Lake Scranton lured Casey Weatherhogg even when it rained.

Now the weather changed.

The water froze.

Every morning back in August all you could see of Casey in the middle of the otherwise calm reservoir that provided drinking water to about 77,000 people was his bare behind, rising and falling like a hump-backed whale breezing through the open ocean. Diving and surfacing up and down across the big drink, Casey took great solace in the natural pool, a sacred substance where life began and would one day likely end. Humans are almost entirely water so, in Casey’s mind, when the world’s water turns toxic, life no longer exists.

Death prevails.

Eternal silence ensues.

Call it a day forever.

Casey always peed in the water before swimming to shore, a personal ritual that contributed part of his being, or peeing, as it were, to the body of water, the substance that provided existence in the first place. Giving back, if you will. Or, as the French philosophers say, wee wee. Stepping on land, Casey then dressed for his morning part-time job at the medical cannabis dispensary where he swept up, cleaned employee toilets and ran whatever errands his young hipster boss asked him to undertake.

Breaking for lunch at noon, Casey occasionally ate a homemade postage stamp-sized windowpane of acid with a picture stamped on the front of a multi-colored psychedelic baked potato with kaleidoscopic eyes. Casey dug spuds as his favorite vegetable and sometimes saw visions of dancing baked potatoes cavorting their way into the psyches of seekers who partook in the continuing Merry Prankster-inspired acid test of America. Over the years Casey slapped his trademark tiny hand-drawn baked potatoes on countless window pane blotter tabs of acid he cooked up and stored for a rainy day. A few thousand hits made their way to California where they are to this day considered cult classics by vegetarian trippers and others who value edible produce.

Making blotter acid gave Casey joy. But his cartoon drawings no longer sparkled. His poor little taters often looked like mashed blots rather than blotter, faded ink spots and amoeba purple haze, a scraggly mist hanging over the cold mountains of his mind. That’s why he worked feverishly to manufacture a better brand of acid to distribute more equitably to the masses, a sacred pursuit on which he spent years. Then last week, Christmas week, Casey hit big time. Untold liquid LSD doses now filled a 55-gallon stainless steel drum he bought with $739 of his pension and Social Security savings and kept in the basement laboratory he put together over the summer.

With a decent high school teaching retirement, Casey still struggled to stay sane. Like LSD itself that sometimes breaks down in direct light, Casey regularly resisted mental disintegration. Cracking up scared him so he tried to stay calm. Working to perfect the “Scranton Sunshine” he called his brand made him something of a gourmet acid aficionado and ready for the big time.

Still tripping after all these years, just last night Casey watched a strobe candle flicker madly against the walls of his room, dripping hot wax down the sides of an empty Bali Hai wine bottle he kept from Berkeley as a good luck charm. As the candle dissolved he pressed the button on an old can of shaving cream he found in the medicine cabinet until it emptied a thick white mountain of foam that covered his roll top desk top and oozed to the floor. Laughing so hard his cheeks hurt, Casey realized how insanity would own him if the drug failed to wear off or dragged him so deep he couldn’t climb out of the abyss. But he eventually regained equilibrium. The time he tripped before that he drove his van alongside three running horses led by a white stallion that raced him on the other side of a farmer’s fence. Watching their thick manes blow in the winter wind, Casey wasn’t sure if the acid had taken hold or whether he transcended the holy chemical concoction. Whinnying loudly, he was one with the galloping herd, the only time he consciously wanted to stay with the pack.

LSD isn’t for everybody but everybody can take a lesson from wanderers who open the doors to perception. Casey never advocated wholesale acid consumption for kids or pets or even adults in the 21^st Century. But the continuing corporate assault on the environment pushed Casey to action, turning him into a guerrilla eco-warrior who targeted everybody in command of the business world. That went double for politicians in cahoots with the system. Casey might not be right but he wasn’t wrong. OK, he was wrong, but that only fueled his Kamikaze sky pilot high-holy crusade to defend Mother Nature by any means necessary. Malcolm X would get it.

With a half-poached brain after all those journeys to the corners of his mind, with his brain stem parboiled but not yet completely fried, acid in the Scranton water supply made perfect sense to Casey. One final mission remained before Casey blasted into the ozone like Timothy Leary’s ashes heading into space for one last adventure at the tip of a rocket because, like the heads say, a trip is never a fall.

Especially in Scranton.

That stupid NBC television show “The Office,” set in Scranton but shot in and around LA, helped brainwash America into thinking Scranton was a happening place embodied by one memorable line from the show.

“Ain’t no party like a Scranton party.”

Casey knew better.

Goofy Joe Biden also helped indoctrinate the world about Scranton, too.

