.  Anyway, he used to keep honeybees, & grow & sun-dry all sorts of fruit, & brew his own beer (said it was as close as he could figure to the original Czech Budweiser recipe before it was stolen by Westerners and mass marketed in the states as the swill that it is become).  He served it room temperature warm.  …Swamp cooler room temperature warm.  After a while it’s uncanny what you can develop a taste for.  One glass of this had the kick of a Rainier tallboy, a shot o Jim Beam & a cut o mushroom.  I’d be sitting there in his garage machine-shop drinking his version of Budweiser all normallike and stuff then next thing there’d be pebble-in-pond-drop-rings-within-rings on the walls and other such mild hallucinations…while he showed me the new pistol grip he’d recently made out of toothpaste, hardwood shavings and Elmer’s glue-all.  Not really sure what he put in his homebrew, but for some reason I tripped a little…& it was just a beer to him!  heh-heh.  Something really…innocent about those days back in the mid-late 80’s, early 90’s.  Not innocent, innocent, …but innocent nonetheless.    No, not innocent.   I don’t have the word.  In-the-clear, eyes on the horizon, jovial & affordable notions, recovering from sticker-shock but not too gone for the wear, aware of the spooky shidt but not overwealmed by the audacity yet, …& perhaps blind too, but not broadsided & depressed & between a rock & a hard place & disheartened by the whole bloody ball o twine n razor wire ire & inhumanity....

[as an aside:  ’preciate th new juke fodder to feed our skull ingredients wit...]