Thursday, December 21, 2017

BACK AND FORTH by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 5 - THE ID LOUNGE

The next morning AK, Pam, and Sean slept in late.

After waking they ate a hearty breakfast of flapjack and sausages with the lodge’s owner on the porch. White rapids surged over the rocky creek and a few clouds dotted the deep blue above the mountain peaks. Ralph spread a map on the table to give them directions through the Rockies.

“Follow 34 into the Rocky Mountain Park. Snow had closed the road until two weeks ago. Check out the view of Sundance Mountain from Tombstone Ridge. These canyons were once the hunting grounds of the Utes and Arapaho. They chased Megabisons to their death. No buffalos here now. No Indians either.”

“None?” Pam was surprised by this.

“You might see some in the desert, but they keep their distance from us.” Ralph meant white people.

“With good reason. The FBI declared war on Wounded Knee.”

“Indians have been killed by the government for ages. The Sioux killed two G-Men White people like the West white. Not brown. Not black. White.”

“Same as Boston.” His hometown was known as the Selma of the North.

“And they don’t like hippies either.”

”We’ll be careful.”

Pam and AK loaded the Torino and Sean reached into his pocket to pay for breakfast.

Ralph refused his money.

“You’re nice kids. I wish you were staying longer. Heck, I could use you here this summer.”

“What’s wrong with the people around here.”

“They’re either a cowboy or a farmer and while they’re fine with animals, they suck with people other than their own kind. I could pay you a decent wage and you’d get room and board.” Ralph’s offer was serious.

“I have work in the Fall.” Sean had a substitute-teaching job waiting after Labor Day.

“This is a nice place to spend the summer. You’d be doing me and yourself a favor.”

“It’s tempting.”

The river roared through the canyon.

Tall pines covered the mountainsides.

“The Rockies are begging for me to stay.”

“But you have someplace to go.” Ralph handed over the map. The two of them were almost thirty years apart, but bond of the New England was stronger than the gap between their generations.

“Yes.” His answer should have been ‘not really’.

“I once had someplace to be and here I am.” Ralph’s years along the Thompson Creek promised better ones to come.

“Maybe we’ll catch you on the way back.” It was an honest consideration.

“I’ll be here.” Ralph accompanied him to the car and wished them a safe trip. AK had elected himself the driver. He got no argument from his friend. Sean hangover excluded the operation of heavy machinery and moving objects. Ralph waved good-bye and the Ford Torino motored up the canyon following the wild waters of the creek.

“Pam, yesterday you spoke about staying in Sterling. Today Ralph offered me a job.”

“And you thought about staying?” AK steered through the curves with both hands on the wheel.

“Some of Lewis’ and Clark’s men must have felt the urge for staying someplace on that expedition.”

“I’m talking about now.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t have minded staying.”

“I can understand the temptation of the mountains, but we have an ocean to see and swim in.”

“Yes, we do.” The Pacific was their destination same as for the Lewis and Clarke expedition. “And we’ll be there soon.”

They passed through Estes Park. Traffic was light on the Fall River Road and the Torino swung through the many switchbacks. Climbing above the tree line the sky fell on the mountains and a flurry of flakes cut visibility to less than two-hundred feet.

AK slowed down to 20 mph on the icy road.

“I’m glad you’re driving and not me.” There were no guardrails to prevent disaster should the car leave the road.

“Anyone in a rush?”

“Not me.” Pam put on her jacket.

AK switched on the heat.

They stopped at the snowy pass some 11,000 feet above sea level. The frigid wind ripped through the stunted trees and the three of them fought to breathe the thin air, as Sean read the plaque on a large stone.

“This road follows the Indian path.”

This altitude must have tested the stamina of anyone on foot.

“They were better men than me.” AK shivered in his jean jacket. He had not counted on running into winter until next December.

“And so were the chain gangs that built this road with picks, shovels, and sledge hammers.”

“Convicts built this?”

“The road opened in 1920 and in those years prisons provided cheap labor for the state.”

“Nowadays too.”

“Enough with convicts. You can drink a beer to them at the next bar.” Pam grabbed the keys out of AK’s hand. “I’ve had had enough of the tundra. Let’s lose some altitude.”

The weather improved on the other side of the pass and they descended into the warmth of an alpine spring. Elk fed on the fresh meadow grass surrounded by aspen woods bordering the Trail Ridge Road. AK reached over to the radio, finding static from one end of the dial to the other.