Casey would soon educate the planet about the difference between dumbass comedy and the president-elect’s hey-man silliness a truly civic-minded America didn’t really want or deserve.

If only Casey could figure out how to skinny-dip in winter. For now, he just skated nude on tissue-paper thin ice, waiting for the right time to make his move to walk on water. Tripping allowed you to walk on water all the way to Woodstock, bubbling memories that brought back three days of fun and music.

A little Scranton dysfunction (LSD) never hurt anybody.

In Casey’s world, ain’t no party like a Weatherhogg party.

A crown of bullets trumps a crown of thorns any day.

Earl Schmidt adjusted the fake gold tiara sitting snug on his head, gently touching the solid copper tips of bullets that encircled his noggin like cubic zirconia diamonds. Christ could have easily taken out those brutal Roman legionnaires if instead of a wreath of thorns he wore a wreath of armor-piercing rounds to load into a rifle and open fire before they pulled hammers out of their cloaks and started pounding nails into his hands and feet.

Earl’s new bride Zerelda sat snuggled close in the pew at their church in the Poconos, the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, also known as the Sanctuary Church.  The newlyweds met on Thanksgiving at the corner of Moosic and Meadow streets in Scranton during a pro-Trump rally. Joined by two dozen other church members, mostly natives of South Korea and Japan, they railed against communism and voter fraud. They praised Jesus and Donald Trump (not necessarily in that order) and demanded the commander-in-chief  be declared the winner in a crooked election.

Founded by two brothers who broke away from their father, Sun Myung Moon’s, Unification Church, Sanctuary believes in standing in the gap between what they determine to be good and evil. Earl saw evil everywhere he looked, even in Zerelda’s big amber eyes that made her look like one of those yellow-eyed tigers Adam and Eve kept in the Garden of Eden before Eve ate the apple and blew paradise apart forever. Earl and Zerelda would have eaten the apple before it even ripened, worms and all.

But, in a surprise move, Earl planned to break away from the church, packing up Zerelda and their meager belongings, mostly survival gear including fully automatic weapons, ammunition and cans of 13 different varieties of Spam to make the move to a new home in Scranton, just 25 miles away. If two Moonie escapees could do it, so could he.

Starting a new action church would be easy. All Earl needed was a couple-hundred-a-month in mortgage money for one of those dumps that once housed a robber coal baron and now sat empty and decrepit just waiting for demolition or a new owner. Whackers who refuse to accept Trump’s defeat would be easy pickings to recruit to the Cathedral of the Eternal Donald.

Earl Schmidt dreamed big. Together he and Zerelda would rule the universe. Or at least make enough money to retire in Atlantic City when the pandemic ended. Such lightning bolt enlightenment doesn’t happen every day.

A week later on Christmas Day Earl Schmidt stood before a packed living-room church loaded with “lost sheeple” praying for redemption. A cross between a local gun show and a high-holy hillbilly snake-handling ritual, the ill-advised and technically illegal gathering in the midst of the rapidly-spreading coronavirus brought tears to the eyes of the faithful.

Earl wept the loudest.

Zerelda also sobbed fat tears that rolled down her face and stained the front of her horizontal- stripe camouflage field jacket. She cried so hard she lost her breath. Pointing at his wife, pistol-packing Pastor Earl Schmidt spoke.

Speak to us in the tongue of the Savior, Earl said.

Zerelda inhaled and screamed the golden gospel taken from the exact capitalized words of a recent Trump tweet.

THE DEMOCRATS DUMPED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BALLOTS IN THE SWING STATES LATE IN THE EVENING. IT WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!

Devotees high on conspiracy went wild.

Hallelujah, sister! Sing it, sister! Fire in the hole, sister!

With eyes bugging out in rapture, the Right Reverend Earl Schmidt rushed to his wife’s side, knocking off her red and white Santa Claus hat equipped with a blitz action trauma (BAT) bullet headband. Wearing a tight tank top so his new hand grenade tattoos glistened red, white and blue like biceps of mass destruction, he consoled Zerelda. Again he commanded her to deliver the word. Spinning with the ease of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on the season premiere of “Dancing with the Stars,” this armed evangelical madman faced the crowd to demand additional scripture from his wife.

Who is Satan?

Zerelda answered.

Joe Biden is Satan!

Earl Schmidt went ballistic.

Where is Satan from?

From Hell!

Where is Hell?

Now Zerelda’s eyes bugged out as she wriggled like a lap dancer and hyperventilated the naked truth.

Scranton, she said.

A motley congregation of misfits, dishonorably-discharged military veterans, recovering addicts of all stripes and assorted other troubled and easily-led extremists began to chant.

Scranton!

Scranton!

Laying his hand in a healing gesture on top of his wife’s head of stringy blond hair, Earl Schmidt raised his eyes to the heavens and addressed the multitudes.

