Bombs In Holy Places

The Erawan Shrine was built in 1956 to offset the state-owned hotel's foundation being laid on an astrologically disadvantageous date as well as the intersection having been a site for displaying criminals before execution. The Thao Maha Phrom Shrine of Lord Brahma has long been a top tourist site for visitors from Communist China who hired Thai dance troupe to gain an edge on fate, however last week a lone bomber detonated an explosion killing twenty worshippers and wondinging scores of others at the Hindu shrine. Another bomb was set off hours later at a popular ferry stop on the Chao Phyra River. Thankfully no one was hurt at that location.

Western media such as CNh and the Fox News reported as the work of a jihadist terror cell, since the yellow-shirted suspect had non-Thai features, but no one claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Thailand's chief of police has told the media that the bombing was the work of more than one person.

"He didn't do it alone for sure. It's a network," he said, also adding that Thais were involved in the murderous plot. "The perpetrators intended to destroy the economy and tourism, because the incident occurred in the heart of the tourism district."

I doubt that the perpetrators were from Yala in Southern Thailand. The Muslim separatists have never struck at the capitol before, although over 6000 people have been killed since the beginning of the long-smoldering insurgency and the extreme fighters from Pattani have designated their goal no longer as autonomy for the four southern province, but the establishment of a Khalipahte ruled by strict Sharia law.

As the days passed without any leads, the Western media dropped their coverage, leaving the military junta to its own devices. Most Thais think that the bombing was arranged by supporters of the deposed PM Thaksin, who had recently been stripped of his political immunity in absentia. It'a all part of the shadow dance for power and the beloved king celebrates his 70th year on the throne. The army and the police vie for position as the rich seek to suppress the poor with the rural people set against the cities.

If only Bhumipol could rule forever.

And peace spread over the land.

That's all I want for Thailand.

My home on the other side of the world.

Bernie Was There 1962

Bernie Sanders was there from the start.

He remains true.

He has my vote once he truly addresses the occupation of Palestine.

ps This photo dates back to a CORE sit-in 1962.

Conversely Hillary Clinton was working with the Barry Goldwater Campaign.

The Messiah Speaketh on Wisdom

The Lord of Truth lives.

George Carlin.

Check out this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs

STING LIKE A BEE by Peter Nolan Smith

This past May a tropical bee flew into our new house in Sri Racha. My wife attacked the flying insect with a broom. My two year-old son Fenway screamed at the buzzing creature. I rolled up yesterday’s Bangkok Post and tracked the invader's flight. My first swat caught the zigzaging bee and it caromed off the wall to finish its life on the tiled floor. Mam swept the bee from the house and I brandished the newspaper in triumph.

"Bad man. Not kill bee. Bee good for flower. Bee good for nature. No bee."

"No flower." My son was smarter than me, because as Buddhists my wife and children venerated all living things, but this was not my first encounter with bees.

In the summer of 1960 my family moved from Maine to a suburban tract south of Boston in the Blue Hills. The neighborhood was located on the site of an abandoned army base. Bulldozers had razed the remaining derelict military installations to create half-acre plots for the new suburbs. Their ruins provided shady shelter for dozens of bee hives and their scouts swarmed over the flower bed of the neighborhood gardens. My mother considered any creature larger than an ant an animal and throughout June and July her screams filled our split-level ranch house. The mothers of our enclave confronted the developer. The farmer by the highway said that the bees helped grow flowers. The mothers had been brought up in the city. They wanted the bees gone and by the end of August the bulldozers had eradicated most of the nests.

The onslaught had forced the bees into a small gully filled with fruit crates. The narrow defile was located behind our house. Bees swarmed around our crab apple tree. My sister cried herself to sleep and my mother screamed at the sight of them.

A week before school my older brother, next neighbor, Chuckie, and I decided to exterminate the remaining threat and left our garage with snow shovels, wearing towels around our heads as protection. My youngest sister accompanied our expedition swathed in her baby blanket.

