Dear Friends,

Thanks to all of you who followed me Sideways through Zion.  My buddy Craig and I performed a lot of the work from that blog last December (2014) @939, and January (2015)  at Arcaro Boxing Gym. Great time, great audiences.  Time now to move on.

Broken Inn - a good title, I hope, for a memoir fantastical and actual.  It shouldn't be hard to sort out the two, but, ah, when the actual becomes fantastical, or the fantastical actual then which is which and what is what or what part where by whom?  I stand fully clothed as an unreliable narrator.

The picture above is of a saloon around the corner from our extended family home on East 10th Street in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Under the name of Ziggie's, it was a family business.  Uncle Andy, and Uncle John owned the joint.  Uncle Stevie cleaned up in the morning.  My mom, Florence, would stop in on her way to  St. Stanislaus Parish grade school, and Stevie would give her a Hershey bar to put in her lunch.  I'm sure that at one time or another the whole family dropped in for a pop or a beer. I took this picture a few years ago, and I'm sorry to say I don't know the history of the joint as it morphed, through who knows how many incarnations, from Ziggie's to Broken Inn.  I suspect it never actually operated as Broken Inn, but that the sign reflects the property owner's feelings about the place.

I look forward to entertaining you.

Richard