They stopped several times to admire scenic vistas. Serious hikers set out from the trailheads. They wore rugged boots and carried big packs, as if they were entering the wilderness forever.

“Anyone care for a walk?”

“Grizzlies roam the high country,” warned Pam.

“People are rarely attacked by them.”

“This time of year they are hungry and none of us can outrun one of them.”

“Grizzlies have been clocked at 30mph.” AK was a fast runner, but not that fast.

“So no hiking?”

“Not here.”

Sean had hoped for AK to take his side, but the New Yorker got in the station wagon and they headed west, passing through Grand Lake, which was busy preparing for the holiday weekend.

“What about lunch?” It was well past noon.

“We’ll stop at the next store and buy food to make sandwiches.” Pam was determined to put some miles on the odometer and they zigzagged by the high lakes to reach US 40 in Granby, where the valley broadened for verdant cattle pastures. Several miles farther down the road a state trooper was cooped behind a large boulder. The young officer in the front seat wore a stiff cowboy hat like he was related to Wyatt Earp.

“Shit.” Pam had a heavy foot on the gas pedal.

“You’re okay.”

The cruiser remained tucked behind its hiding spot. Strict enforcement of the national speed limit had yet to hit these wide-open spaces.

“Of course it would have been different, if we were black.”

“I haven’t seen a black man since that gas station attendant in Omaha.” AK fiddled with the radio, catching the scratchy signals playing country-western. “And I doubt we’ll see one until Reno, Nevada. Like I said before hippies are a minority to these people.”

“Mexicans are the low man on the totem pole for the cowboys and farmers out West, even though they were before the White Man.”

“Indians were here before all of us. There‘s none here, but people have to have someone underneath them.”

“And usually it’s a woman”

“Adam did come before Eve.”

“Sometimes being first doesn’t mean being first forever. Time for gas.” Pam pulled into a Sunoco station at Craig to fill the Ford Torino with high-test. Ten gallons came to a little over $5. AK paid the teenage gas attendant. The gas station had no food and AK strolled over to the Coke dispenser to buy three ice-cold bottles. As they drank the sodas, AK said, “The Indians have to be someplace.”

“I’ll show you where.” Sean opened the map. He had received a
map-reading merit badge from the Boy Scouts. “Look in the bottom right corner of Colorado and you’ll find where they stuck the Utes. The tribe once roamed from Wyoming to Northern New Mexico.”

“Back before when the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” As a child of the 50s AK had seen his share of cowboy and Indian movies. “General Sheridan said that after a Comanche Chief told him. “Me good Indian.” Sheridan replied, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”

“That’s fucked up.” Pam said the f-word for the first time on this trip.

“Very fucked up. Woody Guthrie sang THIS LAND IS MY LAND about America belonging to us all, red, white, black, brown, and yellow.”

“Not in the mind of white folks and not only is this white people country.” AK was half-Jewish. The Nazis shared the same sentiment about his people as Sheridan had about the Indians. “This is Mormon country.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Just don’t tell people how you’re related to Joseph Smith. These people take their religion serious.”

“I am related. My father and aunt told me that his side of the family moved to Vermont and ours stayed in Maine.”

“Just keep it to yourself. We don’t need any trouble.”

“I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

The gas attendant was joking with his friends. They were ogling Pam. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She asked Sean, “So what’s next?”

“This road, US 40, runs through small towns. None of them have many inhabitants. The next real city was Salt Lake. We should reach it tonight.”

“Motel?” AK liked sleeping in a bed.

“Or the Bonneville Salt Flats.”

The dawn shone on the dead lake’s prehistoric splendor.

“We’ll decide later. Let’s push on.”

“You still in a hurry get to Mendocino?”

“What do you think?” Her fiancée was waiting there.

“Big hurry.”

They downed the cokes and put the empty bottles in the crates.

The young locals snickered out a joke about Cinderella and her ugly sisters. They had heard this before, but this was not the place to have a fight and Sean sat in the back.
AK and Pam switched driving duties. When they left the gas station, Sean fought hard not to give the local boys a farewell finger.

They topped the Continental Divide at Rabbit Ears Pass. The western slope fed the Pacific and the Colorado River began its long run south. The land grew more parched with greenery surviving in stubborn patches along the shallow river and its many oxbows. The few inhabitants were wizened by the harsh seasons of the High Plains.

Most were white.

The few Mexicans drove rusted-out trucks.