The four of us stood at the edge of the gully. The sizzle of bees resonated in the air like a flock of mini-motorcycles. My brother was 8. Chuckie and I were 7. My younger sister was barely 4. Frank was elected captain. We were his privates. His strategy was simple.

"Don't bees make honey?" my sister pleaded their case.

"Yes, they do," I liked honey.

"So no bees, no honey?"

"No." I saw her logic.

Not Chuckie.

"I like sugar and bees have nothing to do with sugar."

“Smash everything.” My older brother motioned for my sister to back away from us, as we descended into the pit with the shovels raised above our heads. The first crate splintered under the first assault, but the bees instantly congealed into an angry tornado seeking our flesh.

“Run," My brother shouted in terror.

We dropped the shovels and ran across the lawn toward safety of our house.

I looked over my shoulder.

My sister was frozen to the spot and the bees bit her a dozen times in the space of time that it took for my older brother to rescue her from the swarm. Bumps rose from her skin. She cried in our arms, as we took her back into the house.

My mother was furious with us, but more so with the developer and the next morning a bulldozer buried the gully with earth. We didn’t see a bee after that day, although my older brother and I swore that the ground vibrated with the buzz of the buried bees.

As we reached puberty, the danger of the bees was softened by our parents’ mystical interpretation of the birds and bees. None of their explanations made any sense to us, because none of it was supposed to make any sense. Sex was a forbidden subject in the suburbs of the 1960s. Later that summer I asked my father what 'the birds and bees' really meant. He had attended a good college in Maine.

“‘All nature seems at work … The bees are stirring–birds are on the wing … and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.' That’s from the poet Samuel Coleridge. Now do you understand?” The tone of my father’s voice excluded any answer other than one.

“Yes, sir.” I had no idea who Samuel Coleridge was, but I would have bet my allowance that he had never been bit by a bee.

Several years later Chuckie and I found a stash of moldy porno magazines in the woods. In the photos of naked men and women the people looked dirty like they had never taken a bath and Chuckie said, "Sex has nothing to do with the birds and bees."

"I know." I was hurt, thinking that my father might have lied to me, then realized that he had said nothing at all.

"Then again I'm not so sure." Chuckie pointed to the man's erect penis and said, “Maybe that’s a man's stinger.”

“And the woman is the egg?” I asked under my voice, for while we were over a mile from my house, but I was certain, that my mother could hear everything I said anywhere.

“I guess so.” Chuckie was stumped by my question and that evening I fell asleep that night to dreams of the birds and bees in strange positions. My Boy Scout Handbook had warned about ‘nocturnal emissions’, so in the morning I knew that the wetness inside my pajamas wasn’t pee and that I had taken step closer to being a man.

Te next summer there were no flowers in my neighborhood and bees disappeared from my existence until the spring of 1971

I attended Boston College as a commuter student. My trip to Chestnut Hill began with a trolley ride from Lower Mills along the Neponset River to Ashmont, where the T ran to Park Street.

One morning the trolley entered the station and an inbound train was waiting at the platform. The driver was walking to the head car and I jumped off the trolley with my token in hand. I dropped my fare in the slot. As I ran to the nearest car something flew into my mouth.

It was a bee and it bit the roof of my roof.

I screamed out in pain and my tongue swished at my tormentor. I danced in a swirl, until the bee released its barb and I spit it out of my mouthHaving long hair most of the other passengers on the platform feared that I was having a bad acid trip and hurried into the train. I pointed to the bee, but black and yellow attacker flew away before anyone saw it. My explanation of the bee bite through a swollen mouth only scared the passengers more.

Lightning supposedly never strikes the same place twice, yet later that evening I was walking through Chinatown, when something flew up the leg of my jeans. It was a bee. The instant it stun my calf, I slapped at my jeans and the bee dropped to the sidewalk.

My attacker looked amazingly like the bee from Ashmont and I wasn’t giving the creature another chance to kill me, so I stomped the bee into a smear on the concrete.

