The Future's Uncerrtain and the End is Always Near

     This is a gas station we stopped at today near Beaumont, Texas off I-10. It's the cheapest gas I've ever seen in literally over a decade. That shouldn't surprise anyone. We'd just left Houston, where there are plenty of oil refineries.

     We should get to Land O Lakes, Florida by sometime tomorrow night. Then there will be a layover of about a three to four weeks before I hop on a bus to Framingham, MA. I'll be honest with you: While it was supposed to be a happy experience, going back home after over two and a half years and seeing my kids, I'm terrified. It'll be early December when I get home and, as of now, I'll have nowhere to stay. I don't even know if the local shelter in Marlboro will have a bed for me. And that would be far from ideal. I lived there for a couple of months back in 1989 and it was horrible then and it's horrible now.

     Leaving Phoenix was supposed to be a happy experience. Since the day I got there on April 13, 2024, I'd been looking forward to the day when I'd finally leave. The actual experience was less than anticlimactic. In fact, it was sad and joyless.

     Since this is a political blog, I don't put much of my personal life on here. But on September 30th, I met a girl in Phoenix and we took a shine to each other very quickly. Gina and her mother Sue are virtually the only two things I'm going tho miss about Phoenix. I honestly didn't see Gina literally coming down the road and it figures that I did so less than five weeks before I left.

     But, yeah, I'm terrified. And I'm sad.

     For the last several weeks, I've had flashes of foreboding. They'd pop into my head, unbidden, and the feeling I'm getting is that going back to Massachusetts early next month will result in my death. Maybe it's nothing. But these flashes of foreboding are popping into my head on their own.

     I've contacted some of the authorities in Hudson and the best they can do is direct me to the shelter or to a shitty rooming house in Marlborough with a horrible reputation that charges a bloated $200 a week for rent, which would cost me over three quarters of my Social Security. Oh, and they'll demand first, last and security.

     This is the best we can do for our senior citizens. If you have no place to live and you don't have a sizable pension or a big nest egg, you're completely fucked. The last I checked, senior housing in Hudson cost $1500 a month when Barbara and I looked into it and that was over a decade ago. When I left Hudson in March 2024, I created a void and that void closed up immediately and now I may not be able to find a place for myself within it even though I lived there for over 30 years.

     I'll keep putting my feelers out. But there's a serious housing crunch in Massachusetts. And I don't know what awaits me. This was supposed to be a happy experience for me. And I got robbed of all that happiness.