Keystone State of Mind

"Bucking Ham Palace"

The Adventures of Richard Garrettson

Chapter Four

"Unemployed and Fat as Shit"

Richard returned home, out of work, and out of shape.  Without realizing it, he let his weight balloon to over 230 pounds.  He had more chins than a Chinese phonebook has pages.  After taking a couple of days to rest and reacquaint himself with his Pittsburgh friends, (glug, glug, glug) he kicked into gear and got to work.  He got a membership at the local rec center and worked out every morning.  After he finished, he would come home and lock himself in his room, drawing and writing until dinner.  When his website went live, it had several pages that he updated daily.  One for the latest cartoon, one for caricatures of friends and family, and a page where he wrote a humorous advice blog.  After a couple of weeks he realized that some people were actually checking it.  

Things were good again.  Richard spent his days doing the thing that he loved and people were actually responding to it.  For awhile the routine went on.  Five days a week something went up on that blog.  There wasn't necessarily a new cartoon each day but there would at least be some form of blog entry.  This was truly a golden age of cartooning.

Then one weekend, he planned one of his excursions.

On Thursday, after he had finished his blog, he posted that he would be out of the office on Friday and there wouldn't be an entry.  People can't possibly expect him to do one everyday can they?!  But he wasn't letting the readers down, he was letting himself down.

Since he started the website he held himself to a high standard daily, and once he took one day off, why not another? And another...

Soon he wasn't a struggling cartoonist, just an unemployed bum.  Barely able to muster the energy to draw a bath, let alone a cartoon, or even a cartoon of a guy in a bath, lifting little tiny weights with a caption reading: the bath of least resistance. (Hey that's not bad!)  

Spring was coming and as the weather got warmer, Richard realized that he would soon have to find a job.  For years he worked the summers as a tiki-bartender for a country club and he decided that he would try to get that job back as he clawed his way up into the working world.  

He had no idea what Fortuna's cruel wheel had in store for him...