Upon returning home and checked out the old gully. The moon was up and the grass shone silver under the light reflected by the moon. I laid my ear to the ground. It was silent.

At the breakfast table I related this tale to my younger sister and asked, "You remember the time the bees attacked you?"

"No." She was almost 13, which was a difficult age for all teenagers.

"The bees stung you over and over."

"Why?"

"Mom wanted them gone."

And she left it up to you?" laughed my sister. "Junior bee-killers. You know they make honey?"

"Yes, I do."

I surrendered to her recollection of the past, however I was certain that this day’s bee was a descendant of those hives' queen. It had to have family and they had sought their revenge. I expected nothing less from the birds and bees, because in the words of Samuel Coleridge, “The bees are stirring–birds are on the wing.”

I think I understand now.

Maybe one day my son Fenway will understand the mystery of the birds and the bees.

Something about it has to be the truth and Fenway would find the answer.

All men do in the end.

Bernie Versus Hillary

Today I saw my first Bernie volunteers in fort Greene, Brooklyn.

The Bernster has my vote.

Sanders was the only senator to vote against the War in Iraq.

ps George Carlin as VP

Asshole of the Week 8/18/2015 Kim Davis

I understand belief as a Red Sox fan.

I knew in my heart that the Fenway Faithful would be rewarded with a World Series triumph, although maybe not in my lifetime. This year I haven't worn my Red Sox Nation shirt. The Bosox never got it together and we are last in the American League East, yet I understand that one day we will rise again, so I share some insight into the dilemma of civil servants with strong religious beliefs not wanting to violate the tenets of their faith.

Last week in Rowan County, Kentucky, County Clerk, Kim Davis decided to stop legalizing marriage licenses for same-sex unions. Her decision came after months of prayer and fast. Looking at the above photo I would have to say that Kim only fasted from sex, because she certainly hadn't lost any weight during her prayer-driven hunger binge, plus she ended up looking like a Mormon sister wife.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the right to same-sex union.

Kim Davis is in direct violation of carrying out the Laws of the Land and this land does not consist simply of the Bible Belt.

We are a nation reflecting the prism of humanity.

Kim Davis serves another cause.

Shame of her.

And I wish worse, but not today because I'm going to Afropunk in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

We are Family.

To hear WE ARE FMAILY by Sister Sledge, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBpYgpF1bqQ

Julian Bond RIP

"Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education." - Julian Bond

A great and tireless fighter for human rights.

Julian Bond was not quitter.

None of us should be either.

RESIST.

ATLANTIC SLAPDOWN by Peter Nolan Smith

Last Saturday afternoon the streets of Brooklyn sweltered in the sultry August heat and my landlord invited me to join a family excursion to the beach. I had only swam in the ocean twice all summer, so my answer was quick and to the point.

"Gimme five minutes."

I ran upstairs and changed into my beach gear, then grabbed a towel. We weren't going far and I hurried down to the street in time to help AP load his kids' bikes into AP's Audi A6 station wagon.

"Nice day for it." The temperature was in the mid-90s.

"Any day is." I sat in the back with the door open. The afternoon air was breathless and I toweled the sweat off my face. His daughter and son bounded down the stairs and joined me in the back. Lizzie and my daughter Angie were born only a few days apart, while James was two years older than Wey Wey. I considered both AP's children family. Mine was on the other side of the world in Thailand.

"Everyone set," their platinum-haired mother, Kay, asked from the front.

"Ready," we chorused and AP drove through downtown Brooklyn to the Dumbo exit of the south-bound BQE. Traffic was nearly non-existent along the shore of New York harbor and we round the Narrows past Coney Island. AP got off the BQE at 11S to cross over Jamaica Bay Inlet on the Gil Hodges Bridge after which AP entered Fort Tilden, to which he had a parking permit from the Rockaway Artists Collective.

After pulling out the bikes, the two kids rode ahead on the crumbling roads of the decommissioned military outpost, while we tramped toward the beach.

