Patrick Daugherty and the Reader

Patrick Daugherty was the author of the weekly Sporting Box column since 1995. He died April 20, 2016.

He wrote for the Berkeley Monthly before the Reader.

Editor's picks of Daugherty's Reader stories:

• The low-budget horror film of San Diego homelessness

• 8:08. Begging shift starts to form. Clumps of people move out from Horton Plaza to curbside staging areas. The fashion is baseball hats, torn black jackets, tennies, and ’60s long hair. Over by the fountain, a gray-haired man is doing morning maintenance. Today is laundry day. The man sits, puts two black nylon socks on his hands. In his possession are two empty, king-size Carl’s to-go coffee cups. He fills each with water from the fountain, breaks out a tiny bar of soap, washes his socks in one cup, rinses them in the other. (May 3, 1990)

• Farewell, Nazi Harlot

• Next morning the Benz began to teach me about life as it's lived. Before my lessons were over, the Benz would require a new oil pump, new shocks, new power brakes, completely rebuilt engine ($1400), new transmission ($1100), new battery, and that, let me stress, was just for openers. To this day I can't make myself review the receipts, can't make myself look at the other 40 items that, in total, added up to more than $4000 U.S. (Aug. 13, 1992)

• What If We’d Been Named Edward?

• Patrick Daugherty of Escondido. Patrick lives in a comfortable, suburban ranch house tucked behind a snatch of well-kept lawn. I park, walk up his newly swept concrete driveway, and ring the doorbell. A thin man, 35 years old, five foot ten, with a thick brown mustache answers. The man appears to have Hispanic ancestry. I learn later, his mother's family is Perez. We shake hands, I say, "Hi, I'm Patrick Daugherty." (Dec, 1, 1994)

• Friends Called Him Bill

• Just before he died, I stood up and walked over to the hospital bed, leaned forward, kissed his forehead, and then lied through my teeth, “Good-bye, I love you.” I’ve regretted that lie ever since, regretted that I sent my dad out on one last note of falsity, regretted that the “I love you” was said for the benefit of my mother and not for him. The truth is, I didn’t love him. But don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate him either. I simply had no idea who he was. (June 15, 2000)

• Work 10 weeks, take 10 months off

• I had — and still have, the last time I looked — a one-room cabin 20 miles west of Fairbanks, near the top of Ester Dome. The decor is threadbare Gold Rush: leaky roof, no running water, and no electricity. Amenities include a Majestic wood cookstove, Ashley Automatic wood stove, one reading chair taken from the Fairbanks city dump, likewise one desk, one mattress on loan from the Salvation Army. 3-part series