Outside Dinosaur a lone man stood on the shoulder. Long braids streamed from under a battered cowboy hat. His skin was burnt from the sun, but his features belonged to this land. The Indian stuck out his thumb.

Pam stepped on the brakes.

“What are you doing?” asked AK.

“We’re giving him a ride.” Pam looked over her shoulder.

The rawboned man slowly approached the station wagon.

“What about the ban on hitchhikers?”

They had picked up a drifter in Boston. Bill had ranted against Jews, fags, and spooks. To Pam each hitchhiker was a potential ax-murderer.

“There’s always an exception to the rule. Open the door.”

Sean pulled on the latch and the big Indian sat in the car. His boots were cracked by the weather.

His jeans carried the grime of the West. His canvas jacket was ripped, as if he had fought a pack of dogs. The big man stared into Sean’s eyes with a sadness belonging to a lost life

“Where you going?” It was a simple question.

“West and then north.” The Indian had a simple answer. “The name’s Slow Eagle. I soar high and go slow. You mind if I sleep. I’ve been walking a long way.”

“Not at all. Makes yourself comfortable.” Pam stepped on the gas.

Slow Eagle fell asleep and his snore sung a road-tired song. AK turned up the volume for BLUE on the tape deck.

“Well, you finally met an Indian.” Sean sniffed the air.

Slow Eagle smelled like a gravedigger.

“He’s better than your ‘Bill’,” Pam said with biting irony.

“The only good white man is the white man you throw out of the car.” AK had chucked Bill out of the
Torino before we hit 128.

“I’ll sleep with one eye open.”

“As long as it’s not at the wheel.” Pam paid attention to the road.

“I learned my lesson.” Sean had almost driven into the scenery in Illinois.

At sunset Colorado became Utah. Pam and Sean switched seats. Eagle slept in a motionless coma.

Night fell with a black completeness erasing the desert. The two-laner straight-lined into Roosevelt, Utah, which was a speck on the map.

Sean slowed down seeing the lights of the Id Lounge. The long ride had cured his hangover. A cold beer would take care of the rest. He flicked on the left turn signal.

“What are you doing?” AK didn’t like strange places. In truth no one did at night.

“We’re stopping there.” Sean pointed to the upcoming bar.

“We’re not stopping.” Pam had had her one fling in the parking lot of the Inferno Lounge and was not interested in testing her fidelity for a second time in two days.

“We’re not stopping at the Id Lounge? My best grade in university was an A in Psychology 101. Ego, Superego, Id, and beer.”

“How do you know it isn’t the ID Lounge?” AK was in accord with Pam’s wish for giving the bar a miss.

“Small d on the sign.” Sean pulled into a dirt parking lot filled with dusty pick-ups. “Where better to celebrate my last day of being 21.”

“This is a bad idea.” AK tucked his hair under a NY Mets baseball cap.

“It will be fine. We had fun at the Inferno Lounge, didn’t we?”

“That was yesterday and this is tonight.” Pam pulled on a jacket to hide her breasts. The desert had a cruel feel.

“If it gets bad, we leave, plus we owe Freud one drink in his name as well as those men on the chain gang that built the Fall River Road.” Sean was interested in seeing a bar deep in Mormon Country.

“What’s happening?” asked Eagle, stirring from his slumber. “We’re getting a beer. You wanna come?”

“Better not. They don’t like Indians out here. If you want, I’ll get out of the car.”

“No, stay where you are. We won’t be long.” Pam took the keys, knowing how Sean liked his drink.

“I’ll be waiting.” Eagle resumed his position against the door.

As they crossed the parking lot, he asked, “You think it’s all right leaving him with our stuff.”

“You have your wallet.” Pam didn’t turned around to look at the car. “I have the keys. Slow Eagle will stay with the car. One beer and we go.”

“Sean? One beer. Fat chance.” AK held open the door to the Id Lounge.

The clientele of farmers and cowboys sat at the bar and tables. The jukebox played MAMA TRIED. Sean ordered three Olympias and toasted Sigmund Freud after which he sang along with Merle
Haggard.

“Always wanting to belong.”

“Everywhere is my home.”

“And nowhere too.”

“What else can you expect from a drifter?”

AK turned to Pam.

She hadn’t touched her beer.

“Suit yourselves,” Sean muttered and asked the bartender, “You get many Mormons in here.”

“None. They don’t drink and we don’t serve milk and we don’t allow any talk about religion.” The bartender left to serve two fat women leaning against the bar. One was checking out AK. He must have been her type. “What’s wrong now?”

