Author’s Proof

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Copyright 2024 James LaFond

A Crackpot Book

Lynn Lockhart Publisher

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Dust Cover

I first met Electric Dan, a long time reader of mine and fellow combat practitioner, in August of 2020, near Joliet, Illinois, during the plague that enslaved us all. Between training, clearing a small tree downed in a recent tornado and engaging in a role playing game with his wife and daughters, Dan shared stories of his life growing up as a working class son in a town targeted for transformation into a criminal class slum. Dan’s story of his early life in the soulless shadow of Chicago, growing up in the 1970s and into manhood in the 1980s, comes from an untold corner of the Modern Experience.

Electric Dan

I find Dan and his life, trials and thoughts to be interesting, far more so than that of the power-twisted people we normally read of. He, however, does not, would rather speak of his father foremost, then his friends and the world of honesty, bustle, lies and trouble he has waded through as a boy, then as a youth, then as a man. I, as the nefarious author of this chronicle of working class plight in a modest town of the Midwest, am seeking through Dan’s recollections to find a better understanding of this friend found late in life.

Last year we sparred for almost an entire day, then talked. I like Dan. He is a slightly big man with a power lifter’s frame who enjoys the relatively delicate arts of boxing, karate, stick fighting and knife fighting. Dan is an electrician by trade who has suffered hard injuries to his back and shoulders. In his mid fifties, his stamina is better than that of big men half his age. I can tell by this, that Dan has been in bad situations and has come through with a more level head and easy heart than most. I am hoping to learn more about Dan, my friend come late in life, through his stories of other men he wishes not to be forgotten.

Tonight, my only childhood friend, Rick, will drive me down to the Pittsburgh train station. Overnight the train will take me to Chicago, then in the morning to Joliet, where Dan will pick me up in his plain work truck. He is recovering from surgery, so has time to sit and talk at length about his life. I aim to complete recording his tales from Monday through Saturday. Then, hopefully having come to know Dan better, as I take the trains from Joliet and Chicago to Seattle, to visit another late found friend, my intent is to assemble the pieces of this life remembered, in the order they occurred, into single a book. Then, considering our week together, my biographic intent is to write an impression of Dan as he is, at the rear view mirror of life, together with his family and wife. Dan does not think his life is worth recording anymore than another person’s. That is the point of this. Those who earn the fame to be written of as a subject, in this money-god society, tend to be the worst of us, the folks we, as humans, would least like to have dinner with. Dan wished me a happy Father’s Day today.

-James LaFond, Sunday Morning, June 16, 2024

Composition

Seated at Dan’s dining room table, over coffee, books, water, and perhaps something else. To be typed as spoken with questions limited to details and prompts to recalled stories from earlier visits and questions focused on the persons, places and events of early life.

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Inspirational Quote

“He was so thick, so strong, almost squashed—like he was from a heavy gravity planet.”

-Dan, Late April, 2023

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Dedication

For Angie, Dan’s wife, for her kindness to this stranger and her common sense dedication to seeing reality in a world trafficking in stranger fantasy.

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Contents: From Quotes of our 2023 Interview

-1. Being a Kid

-2. Protecting Our Sisters

-3. Being a Man in a World that Hates You