Looks like 2021’s going to be some hot new year in Hell, he said.

Grinning fiendishly, he corrected himself.

I mean Scranton.

Santa Claus is wearing a mask.

So why does Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey risk infecting his own neighborhood despite his protestations to the contrary?

Concerned for myself and others, as I always do before going out in public, I wore a black mask Wednesday as I headed out on my regular afternoon walk. At almost 70, I’m just another senior citizen in the Hill Section of Scranton trying to stay alive in this deadly age of COVID-19. Staying healthy always matters, but commitment to the common good is now crucial to survival.  

Sadly, not everyone behaves conscientiously. Too many of my neighbors, postal carriers, FedEx drivers and others who should know better recklessly flaunt their ignorance, defiance or both by refusing to wear a mask.

Bob Casey is one of the sloppiest offenders.

As I walked up North Webster Avenue at about 3:15 p.m., my powerful Hill Section neighbor stood in the street chatting amicably with a gray-haired man. They stood about two feet apart, not at all socially distant or seeming to care about risk. In his black topcoat, hypodermic-needle-thin Casey looked like a stuffy professional pall bearer.

Casey wore a thin surgical mask under his chin like one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame back when the team wore leather football helmets. Last of the legends Jim Crowley is long dead and buried near Scranton. I don’t want to join him anytime soon if I can help it. Casey, 60, shouldn’t want to run the risk of dying or killing his neighbors, either.

Casey didn’t adjust his mask as my wife and I drew closer. As I passed on the other side of the street, I tried not to inhale the stench of Casey’s brash carelessness, too close for comfort for my underlying medical conditions. Geisinger doctors have diagnosed me as suffering from hypertensive heart disease without congestive heart failure and nonischemic cardiomyopathy (HCC). Excellent health care, medication, daily exercise, a good diet and a disciplined lifestyle make me strong – as long as potential fatal disease spreaders keep their distance.

Steering clear of Hill Section feral cats fighting fleas is one thing. Worrying that my neighbor the senator might breathe on me is a different kettle of droplets entirely.

On July 2 Casey appeared with other Democratic senators in a video Casey highlighted in a Twitter message touting the civic responsibility to wear a mask.

Casey wrote: “Wearing a mask shows:

1. Compassion – the person near you could have, or care for someone with, an underlying health complication.

2. Humility – you could be asymptomatic.

3. Community – mitigating COVID helps us all. TOGETHER, we will beat this virus.”

In yet another show of humility, in a subsequent July statement released by Gov. Tom Wolf’s office, Casey said, “Public health experts continue to recommend mask-wearing in public, and ongoing research continues to support that recommendation. When you wear a mask, you are sending a clear message to others in your community that you care about them and their well-being as much as your own. I know that if we each do our part, we will beat this virus and be able to start safely rebuilding together.”

The death toll climbed.

The fight continued.

Science discovered a vaccine.

In a Dec. 20 statement, Casey said, “This morning, I received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. I will receive my second dose in approximately three weeks. I encourage all Americans, in consultation with their doctor, to get the vaccine when it becomes available to them. I will continue to press the Administration to work to ensure that all Americans can receive the vaccine in a timely manner and insist that vaccines be distributed in an equitable fashion, particularly at nursing homes where residents and workers face an acute threat from the virus.”

Equitable?

How equitable is VIP vaccine distribution when I’m more at risk than he is? And I’m willing to wait in line while those even more at risk get their shots first. Despite whatever law or privilege gives Casey special vaccine status, our local blueblood should be standing in line with the rest of us. Not only does he jump the queue, he mocks the vaccine with his own smug dangerous behavior.  

This is the same guy who says he likely already survived the coronavirus.

“My fever went away on its own by mid-April, and it was never recommended that I be tested for the virus,” he said in a published statement. “I was able to work during my illness, remotely engaging with constituents and staff and keeping a full schedule.”

Casey said the anitbody test “revealed substantial levels of COVID-19 antibody in my blood, significantly more than the amount required to qualify me as a plasma donor.”

“In an effort to help others fighting this virus, I will be making my first donation today in Taylor, Pennsylvania,” Casey said. “I encourage others who have recovered from COVID-19 to consult with their own physician to see if they may also be eligible to donate.”

“I will continue to follow the guidance of public health experts by wearing a mask in public and observing social distancing practices, and I hope that others will do the same to help slow the spread of this virus,” Casey said in the statement.

I, too, will follow the guidance of public health experts.

I, too, will continue to wear a mask in public.

And, I, too, will social distance – particularly when it comes to “Our Bobby,” an oblivious, inoculated white, male politician living the dream as a hypocrite.

No doubt about it, your honor, I am guilty as charged.