“You’re from Boston. None of these people know a thing about your hometown and to tell the truth you know nothing about theirs. You’re not one of them.”

“I know that.” Sean’s Boston accent was a reminder of his origins, even if he couldn’t hear it, and he told AK, “Stop worrying so much.”

“Easy for you to say.” AK kept his back to the tables, fearing someone might finger him as a Jew.

“You’re one of them now.”

“If anyone says anything, go out to the car and start the engine,” Sean said to Pam.

“And wait for you?” asked AK.

“You’re my friend, right.”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t worry about me.” Sean had on heavy Frye boots. No one was touching Pam or AK. “Or you.”

“If anything starts, you’re on your own.”

“Nothing will start. Not by me.” Sean knew his role in this universe.

A stranger passing through town.

At the nearest table a goat-roper and a sodbuster argued about who was the strongest. Devoid of blacks, beaners, and Jews the Non-Mormon residents of Roosevelt, Utah had its own caste system and these two were vying to see who was # 1. Like Ralph said back at the Big Bear Lodge these people were better with livestock than humans.

“Ain’t nothing hard about rasslin’ cattle.” The huge farm boy could have started at linebacker for an NFL team.

“And nothing tough ‘bout plowin’ dirt with a truck.” The young cowboy appeared to have been born from barbed wire, but their back-and-forth sounded friendly to Sean’s ears.

“Only one way to settle it.” The farm boy rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

“Yeah.” The cowboy spat to the right.

“Arm wrestle,” the two of them said and posed their hands over the table.

“One out of one,” the heavy-set bartender declared with a baseball bat in his hand, which was not a promising sign. “Ready, set, go.”

The two locals strained their biceps and forearms muscle to force their adversary’s hand to the table. Backers from each clique shouted out drunken encouragement. Sean rooted for the farm boy. The cowboy looked mean.

“I have a bad feeling.” AK regarded at the jostling between the two groups.

Pushes were replaced by elbows and stomping boots. The bartender tugged down a chicken-screen wire over the liquor bottles against the wall.

A glance between three of them confirmed that these people probably knew each other from childhood and if they didn’t have any trouble fighting each other then they would even be more willing to stomp hippie strangers.

“You get out of here.” Sean put down $5 to cover the tab, transfixed by the contest. Pam left without saying a word. AK followed two steps behind her.

The cowboy threw his weight into the table.

The farmer lost his advantage and his hand wavered an inch from defeat. Gritting his teeth he shouted like a steer trying to free itself from quicksand. His hand inched higher and higher. The cowboy sweated bullets and a beer bottle toppled off the table to break on the tiled floor. A second later the farmers’ hero slammed the cowboy’s hand to the table.

Whooping was their victory call.

“I might have lost that match.” The cowboy rubbed his wrist and said, “But I could kick your ass out back.”

The big farm boy wasn’t much with words and punched the cowboy in the skull with a massive right. The young goat-roper collapsed at Sean’s feet. His ranching friends swarmed over the farm boy, who tossed their bodies right and left like bales of hay.

The bartender bonked heads with his bat to even out the sides. A smashed bottle revoked Sean’s spectator status. Three farmers eyed his long hair. They were out for blood and Sean ran from the Id Lounge. The Torino’s back door was open and Slow Eagle stood his ground.

The farm boys stopped in their tracks.

Slow Eagle was a big Indian.

“This ain’t your fight, Injun.”

“He’s with me.” Slow Eagle hitched his thumb. “You have a problem with that?”

Four cowboys emerged from the Id Lounge.

“Fuckin’ Injun.” It was the loser of the arm-wrestling contest.

“White man, go back inside.” Slow Eagle had heard it all before.

“You gonna make me, redskin.”

“No need to.”

Slow Eagle and Sean jumped in the car.

“Go.”

The Torino’s tires spat dirt in their wake and hit 100 within fifteen seconds. The V8 was built for speed.

“Nice bar.” Pam checked the rearview mirror.

“Was for a few seconds. I liked the Merle Haggard and the beer was cold.”

“No more bars on this trip.” Pam had abandoned the romance of the road along with that young cowboy in Sterling, Colorado and there was no turning back left in her heart.

“We both insist,” said AK.

“But tomorrow’s my birthday.”

“No more bars.” AK had had his fill of cowboys and farmers. “We’ll celebrate with a cake and candles.”

