New Ways. By Don Robishaw

Vagrant’s Thoughts: Old ways don’t work these days. Panhandling calls for patience, persistence, and writing skills. A Sharpie and invented spelling are acceptable on a raw sheet of cardboard. I’ve got an idea. I’ll offer a service even better.   

Driver’s Thoughts: An unfamiliar old bearded dude in a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans mills around on a traffic island at the Lincoln intersection on the outskirts of the gated village I’ve always lived in and taps the corner of a squeegee against the mirror of my vintage BMW.

“Brother can ya spare a dime?

Need a drink and ain’t got no money.

and ain’t got a dime”

   

    “Where is the other guy who usually washes windshields?”

Bearded dude with a tear in his eye bows and blesses himself as I go through my change says “My friend’s not coming back no more but ‘left behind’ a message for ya.”

Fumbling around in my beggars cup. “What?” 

“Shove the dimes up your butt ya cheap bastard.”

Don Robishaw’s collection of five FF tales found in, ‘Bad Road Ahead’ was the Grand Winner in Defenestrationism, 2020 Flash Fiction Suite Contest.

Don’s short story entitled,’Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Through the Fat 2018 Chapbook Contest.

His work has also recently appeared in The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, FFM, O’ Dark Thirty, among other venues.

Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or stereotypes he's met while on the road. He likes to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.

Before he stopped working to write he ran educational programs for homeless shelters. Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.