Fort Tilden had served the nation since the War of 1812 and existed as Naval Air Station Rockaway throughout the 20th Century. Coastal guns had at one time dotted the dunes to protect New York City from invasion. During the Cold War Nike Hercules and Nike Ajax missiles had been installed in bunkers and launch sites to shoot down Soviet nuclear missile.

AP's eight-year old son was desperate to find a silo in the flowering beach heather.

"Why don't they not have missiles now?"

"The fort was abandoned in the 70s."

"Why?" It was only the second of many whys and AP was a good father. He answered each and every one through the dunes.

We reached the beach, as the crowds were heading for home. The wind off the water was cold. The beach was strewn with plastic bags and beer cans. AP's son asked why.

"Because people are pigs," AP answered and stripped off his shirt. He had summered most of his life on the Hamptons. This was his ocean. His daughter and son waded in ankle-deep surf, as he plunged into the thick ocean rollers. I wasn't quite ready and policed the sandy stretch around us for trash. After five minutes it was almost pristine and I dropped the bag of garbage by Kay reading a book.

"A little better now."

"Wasn't any plastic on the beach when I was growing up."

AK's wife came from San Diego. I knew those beaches from the 70s.

"You think the Atlantic is different from the Pacific?"

Both are cold." She put down her book and surveyed the green waves. "The surf is bigger back home and the slope doesn't drop off so fast like it does here, but it's almost the same. What about Thailand?"

"The water there is calm and warm." I shut my eyes and saw Angie and Wey Wey on Mae Laim Phim. My kids loved Rayong. The sand was soft and the water was warm, plus palm trees lined the beach. Nothing was getting me there today and I opened them to see Lizzie and James before me.

"Are you going in?"

"No, I just sit here. I'll watch your garbage."

Kay resume reading her book.

"Thanks."

I tugged off my shirt and walked to the edge of the surf. AP stroked through the surf and shook the water off his body.

"You kids ready for a swim?" AP was a good swimmer and a better father.

"Yes."

Lizzie disappeared under a wave. Her younger brother was more cautious.

"I'll carry you." AK lifted James in his arms and wandered into the deeper water. I missed my sons. My daughters too.

"Don't mention it." I was also a father.

I ran into the ocean. I duckdove under a large wave and Aussie-crawled about a hundred feet from shore. The current swept east at a fast clip and I swam to keep AP and his daughter before me. James shouted and pointed behind me. A surging wave built a surfable face. I rode it for a good twenty feet before the wave collapsed onto the sandbar, slamming my body to the sand and I popped to the surface gasping for breath.

An unusual pain throbbed in the ribs.

Lord Neptune had tried to kill me, but I wasn't an easy victim and bodysurfed to shallower water. Standing up I inhaled deeply. The ache wasn't going away and I decided it was time to call an end to this swimming expedition.

"You okay?" AP asked emerging from the surf with his daughter and son clinging to his neck.

"I might have bruised a rib, but I'm okay."

His kids ran to their mother.

It was three months since my last visit home.

Sea water was good at hiding my tears and I said, "Nothing a few margaritas wouldn't cure."

"Your wish is my command." AP is a kindred soul. "Let's go get some in Rockaway. Tacos too."

His wife liked the idea.

"That was quite a tumble you took."

"It only hurts when I laugh."

"I bet it does, but it will go away." Kay understood the ache in my heart, but her children were happy and I was happy for them to be happy and ever happier that we had gone to Fort Tilden. I inhaled deeply and grimaced from the pain.

It wasn't bad and I follow my friends to the car.

They were a family and so was mine.

And one day soon I will go see my kids.

On the sands of a beach far away.

And that will happen one day.

Jesse Ventura For Ambassador to Cuba

Former governor of Minnesota and ex-WWF wrestler Jesse Ventura has retreated from public life and lives 'off the grid' on the Baja, devoted to losing weight through surfing. I last saw him on the Larry King Show promoting his new book and he responded to the TV commentator's query about Dick Cheney saying 'waterboarding wasn't torture' was quick.

“You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”

Jesse Ventura had been subjected to 'waterboarding' as a Navy Seal trainee.

"Damned if it did any good."

Jesse also suggested the legalization of marijuana and normalization of relations with Cuba. The more he speaks, the more he makes sense. And this is coming from a man who wore boa feathers into the wrestling ring.

"Now the USA has opened an embassy in Havanna.

I nominated Jesse Ventura as 1st US ambassador to Cuba since Philip Bonsal.

Ambassador Ventura.

Has a nice ring to it.

To watch the full interview go to these URLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9yfMdNC6cQ

And

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejahDWoYk2A&feature=related

Up the Ra - Rubber Bandits

Our revenge will be the laughter of our children - Bobby Sands

To see Up the Ra - Rubber Bandits, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBT4ZWy6Lm4

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

Threatening clouds roiled over the Iowa cornfields. Monstrous flashes strobed through the thunderheads. The still air was charged with electricity.

"Have you ever seen a tornado?" Brock asked with his video recorder out the window.

"Only in WIZARD OF OZ." Twisters killed people and I stepped on the gas. Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour.

We're heading north, right?" The Scotsman couldn't drive, but as a covert agent he knew the points of the compass.

"Yes." I was headed away from the storm front.

"You know where?"

"Roughly."

The unpaved rural road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever traveled this route through Iowa.

"When you think that family left that house?" asked Brock, as we passed a one-story farmhouse haunting an overgrown yard.

"Back in the 90s." The paint was peeling off its wood like potato chips.

"Stop."

Brock was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt on the dirt road.

I got out of the rented Ford and shut of the engine.

The storm lurked farther to the south. The mutter of distant thunder invaded the still spring fields. I didn't feel safe.

Brock set up his camera and explained more about his documentary on a dying Irish sculptor.

"Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.”

"Then he'll love this." The strengthening wind bent the trees. The four elements were gathering force.

"Barry will love this."

The Irish sculptor was losing control of his body back on Ibiza.

"Let's go." I didn't like the look of the sky.

Thirty miles down the road we stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store.

The sky was clearing. We had outrun the storm.

Brock tried my cellphone.

There was no service.

"I love a little pyrotechnics." He entered the store and spent $100 on rockets and M80s.

Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan and he was homesick for the sounds of war.

Twenty minutes later we braked on a empty road. Iowa had thousands of them. We pulled out the fireworks. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions.

"Not even close to the real thing," he said, as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline.

"Much louder?"

"Much." He didn't want to talk anymore about it and we got back in the car.

Our next destination was Des Moines, which was Iowa's capitol.

We arrived after 5.

The city was devoid of people.

"Is America dead?" Brock said, as if a plague had killed my countrymen.

"After work people flee the cities for the suburbs."

Des Moines has suburbs?

"

They were the great social experiment of the 60s." I had grown up in a pink split-level ranch house south of Boston. It had a two-car garage. "Cars gave Americans freedom to go where they wanted."

"Away from blacks?"

"Yes." Iowa was 95% white. My hometown had a population of 25,000. Only three families were black. "Segregation is the American Way."

I drove to the Flanagan hare at the city's Art Center. I stayed in the car, as Brock focused his camera on the statue. He interviewed homeless people for their impression of the hare. No one else's was left in the city. I called Thailand.

My son Fenway was better.

His mother was angry at me.

"Why you go trip? Why you not see son?"

I said nothing, because a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman and I missed Fenway

We spent the night on the outskirts of Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs at the restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. This was Nascar Country. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. Neither of us could finish our ribs.

"Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I discerned no difference between hares and rabbits.

"One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him the hare represented freedom. All kinds of freedom."

"Freedom is a rarity in America these days. All kinds of freedom."

"Better than Afghanistan."

"I'm sure."

"What about your hippie friend? Doesn't he live in Iowa?"

"Thanks for reminding me. No one was freer than Rockford back in the day."

I loved being a hippie almost as much as being young.

Before I went to sleep, I called my friend Rockford in Iowa City.