Former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies bowed his head and closed his eyes as if in deep, powerful prayer.

U.S. District Court Judge James “Big Jimmy” Flynn scowled.

You understand I will take your recent cooperation with the FBI into consideration, the judge said.

Yes, sir, your honor, sir, I sure as hell hope so.

Big Jimmy the judge banged the gavel three times, each crack louder than the last, so hard he worried he sprained his wrist and injured his normally limber vodka-pouring hand.

Order in the goddamn court, Judge Flynn said.

With his chin touching his chest, Harry Davies stood slouched and unsettled, unconsciously picking lint off his blue sport coat as the judge spit words dripping with scorn.

You also understand your status as a former Scranton mayor, if you want to call getting elected mayor of Scranton status, makes no difference in the sentence I am about to hand down.

Sir, yes, sir, sir, Harry Davies said.

Harry was ready for anything but figured Flynn ought to give him the benefit of the doubt since Harry used to play cards with the judge’s loser brother back when Harry was a Democrat before he flip-flopped and registered Republican and then switched back to Democrat again to run in the primary.

Big Jimmy Flynn grinned.

Twenty years for public corruption with no possibility of parole, he said.

Former Scranton Mayor Harry Davies’ eyes rolled back in his head faster than the spinning cherries on a classic casino slot machine. His knees buckled as he dropped, slamming his chin off the edge of the defense table on the way down. Rising from the bench, Judge Flynn stared with disdain at the unconscious convicted felon and hissed a harsh goodbye

For the record, you puke, my sentence has nothing to do with your not hiring my wife’s brother in the zoning office, either, Judge Flynn said.

When Harry Davies came to, new Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate number 76927-067-15008-067 vowed to get even with the whole goddamn system that oppressed, tortured, disrespected and stuck him in a minimum security prison camp. Not wasting any time on his second day of incarceration, Davies wrote a letter to President Donald Trump requesting a full pardon.

What better way for Trump to get even with Joe Biden than to pardon the most crooked mayor in the history of Biden’s birthplace? Check that: the most crooked mayor ever caught and imprisoned in the history of Scranton. What better way for Trump to get even than to unleash a pathological former crooked Scranton mayor to run amok in Joe Biden’s childhood heaven?

Harry mailed the letter in care of his buddy Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski, a die-hard Republican and Trump confidant. Besides, with a full pardon Harry could run for mayor again.

He could run for Congress.

Maybe even president.

Harry Davies started to feel powerful again.

If Joe Biden can win, anybody can win. If the so-called crappy kid from Scranton can pull off a presidential victory, a bona fide scrappy kid from Scranton can do likewise. Besides, after all Harry did for Scranton, the feds had the gall to indict him, convict him, sentence him and lock him up for what amounts to a life sentence. With all the phonies, bagmen, pervert priests and two-bit grifters running around just in the downtown alone, the government grabs him?

If Judge Dombroski knew what was good for him he’d come through like a champ and immediately pull the necessary strings to persuade Trump to cough up a full pardon. That old crook Dombroski would know Mayor Harry Davies had in his possession stockpiles of incriminating evidence to support a variety of crimes countless city, county, state and even federal elected and appointed officials committed during the time they corrupted every notion of public decency, citizenship and civic duty.

Who could forget that night at the county/city prayer clam bake when Judge Dombroski drank 12 lime vodkas and Mountain Dews and let that floozy red-haired hairdresser Shannon Kelly spank him with wet halusky whips? Harry Davies got video of that in living color so vivid you can see the buttery yellow marks the thick, cholesterol-rich egg noodles made on the judge’s bare behind.

And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of documented bold bribes, years of brassy kickbacks and careers made on audacious quid pro quos, bad behavior that backslapping Democratic tribal elders and their flattering flunkies in the Electric City ignore as they sing the praises of Scranton values learned at the kitchen table.

President-elect Joe Biden swears he learned everything he needed to know about life at one of those Scranton kitchen tables.

Under the table is more like it.

In the meantime, former Mayor Harry Davies had an immediate plan.

A prison break sounded good. Escape became the first order of a new day. Harry felt like a new man already.

In Scranton everything depends on how you look at it.

Here’s the deal, man, said Timmy Kelly.

Gino looked up from lacing his black high top Converse sneakers, having trouble reaching the laces over the bulging expanse of his belly that heaved from the minor exertion.

You sound like Joe Biden, he said.

Timmy Kelly did a jaunty Irish jig.

Exactly, he said.

Gino grinned his big fat grin that got him all the girls in high school when he weighed 100 pounds less and his face didn’t look like a doughy deep-fried Italian pizza fritta.

For whatever reason, maybe because each man thought he might get interviewed on national television, each morning since Election Day Timmy Kelly picked up his buddy Gino Maraschino and the two men drove the half-hour from their Minooka section of Scranton neighborhood through limited city traffic, singing along to their favorite best of Bon Jovi CD to walk for 15 minutes at the Green Ridge Little League field where Joe Biden played baseball as a kid.

News reporters had been flocking to the field for months to do flat color pieces about Biden’s flat childhood. Since the election, national and even international media competed to interview anybody from dull college students to creepy retired priests. Even guys stooping to pick up dog shit got interviewed on CNN.

Timmy and Gino knew each other since childhood sledding days but weren’t close. They played varsity football together at Scranton High School and got along well enough over beers and subsequent decades to be willing to share five minutes of fame if they got lucky and stumbled across a television crew from Sweden.

Timmy Kelly looked Gino in the eye.

Scranton voted for Biden because we want something, he said, a return on our investment. Little things, like private White House tours, selfies with Joe in the Oval office and low-level government jobs for worthless kids.

What do you want, Timmy?

I want Biden to endorse my candidacy for mayor.

Go on, he won’t do that.

He’ll have to, Kelly said.

Why?

Simple, I’m from Scranton.

So is your opponent, Gino said.

Yeah, but she married into the city. She’s from Oregon. Waving around that Harvard business degree and rubbing our noses in her poison ivy league education like she’s Caroline Kennedy.

She’s also the incumbent mayor, Timmy.

What’s incumbent mean?

Current.

For now she is, Kelly said.

You got a campaign slogan yet?

Timmy Kelly got so excited he stammered.

I… I… I sound like Joe Biden, he said.

Tell me, Gino said.

Scranton Lives Matter!

Now Timmy Kelly rose to full height.

You know what else I got?

Don’t tell me, Gino said.

A career.

Doing what?

I’m a Joe Biden impersonator.

You’re shitting me.

My first appearance is online Sunday. I’m Zooming a stand-up show as a fundraiser for the inauguration.

The Biden transition team hasn’t announced details about the inauguration, Gino said.

You know me, Timmy said. One step ahead of everybody.

The leader of the band, Gino said.

I got front row VIP swearing-in tickets to give away, too.

Where’d you get tickets?

I designed them on the computer last night.

How many you make?

A hundred.

I heard on the news that even though Joe and Kamala will be sworn into office on the steps of the Capitol, the inauguration planners want Americans to stay home, Gino said.

Tell that to the Green Ridge moochers.

You don’t even look like Joe Biden, Gino said.

Timmy pulled a pair of aviator shades from his pocket and slid the frames over his ears.

I been putting the whitener on my teeth so they’re bright as headlights. I bought a gray wig at my sister’s beauty parlor that flips up in the back like Joe Biden’s hair. I’ll keep repeating here’s the deal and look, man. I’ll repeat some of his dumbest quotes, like the one about not being able to go into a convenience store for coffee unless you got an Indian accent. I’ll say it in an Indian accent, too, like them call center scammers from Bangladesh who call you at the house.

Gino seemed concerned.

What if people drive all the way down to Washington for the swearing in and can’t get in?

I’ll tell them Joe called me personally and asked me to apologize for him. I’ll blame the Secret Service. Say they haven’t been right since Trump gave them the COVID. Then I’ll drop the bomb.

What bomb?

I’ll tell them Joe’s coming back to town for an invitation-only post-inaugural ball at the Cultural Center.

You got invitations for that, too?

Soon as I get the printer working again, I will.

You’ll be as famous as them Elvis impersonators in Vegas, Gino said.

Remember what Joe told Barack when Obamacare passed?

Gino drew a blank.

This is a big fucking deal, Timmy said.

Retired Scranton High School chemistry teacher Casey Weatherhogg rooted for the revolution.

Burn it down, start all over again.

But the revolution never arrived.

Filling out his mail-in ballot on Election Day, Casey hoped for the best, voting for Scranton native son Joe Biden. Actually, he voted for Kamala Harris, a strong West Coast woman of color who could take over if Biden got shakier. Casey never forgave Biden for lying about having an uncle who worked in the Scranton coal mines and later laughing about his scam on a late night television show, mocking local yokel coal crackers who bought his story hook, line and anthracite. Casey still wanted an apology. But what could he do? Refuse to vote knowing Donald Trump might win re-election and take us all with him on the road to the apocalypse? No, Casey sucked it up and went with the man Barack Obama called the scrappy kid from Scranton. Maybe one day Casey could get even.

COVID changed everything. Life didn’t go as planned. The world shifted even without the benefit of mind-altering drugs. Such cultural chaos was no malarkey.

At 75, Casey Weatherhogg weighed 172 pounds and stood 6-foot-4 in his Birkenstocks. Thin, frizzed gray hair fell below his shoulders. Tufts stiff as last year’s robin’s nest protruded from both sides of his head. Wearing nothing but a thin leather headband adorned with a silver peace sign, faded blue jeans and vintage T-shirts with classic rock band names emblazoned across the front, Casey threw on a stained fringed suede jacket whenever he went out. Since March he added a tie-dyed surgical mask he bought online from a vegan music commune in Maine.

Shoppers snickered at Gerrity’s Supermarket where Casey bought tofu. Smart-ass kids called him names like Space Dick. Casey danced his way through the aisles to the psychedelic music that always played in his head.

Other than his 95-year-old mother, Mabel, no other Weatherhoggs of ancient Anglo-Scottish breeding lived in Scranton. Mrs. Weatherhogg seemed to fit quite nicely into the established social order, though, being a proud Marywood College graduate and retired city librarian and all. Local business and political leaders viewed her eccentric yet obviously brilliant boy as just a cultural aberration. For the most part the Weatherhoggs minded their own business. People in town mostly ignored them.

Until the COVID hit, Casey took Mabel out to get her hair blue-rinsed each week and stopped at Cooper’s Seafood House for fried flounder and a bowl, not a cup, of clam chowder. Mom liked red; Casey liked white. Since the coronavirus, though, they became cloistered, isolated, housebound recluses who dug deeper and deeper into themselves, exploring internal grievances and trying to comprehend the meaning of life. Unmarried with no heirs, Casey stood alone, just the way he liked it. Mabel fussed over her baby like always.

Named after the downtown Hotel Casey where his parents conceived him after their wedding reception and overnight honeymoon, Casey longed for yesterday. Stories of shining streetcars, men in fedoras and ladies in dresses and white gloves seemed glorious. His own favorite memory of watching Bonanza in blazing color on 1959 television collapsed under the weight of an onslaught of so-called progress. Nowadays Casey felt doomed with the new spliced generations X, Y and Z, aimless cubs foraging through clear-cut forests of technology, a glut of menacing social media and teenage angst poisoned with attention deficit drugs, college loans, chronic unemployment, zero goals, low aspirations, foodie pretention, and TikToc obsession. Some of the current breed never heard of the Beatles. The Hotel Casey existed only in crusty photographs and memories cherished by an aging cadre of senior citizens. A snotty well-used Hilton stands in its place.

Casey’s long ago decade of California dreaming had provided unparalleled adventure. Yet all that remained of that radical trip was strategy, a simple yet ominous plan to take down whatever little piece of the establishment, what Casey called “The Power,” he could level. Casey plotted the best way to take out “The Man” and make a spiritual impact in the process. Right on, right on, right on.

Ecological injustice continued to run amok throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. A stinking, sprawling, garbage-juice-spewing monster landfill loomed large in Dunmore, Scranton’s backyard. Elite political hacks like U.S. Sen. Robert Casey Jr. (who lived down the street from Casey) and Rep. Matt Cartwright only paid lip service to liberating the people from the pollution and economic slavery practiced by evil environmental masters.

Casey needed revenge.

Both the senator and the congressman stopped responding to his heartfelt landfill emails. Nobody from their offices returned his respectful phone calls. Ignoring his concerns, they marginalized his civic duty. They mocked his sincere activist existence. Neither of these officials would have pulled that shit back in 1968 when Casey went by the nickname “Molotov.”

Nobody knew his past, of course, not even Mabel. This once bold and now washed-up radical often thought about the free-wheeling subversive existence he relished when he majored in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and blew up freeway rest stops along U.S. Route 101 in his spare time. Every Highway Patrol officer from Stinson Beach to Santa Barbara was on the lookout for Molotov, who truly expected to get caught. Casey still had an FBI wanted poster featuring his grinning mug that he stole from a post office in Santa Maria. But nobody tracked him down. Decades later, this former Weather Underground soldier who once helped Patty Hearst hide out in the Poconos, this veteran freedom-fighting bomb thrower, this hometown guerrilla, just chilled at home with his mother in Scranton, a couple of golden agers waiting for the end.

Both wanted to go down fighting. You wouldn’t know Mabel was capable of anything. Casey, too, craved one last mission to defend against “The Power” that would send him into the great beyond of clear consciousness where he became one with the universe.

The only question was exactly how much LSD to dump into the Lake Scranton drinking water supply. A little 21^st Century-style acid indigestion ought to throw open a few doors of perception.

Like Casey always said, you don’t need a Weatherhogg to know which way the wind blows.

Say hello to 75-year-old Casey Weatherhogg.

A retired Scranton High School chemistry teacher and 1967 University of California at Berkeley graduate, Casey once followed the Grateful Dead.

Now he follows Joe Biden into the White House as “The Power,” as writer Tom Wolfe called it, bears down on  Scranton, the birthplace and childhood home of America’s soon-to-be 46^th president.

Casey mistrusts Biden. Casey hates the system. Casey wants to spread truth and light in hard coal country but doesn’t know how… until he does, of course.

Man, does he ever figure it out.

Thus shapes the bones of Scranton Lives Matter! a scrappy kind of novel and free online serialization starting Monday at theoutlawcorbett.com website where I’ll post a new chapter every Monday and Friday until the end.

That sounds ominous because it is ominous.

The novel tells the tale of a city born of ashes and coal dust, a town always on the ropes in one way or another because of money and politics. Political corruption remains the lifeblood of the city.

Despite a hip new mayor, the city’s first female, The Power flows like the creature in The Blob, the 1958 horror movie that oozes sticky, clinging mayhem through every cultural crevasse of our town.

Professional Joe Biden impersonator Timmy Kelly wants his piece of The Power. Prison guard Gino Maraschino wants to cash in, too. Who knew Black blood flowed through Gino’s veins until Timmy Kelly laid out why the family pedigree mattered? Timmy’s sister, Shannon has already carved out her piece of The Power during a hot affair with married Lackawanna County President Judge Stanley “Stash” Dombroski. Federal penitentiary inmate and former Scranton Mayor Harry “The Ninja” Davies has a comeback plan as well.

Like her son, Casey’s 95-year-old pot-smoking militant senior citizen mother Mabel hates the Establishment, too.

Together, these characters provide an inside look at a city and a nation on the verge of greatness or implosion. Scranton is but a microcosm of the national chaos that now defines our republic.

Don’t miss chapter one in Monday’s news blog.

News?

Is this novel really news?

Is Joe Biden really scrappy?

Scranton Lives Matter!

My novels and short stories shove readers’ brains deep into the messy word world of cultural chaos and raw violence.

But, in most media interviews about Paddy’s Day in Trump Town, my most recent novel, I’ve focused on partisan politics and the distorted way too many people live in Northeastern Pennsylvania hard coal country.

And, yeah, we’re hard coal country whether you like it or not.

Nowadays, with no boss, living and creating in Scranton as an outlaw novelist, I’m a paperback writer whose words might offend more people than when I wrote news columns for the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre or argued with blockheads on local wasteland radio for a decade.

That’s progress.

WVIA’s Erika Funke understands.

Unlike most media interviewers Funke comes with a well-informed artistic arsenal that recognizes fiction as power and words as weapons of societal self-defense. She gently prods and questions with the ease of the intellectual she is.

Erika Funke gets it.

Our recent conversation gave me a chance to share with her and WVIA listeners some of the method to my madness after transitioning from a decades-long journalism career to the novel world of my imagination where a thin line often exists between fact and fiction.

Funke is a senior producer, morning host of Classical Music, Early Birds, and other programs. “ArtScene”, her award-winning daily arts program, features interviews with creative individuals from the region, the United States and abroad, according to her station bio.

That’s me – a creative individual, a primitive and proud of it, from the region.

I respect and admire Funke.

More people need to understand how edgy, unsafe art, genesis that offends, disturbs and sets the stage for progress that best prepares an uncertain world for a visionary tomorrow. Originality and authenticity trump, no pun intended, the dull self-absorbed moderation of the masses who are too often asses.

So read.

Write.

Think.

Answer the Muse and be yourself by whatever means necessary.

As legendary Parliaments-Funkadelic intrepid traveler George Clinton said, “Free your mind and your ass will follow.”

Here’s the link to the WVIA ArtScene interview.

https://www.wvia.org/radio/artscene/

Like I said on the radio, “You better listen!”

¡Ay caramba!

Putting out the Scranton welcome mat to small business owners of color is one thing. Pulling the rug out from under their American Dream is another.

The affront is all the worse if city officials targeted one of an increasing number of people of Mexican descent in whose hands lies the future of the city.

That’s why the owner, employees and supporters of La Chingada at 512 Cedar Avenue in South Side should stand Scranton strong after the restaurant and so much more finds itself embarrassed and attacked simply because of its name.

City zoning board members Wednesday voted 4-0 to uphold a sign violation against owner Cristian J. Garcia Torres for displaying the sign because the name of the restaurant is a vulgar word that violates the city’s prohibition on obscenity or vulgarities on exterior signs, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune.

The owner said the word he chose for his restaurant’s name has other meanings in the Spanish language. While he acknowledged that one of the meanings is a vulgarity, he testified that the vulgar usage is not what he intends and not how his customers view it, said the Times-Tribune, whose editors failed to name the restaurant.

Whether board members and editors know it or not, the business brand is steeped in deep Mexican history and culture.

Like many words in many languages, “la chingada” carries many interpretations. Go to Italian-American Pittston and ask people if they know what “minghia” means. Ask if they are offended whenever somebody uses the expression of exclamation. Ask my Irish tribe if they know what bollix or bollocks means. Ask any pseudo Scranton hipster about the cute name borne by the now defunct food truck “What the Fork.”

The same goes for “la chingada.”

La Chingada is the name of an actual town in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Among numerous other meanings, the words also serve as an expression of exasperation, as in “go to hell.” The words can also mean “go fuck yourself.”

Can we help it if the Scranton Zoning Board has a dirty mind?

The concept of “la chingada” has been famously critiqued by  1990 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Octavio Paz in his book The Labyrinth of Solitude. Linguists and other scholars have weighed in as well.

When a restaurant with the same name opened earlier this year in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, here’s what Michael Hastings of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote in a February 14 article: “Claudia Valdez, a native of Sonora, Mexico and a teaching professor of Spanish at Wake Forest University, said that though expressions containing “chingada” can have negative connotations, the typical reaction from a Mexican or Spanish-speaking person will not be negative.

‘My husband and I are both linguists, and when he told me about it, we both thought how interesting and smart a title. My attitude was totally positive,’ Valdez said.

An internet search revealed that other businesses, primarily restaurants, have used La Chingada as a name in such cities as London; Paris, Toronto; San Jose, Ca.; and Scranton, Pa.

Many sources attribute the origin of the negative, vulgar connotations to a historical reference to La Malinche, the Indian mistress of Spanish conquistador Herman Cortez.

Valdez said that the word ‘chingada’ and its root ‘chingar’ have generated so many slang words that they have their own dictionary called ‘El Chingonario.’

‘The meanings change with the context, different syntax, even the intonation,’ she said.”

So will we Scranton gabachos (another interesting Mexican word you can look up) discriminate against our new neighbors? Do the people of a city that once welcomed countless white immigrants, including my grandfather who spoke Irish and English, shun other languages, cultures and traditions? Do we lash out in ignorance?

Or do we raise high the banner of free speech, liberty and justice for all?

By the way, “ay caramba” is a Mexican curse so innocent that TV cartoon hero Bart Simpson used the phrase regularly. Loosely translated, caramba is a euphemism that means penis.

Hoist that on a flashing neon sign and see if anybody complains.

Seriously perplexed, Mikey Hoyle stood in the corner of the bar by the pool table.

We won, right?

Wilkes-Barre Mayor Spuds McAnus snapped like a moody red setter.

Of course we won, said McAnus, who also served as Irish Guys social club president.

Jesus, that’s a relief, said club vice president Hoyle.

If Biden doesn’t steal the election, that is, McAnus said.

Mikey Hoyle stopped drinking his beer in mid-chug and stared at his cultural mentor.

But I thought…

You think too much.

Thanks, mayor.

Bad things happen in Philadelphia, McAnus said, remember in 1985 when those Africans holed up in their houses and the mayor had to bomb the whole block to get them out?

That MOVE gang, like George Jefferson moving on up on TV reruns, right?

Then this year the Democrats took down the Frank Rizzo statue, McAnus said.

Next thing you know they be pulling Rocky down the Art Museum steps like he’s some Confederate general, Mikey Hoyle said.

So the libtards are rigging the election in Philly, he said.

Fake votes, McAnus said.

Can’t we do something?

Mr. Trump knows we’re standing by.

For what?

We’ll know when we get there.

Should we protest?

And look like antifa socialists?

Mikey grabbed his crotch.

Yeah, feel this burn, Bern.

Money talks, Mikey.

So we keep donating to Mr. Trump even though the election’s over.

It’s never over for us.

Especially if Mr. Trump gets arrested after the Dems rob the election, Mikey said.

We got time, at least until inauguration day.

I got an idea, Mikey said.

This should be good, McAnus said.

You know that place up in Scranton where Biden goes, that Hank’s Hoagies?

I saw him posing there on the news.

We can drive up and moon the lunch crowd.

What are you, Mikey, 14?

What’s the matter with that?

We’re adults, McAnus said.

Listen to the guy who blew up a dozen condoms and pasted a picture of Biden’s face on them.

We called them dickhead balloons and sold them outside the Trump rally for twenty dollars a pop, McAnus said.

I still think mooning Hank’s Hoagies is a good idea.

At least Mr. Trump won Luzerne County, McAnus said.

Mikey threw his arms into the air, flashing two thumbs up.

Victory, he said.

Irish Guys never lose, McAnus said.

Mikey Hoyle put on that grin his aging mother hated.

Some things never change, he said.