The Free Candy

Blogging? Why not? I have, after all, been writing a lot recently.

Here we go...


There was a time, an amazing and influential time. I lived in a studio apartment with a friend, a life-saving friend. There were long, hard, bitterly cold days. It was the year Oswego was hit with 11 feet of snow in less than 48 hours. That February was the most intense February I have lived through. Blizzards and power outages. Broken spirits united with a strong bond and a sincere, untainted desire to lift each other to our feet.




And as the ice melted away, we laughed at the collage of senseless memories we had created throughout those bitter months. We cried the day we moved out of that tiny apartment. We moved into a van. A giant, red van. Maybe you have heard of it? Maybe you've even taken a ride in it. The Free Candy. Curtains in the windows, mood lighting, seats that folded into a bed. Ahhh, yes. The Free Candy. We parked The Free Candy in abandoned parking lots. We tried to live in a storage garage, but there was no vacancy. We slept on the floor of the restaurant where we worked once, maybe twice. We took any opportunity that came our way, we slept on any couch that was offered. We lived.


I learned more in those short months than I ever had. Maybe more than I ever will.