The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us.

"I have a surprise for you."

"What?" I hated surprises.

"You'll see when you get here."

The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway.

"This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America.

"Corn and wheat."

"Tortillas and bread."

"And prisons. My friend Rockford spent two years at the state penitentiary. It's across the Mississippi from Illinois."

"I doubt he had a room with a view. What he get done for?" Brock was very open-minded for a spy.

"The police raided his farmhouse for pot." Rockford had been growing weed on his Back Forty. Someone had snitched him out on a plea bargain. Snitches were a problem everywhere. "Growing pot is a felony, but the police also found some cocaine and the judge hit Rockford with a three-year bid."

"Better here than Bagram prison in Kabul."

"Bad?." I had seen pictures. The government claimed the abuse was an isolated case, but the US military and CIA had tortured thousands.

"Very bad."

"Rockford doesn't talk about it.

"Most people don't. Are we're meeting him tonight?"

"But of course. Rockford and I go back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach in 1974. "LSD? Do tell."

I told the story of speaking with seals, as we followed the train tracks out of Des Moines. Brock laughed upon hearing about my attempt to speak French with the seal.

"What's for lunch?"

It was getting near noon.

"There's this old Pietist colony in Amana." Iowa had plenty of religious sects. We had passed through several Memmonite communities and seen Amish in horse-drawn buggies.

"Pietists?"

"An old German sect rejected Lutheranism back in the 1700s." I had no idea about their tents, but hazarded a guess. "The Lutherans were too zealous. They fought wars over their beliefs. The Pietists fled Germany and then America. Iowa is a good state for freedom of religion. They were skilled craftsmen and now make refrigerators."

"I knew Amana sounded familiar." Brock had lived in America for a decade as a playwright. The Arts were a good cover for covert agents. "Their food has to be better than McDonalds."

"We'll soon find out." I turned off the highway.

Only a few tourists were visiting the Heritage site. It was still too early in the season. I ordered chicken pot pie and Brock chose a ham steak. The waitress served us water. There was no beer on the menu.

Brock filmed our meals.

"Barry likes to see everything."

"How much longer you think he has."

He had been a young man as had Brock and I had once been back in the 70s.

"He might last to the end of the summer." Brock intended on visiting the artist in Ibiza after our return to New York and aimed the camera in my direction.

"Hmmm good." I knew how to act for Brock.

Nice and natural.

At the end of our meal Rockford called from his farm to make a rendezvous at a sports bar in Iowa City.

"What do you think he has for us?"

"I can only guess."

Something told me it was something good.

Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. He was a teenager now.

I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. They were going to a movie.

"What?" I hoped it wasn't a blood and guts slasher film.

"Star Trek."

"Cool." I had been a Trekkie from the beginning and said "Live long and prosper."

We ordered another round and spoke with the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq.

"It sucked and my commanding officer wants to go again."

"Bastard."

"You got that right."

Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar and I overheard the chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values."

I slammed down my PBR.

"This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." I liked Obama as president. These three said nothing and drank their Bud-Lites.

Brock shook his head. He liked stealth better than brawn.

"Was he like this when he was younger?" asked Brock.

"Our friend has always had a good temper, but with good cause." Rockford stared with eight ball eyes at the threesome and suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar.

"Sounds good to me>"

Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood. The Iowa U co-eds danced to punk. They accepted our offers of tequila. After a few minutes Rockford broke out a small bottle packed with powder."

"Here's my surprise. Bolivian Pink 1975.

"No way." The Cali cartel had destroyed cocaine in the 80s with the help of the CIA an the Mexican gangs were even worse.

"I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast. I did it at the bar.

1975 had been a good year.

"Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me.

I hated being third-person.

"Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul.

I got another blast.

2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world.

At closing the coeds asked, "Are you going?"

"Going where?" I was hoping a cheap hotel.

"To River City."

"What's in River City?'

"It's the future birthplace of James T. Kirk."

