Just messing around -- long

[OnTerryOh]

I buckled my seat belt for the 1700 mile ride from Chitown to Boise, 24 hours on interstates until I would reach the Boise Greenbelt trail. http://www.visitidaho.org/thingstodo...greenbelt.aspx

Reckoned I would stop in Lincoln Nebraska for a night. Probably I'd stop at The Albany in Cheyenne, too -- have a steak and a few drinks before I found a cheap motel. http://www.albanycheyenne.com/liquor.html

As I drove past the soy bean fields and corn fields in Iowa and Nebraska, I found myself thinking of Lane Foley, with his happy exterior and the dark, hidden side that few people ever saw. Lane is fair-skinned, blonde and muscular, with a dimple on his chin and a joke never too far from rolling off his tongue.

He unicycled as if he were dancing to a fast and happy tune, like maybe Glen Miller's "In the Mood" was always playing in his head. I'd seen oodles of women fall for him, but I was never one of them.

We'd grown up next door to one another on Burling Street. At times Lane had been my best friend and at other times my brother's best buddy.

I remember him unicycling back and forth to school at St. Margaret's when he was about seven years old. One time I saw him wheeling along and singing, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart."

When he was 14, he unicycled in Chicago's St. Patrick's day parade, circling and smiling and tipping his green fedora to the reviewing stand where Mayor Daley and other bigwigs looked on, the river dyed green and the bagpipers and drummers conjuring up sounds of the old sod, Lane Foley, such a fine lad, at the center of it all.

No surprise really that I hadn't heard from either him or Beth much since they'd gotten hitched and joined the circus. In a way, the circus would be the perfect home for my dear old demented friend Lane.

As to myself, I'm divorced, alone, no regrets. Got a song in my mind just about all the time -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhApYxZisBI