My Life As E. Malcolm McGuilicuddy

LIFE

A brief introduction

I am named for my paternal grandfather, Malcolm Sean McGuilicuddy. A quiet man who was good with his hands, could pick out a tune on most instruments, and was fair with a line of Irish verse when the muse descended. He made his living as a small farmer in rural Oklahoma and had weathered the worst of the Depression by being self-sufficient and offering his neighbors his services as a man who could fix damn near anything.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to meet the man as one stormy spring day, a twister picked him, and the tractor he was riding on, clear off the ground and high into the air. My grandmother swore he looked back at her as he was being lifted into the air and smiled, still sitting on the tractor. Occasionally someone would joke that he had landed somewhere in Missouri and had just started over. He was never seen or heard from again.

My parents became Christian missionaries when I was four years old, and we proceeded to travel around the country, moving from state to state on the whim of my father’s understanding of the will of the Holy Spirit. We rarely stayed in one place for very long, but when I was sixteen, we moved back to Oklahoma for a bit to care for my grandmother, who had fallen ill.

It was the summer of 1971, and a traveling carnival had come to town, and one of the ride operators asked if I was looking for a job. I was only sixteen, but I’d already seen a good bit of the world, and if I knew anything, it was that there was nothing for me in Enid, Oklahoma.

So I said yes, went home, quietly packed a bag, and left before anyone even knew I was gone. The next day I was riding in a truck on my way to Amarillo. By the end of the summer, I was in California and never looked back.

I started as a ride operator but soon found my calling as a barker. I guess I inherited my grandfather’s quiet lyricism and my father’s gift for lifting a crowd up by their souls. I had spent my life listening to itinerant preachers whip up a crowd with a combination of charm and religious fervor. It turned out that was a good education for working the carnie circuit.

I tried joining the US Coast Guard but only made it three days in basic training before I realized I had made a horrible mistake and convinced my company commander that they were better off without me. I had learned to be rather persuasive by then, but the real reason was that they couldn’t find any record of me. My family had always lived pretty far off the grid. No birth certificate. No social security number. No draft number. I didn’t exist, and they couldn’t explain it. They were happy to be rid of me.

I ended up getting a job as a bartender in an Irish pub in Philadelphia and enrolled in classes at Temple University, where I discovered that I had an affinity for writing and decided I would try my hand as a newspaperman. It wouldn’t last, but I did fall in love with writing and reporting.

I’ve had what most people would consider a colorful life. I’ve done a little bit of everything, learning on the job, and then moving on when I tired of it. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I mostly moved around from place to place, working odd jobs and doing what I had to get by. I lost a lot of years to drugs and alcohol. I was married a few times, but none of them ever took, and I never had any children. Never saw the point of them.

I wrote articles and stories when the mood struck me, making a few bucks here and there. Mostly I found myself drawn to various subcultures, from the carnies and bikers I’d come to love and respect, to pacifists and anarchists. I worked as a handyman for a few summers at a camp in upstate New York, harvested wheat in the Dakotas, and worked as a DJ in a strip club in New Orleans.

My wilder days are behind me, or so I tell myself. Today I live in a quiet seaside town with a three-legged cat named Fidel. I write about what I know, which is life as I see it. Nothing more. Nothing less. For the time being, this is where I plan to stay, but you never know.

It seems I now have the time to write I never felt I had. I was always too busy living to think too much about what it all meant. But now in my dotage, I feel it’s time to devote some time to those age old questions. What are we doing here? What does it all mean? Can I get another ride?

Can’t imagine what I’d do differently, but another ride ‘round the bend sure would be nice.

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