A minute later we were in a taxi heading south. Brock, Rockford, and I were in no condition to drive.

We arrived at the small town to discover that there wasn't a statue, but a plaque.

I cried just the same and had the taxi driver take us back to the hotel. I was ready to call it a night, but Rockford wasn't in the mood for sleep and poured out the rest of the Bolivian Pink. Brock and laid our heads on the pillow.

"This is a night to remember. The night you came to Iowa City and my ice let me out of the town.

I slept until dawn.

I sat up in bed and looked out the window.

Prairie grass ran up to the hotel.

"Hope I didn't keep you up." His voice was a growl native to the Hawkeye State.

"Not at all."

"I guess I'll be going. My wife will be real happy to see me, but I have a good excuse."

I was certain that my name belonged to that excuse.

"It was nice to meet you." Brock stirred from his bed.

"I wish you could stay longer."

"Me too." Brock was no angel, but a museum in Minneapolis was expecting him tomorrow.

Rockford said good-bye and drove back to his farm. We skipped the motel's complimentary breakfast. Our stomach were in no condition for food. We drank black coffee on I-380 northbound.

It wasn't a pretty road, but it was fast.

I pushed the Ford to 90.

We had to make some time.

And time was easy to make on the highway especially with James T. Kirk at my back.

He liked fast too.

Warp speed fast.

A Shower With Naked Men

In 2009 Brock Dundee and I drove 3000 miles through the Midwest; Chicago to St. Louis to Kansas City to Iowa City to Minneapolis and back to Chicago. Most of the trip was off the Interstates. Neither my traveling companion nor I saw a single hitchhiker on the side of the road, as if Homeland Security had renditioned that American icon into a secret prison someplace hidden from justice.

At truck-stops, diners, 7/11s, and bars I asked hippies, motorists, students, and friends, if they had recently seen any hitchhikers. Everyone said no.

Hitchhikers like hobos and beatniks had gone extinct.

People were scared of everything, but Americans were once brave.

I started hitchhiking as a teenager in the late-60s. My high school was located outside of Boston on 128. I ran track. No bus lines or subway train ran between my town and the high school. Hitchhiking was the only available transportation outside of walking ten miles.

Every afternoon around 4 I would stand at the 128 onramp. I was 14 years-old. Dusk would fall fast in the late autumn and strange men would stop for me.

Once I was in the car, they would ask if I had a girlfriend. Answering 'yes' or 'no' didn't matter, since their questions became more lurid with each passing miles.

"You ever have dreams about naked men?"

My hand rested on the door handle.

"No."

"Not even Tarzan or Hercules?"

"No."

"Do you like gladiator movies?"

Their interrogations were remarkably alike regardless of their car or age. It was almost as if they were reading from a script. They also smelled of Aqua Velva. Some of them looked like priests. None of them were Tarzan. By sophomore year I had the dialogue down and they drove me home with high hopes. Some even offered money to let them suck my cock. $10 was the cost of Levis.

"Sorry, I'm saving myself for my girlfriend."

I remained a virgin throughout high school.

It now seems like a waste.

Then again I was more into science fiction than gladiator movies.

Oh, those bikini invaders from Venus.

For a classic film warning about cruisers, click on this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqIIeGmhL2Q

YOU BET I WOULD by Peter Nolan Smith

During our 2009 trip through the American Midlands filming Barry Flanagan statues Brock Dundee and I detoured from our route to meet Colonel Rockford Ret. in Iowa City. The three of us began the evening at a sports bar. The bartender had just returned from his third tour in Iraq. We toasted his return with tequila shots. After the third Cuevo Gold Brock Dundee, Rockford, and I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.

A trio of Bud Lite drinkers were disparaging the President in the alley.

"I don't know how we elected a nigger."

The fattest was leading the hate parade. He looked like he had played second-string linebacker in high school, but this fat boy hadn't touched his toes in years. I clenched my fists. I hadn't seen my family in months. Thailand was on the other side of the world. I was not in a good mood.

