Bio (where i come from/why i'm qualified

Forward The Adventures of Natty Gann or; How Disney Corrupted Me It all started with the trains. It was 1985 and I was five when I first saw The Journey of Natti Gann. At ten years old the apparent Disney flavor of the movie left less of an impression on me than did images of The Great Depression; Men doing unimaginable things to make money so that they could support themselves and their families, often unable to do so. What most captured my imagination in Natty Gann were the freight trains. For years after seeing that film I listened to the trains crossing over Good Hope Road on the north side of Milwaukee while lying awake at night, dreaming of such adventures, hoping one day to hop a freight train of my own. The trains were vehicles of deliverance, calling me out of my bedroom and out of my youth. In 1986 it was Stand By Me. The journey is made not by riding the trains but by walking the tracks. The first appearance of the train is a fearful one in which the boys were almost killed. Natty gets her first scrape with disaster as well catching her first fly. Both of these films were very much about running away; one away from authority to your real father and the other away from your father as authority. At 11 years old I attended the funeral of my second grade teacher Mrs. Cronce’s husband. It was my first funeral. On the way home we were stopped by a train on 91st street. It was raining. It was one of those trains that you never forget because it’s so long you forget you are sitting there waiting on it. You start thinking about your life. That was the moment some past life self awoke within me, some ghost of a thing passed; a story all bound up in struggle and trains and American history; all tangled up in my story to the end. The trains were straightaway two seemingly opposing things to me that I did not call by these names but new by the feelings they invoked; trains meant capitalism, and trains meant anarchism; Natty Gann, a child escaping authority and living life on her own terms at the crossroads of action and desire. It is was most certainly Disney that planted the first seed of corruption in me from which all subsequent transgressions flowed. When I was 18 years old I dropped out of college after the first semester. I was crashing at a friend’s apartment across from the UW-Milwaukee campus. She lived above a café and we often slept on the rooftop, falling asleep under a starry sky faded by city lights, sometimes waking up to a soft warm rain misting our faces at sunrise. I worked at the café below and in my time off began taking day-long walks across the city, singing or silent or in some constant monologue. Sometimes about trains. It wasn’t until then, 14 years after Natty Gann, that I decided my train romance was never going to be reality. I don’t know why but I never thought of doing any research about it. Maybe it’s because I was a late bloomer as far as using computers goes, but not once did I attempt to search the internet. I had never met anybody who thought about riding trains or even cared about such a thing, let alone someone who actually rode them. But the day after I very consciously set this dream free, it came back to me in human form; his name was Nathan. As I was relaying my decision about trains to a coworker, she pointed to a man walking in the door and said, nonchalantly, “That’s Ken’s son Nathan and he rides trains”. Nathan was the owner’s son. It was January at that time and Megan and I had long stopped sleeping on the roof, but Nathan’s passion for the trains was such that he took me to Chicago a week later. We nearly froze to death or at least put ourselves in serious danger waiting all day to catch a train back. Finally Nathan marched us down from a trestle to an engineer next to the first engine idling beneath us. He politely asked the engineer if we could ride in the third engine. When the driver shifted his glance to me he must have been moved by the pathetic sight of my shivering ghost white body as if in its last throes of life, because he gently grunted and sighed, “Alright, just go around the other side and be quick”, chiding in conclusion, “This ain’t train-riding whether you know!” When our train finally pulled through the Milwaukee Amtrak station the conductor slowed down to walking speed, sounded the whistle and waved enthusiastically at us from the disappearing first engine. The following summer the café changed hands. I was sitting at a table talking to my new co-worker and friend Rena, who had already started working for my new boss Brian (Rest in Peace brother). For whatever reason we were talking about writing and publishing under aliases. I said I’d always wished I could change my name. “What would it be?” Rena asked. “Change” I said, “without a doubt”. Again, as if scripted, Brian walked in and up to our table. To my surprise Rena said “Hey Brian, this is Change. He’ll be working for you.” Brian didn’t even flinch. He just beamed the bright smile I’ll never forget him for and said “Hey Change, nice to meet you brother!” And that’s how I came to be called by this name.