The early years with the passerby, Jake “Skinnyhead”

Jake "Skinnyhead" lived just beyond the billboards to the east,

then northward toward the city's landfill called "the dump" and a half-

mile or so west of the cemetery where famed acquitted axe murderess

Lizzie Borden is surely buried.

We remember Jake as having a compressed, tubular-

shaped head with big, protruding ears, and a flat sort-of nose

like that of a seasoned welterweight.

Jake was short of stature, slumped forward,–– a foot-shuffler,

maybe in his late forties. He was a real person, not one of those

character participants made-up for the sake of a story.

Jake was seen regularly, walking passed the ballpark, the Esso station,

and my earliest house, the only house in the neighborhood which stood

directly over the sidewalk behind the sewer that ate foul balls.

The drawing:

Charcoal pencil with brushed-white conte crayon highlights,

on a sheet of grey, standard art-supply, lightly textured drawing pad paper,

completed long after art school, but long before now.

I might know the original date of the drawing, but I might not.

The fun part, in part, was my journey through the process

in cobbling fragmented images gleaned from the bowls of memory

to make a face for Jake which I could live with and maybe, hopefully,

Jake "Skinnyhead" could live with, too.

Quequechan