"Don't start anything." Rockford grabbed my arm. He was still a hippie. "It's not the place."

"Assholes." I glared at the trio. I was more a punk and repeated the word louder.

This time they had heard me and turned to face us.

"What your problem?" asked the fat boy's friend. His head was shaven to the bone and his body had been morphed into a smaller steroid version of a WWF wrestling wannabe.

"That's no way to talk about the president."

"And why not?"

"John Wayne said it best about JFK," interjected Rockford, whose favorite westerns were EASY RIDER and OLE YELLER.

"And what was that?"

"I didn't vote for him, but he is my president." Brock beat Rockford to the quote, then added, "I might not be American, but I do like John Wayne."

The three of us traded opinions about our favorite John Wayne films. I picked TRUE GRIT and as a director Brock classically voted for John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, while Brock surprised us with his choice.

"WE WERE EXPENDABLE. It's set in the Philippines. A PT boat crew trying to escape the Japs." The old appellations lived long in Iowa.

I watched the three conservatives bunch together like they were discussing a stratagem, then the fat one ranted about having a black Muslim communist illegal alien as president. I clenched my fists, but remembered that I was passing through Iowa City. Tomorrow I would be hundreds of miles away.

I stubbed out my cigarette and walked toward the entrance to the bar. The skinniest of the three was feeling his oats and loudly told to his friends, "This country was founded on Conservative values; church, family, and flag."

"That's it." I stormed over and pointed my finger in his face.

"This country was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so shut the fuck up about 'Conservative values'."

"I can say anything____" The butch muscle boy started to say.

"Do yourself a favor and shut your piehole and I don't want to hear any muttering behind my back either."

I strode inside the bar and ordered a Stella. Brock and Rockford joined me two seconds later. I looked out the door. The three locals were gone from the alley.

"Fuck them."

>"What happened to the Freedom of Speech?" Colonel Rockford was a firm believer in speaking his mind.

"Fuck the Freedom of Speech. It's an amendment to the Constitution." I was more than angry after eight years of hearing Conservatives bullshit about family values. "I'll say what I want and I'll tell anyone to shut up when I want too. That's my Freedom of Speech."

"I don't think that phrasing was guaranteed by the Constitution." Brock politely said and then continued, "And to be truthful this country is very conservative. Look at what happened to your Senator Gary Hart in 1988."

"Gary Hart?" I hadn't thought about the Colorado senator in years.

"Yes, he was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election." My British friend's erudite tones had nearby drinkers listening to his every word. "Right up to the moment when the Miami Herald published photos of Donna Rice sitting on his lap."

"On the yacht MONKEY BUSINESS." Colonel Rockford had a good memory for a man in his early-60s.

"Aptly named. The Senator denied there was an 'hanky-panky'. Even his wife said the relationship was innocent."

"The wife is always the last to know." Colonel Rockford signaled the bartender for three more tequilas.

"His poll rankings sunk to the point where he only received 4000 votes in the New Hampshire primary, but if he had said, "Sure I screwed Donna and so would you all, Gary Hart would have received every male and free love vote in America, because people here and in the rest of the world are sinners. Not Conservative, but fun-loving happiness seekers. But no one likes a liar other than those people who don't want to look at themselves in a mirror."

We picked up our shots and Brock said, "America may be Conservative, but most Americans thought that Gary Hart's indiscretion had little to do with his ability to be president."

"And they got Dukakis to run against Bush." I remembered the photo of Dukakis' head sticking out of a tank like a turtle, then again he would have looked just as silly with Donna Rice on his lap.

"Now that was one unsexy guy." Colonel Rockford shivered with the memory of that election. "I voted Communist that year. Gus Hall I think. And he was even more unsexy. You're right, Brock. All Gary Hart had to have done was say, "I fucked her and so would you." and he would have been president."

"Who was Donna Rice," the bartender asked with interest.

"She was a hot blonde."

Unlike John Wayne movies the three of us were in complete agreement on that subject.

And agreeing with your friends was the beauty of Free Speech.