Maggie and Me

Abstract

My father was Oak Waters, the stuttering auctioneer. He didn't make much of a living at auctioneering, handicapped the way he was, but I think that's why he chose his profession. The less you work, the more time you have to speculate upon the nature of the universe of man in this world, that was his idea. He wrote a pamphlet called The Pyramid Theory of the Universe with his own dia grams had it printed. He used to try to sell it at auctions, but most of the time ended up giving copies away. Unfortunately, not too many people thought that a pamphlet on cosmic law written by a stuttering auctioneer was worth read ing. Things like that didn't bother Oak, though. have been three ages of man, he said, and out of them the Cosmic Pyramid was made. There was the Age of the Senses that ended with the in vention of the wheel. Then there was the Age of the Dream, that one ended with the Crucifixion. Now we're in the Age of Worry, the sooner it ends, the better. We lived in a quonset hut about a mile a half up in the woods, behind the Ellmont lumberyard. Oak had a wife at the time I'm talking about. Her name was Eileen. She had never lived in a real house in her life. She was brought up in a trailer camp. Wood or stone walls made her nervous. That's why she loved the quonset hut wouldn't have moved out if Oak had suddenly struck it rich auctioneering bought a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar ranch house with a pic ture window a painting of zebras eating flowers on the living room wall. Eileen was skinny had freckles all over. She always kept a loaded shotgun within reach could never remember to close the marmalade.