“Okay, okay.” Sean slumped into the backseat and spoke to Slow Eagle, “Thanks.”

“I did nothing.”

“And nothing happened to me.”

“That why I didn’t go into the bar.” Slow Eagle mumbled low. “Bars like that aren’t made for hippies or Indians.”

“We should be able to go where we want.” “I will tell you a short story. Once we Indians lived on this land. The white man came. Now we are few. Few is better than none, so you have to know when to stay where you belong.” “I guess you’re right.” “Not right. I’m just not looking for any trouble.” Slow Eagle leaned his head against the window to sleep.

Snores soon followed.

“Guess he told you,” whispered AK.

“You could say that.”

US 40 swung south into the desert. A billion stars possessed the sky. The universe was black and they were white.

Slow Eagle woke in Salt Lake City.

“I’m traveling north to the Rez. Let me off when you turn west on 90.”

There were a lot of reservations in Montana and the Dakotas.

Wounded Knee was the best known after last year’s standoff with the FBI.

“Stay safe.”

“As long as I don’t have any problems with the ‘wasichu’, I’ll be a happy Indian.”

“I guess that means the White Man.”

“But not White Women. I like some of them.” Slow Eagle smiled in the dark. He had most of his teeth.

When he left the car, the big man gave Pam a long feather.

“Same as my name. Good luck for a beautiful woman. Tókhi wániphika ní!”

“What you think that meant?” AK had studied Spanish in college.

“Tokhi wanneepick no.” Sean repeated the phrase, but the words were already fading from his ears.

“Doesn’t sound the same with a Boston accent.” Pam pulled back onto the highway.

“Not even close.” AK had a musician’s ear.

“I gave it a try.”

The Mormon Temple glowed in the black western night. Pam drove through the city. They would stop for the night in the Salt Flats. Sean knew where.

Pam put on BLUE. Joni Mitchell sang ALL I WANT and CAREY. Beach tar on his feet was one or two days away.

“Tokhee wanneeprick no.”

Even saying it badly made him feel lucky.

Maybe because tonight was his last night to be 21 and Sean was spending it on the road.

Just like Jack Kerouac.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Bah Humbug Xmas


Eight years ago my non-belief in Christianity forced me give Christmas a miss, although I sent presents to my kids and wives, raised a few glasses to Xmas, and wished to my ancient father Happy Holidays. I did not travel to Boston for the family gathering nor call up friends in NY to seek a sumptuous meal. My vow to disavow Christmas was sacrosanct and I didn't even leave my apartment on December 25.

I thought about it for a few seconds, but the rain and a raging hangover enforced my edict to the letter.

No gifts, no Christmas carols, no Zuzu in Frank Capra's seasonal offering IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

This rejection of the holiday was considered dangerous by most. Solitude can lead to too much looking in the mirror, however I cooked a garlic pasta with sole and never heard the name of the Judeo-Christian god, who was actually born sometime in May. The December date was chosen by early Christian to compete with the birth of the sun god Mithras, thereby screwing up anyone born in December from getting a true birthday since Jesus was more important than any human.

Not to me anymore.

Not for a long time.

And this year Barack Obama recognized my non-belief in his inauguration speech.

"Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and non-believers."

Damn, I had never heard the hyphenated word 'non-believer' uttered by a president or national leader unless it was a declaration of a crusade against us.

So thank you everyone for freeing me from the spell of Christmas.

I'm no Scrooge or Grinch, but I like to worship peace and on this Xmas I did nothing, but that.

Doing nothing's my greatest skill.

FYI; The 1st Santa was St. Nicholas of Smyrna.

He remains the patron saint of beer.

Happy Beermas.

Has a nice ring to it, eh?

The Attack Of The Grinch

The Trump tax plan has overhauled the code largely in favor of the filthy rich. None of his supporters have criticized this Christmas gift to the top .01%. Everyone wants to be a billionaire and hope for a miracle to raise them from swamp of the middle class, but as I've always said, "There are only three ways to make a fortune. Birth. Marriage. And Theft."

# 45 has also banned the CDC from using the words “fetus,” “transgender,” “diversity,” vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “evidence-based” and “science-based” .

Trump has admitted he doesn't read books and I have to admit the Internet has curtailed my reading as well, but I don't think that's Trump's problem.

It's fascism.

And he's following the path of the Master.

Nothing says Grinch' better than Adolf.

Resist. comrades.

Elk Books At Printed Matter

Years ago famed skateboarder Jocko Weyland published my story FAMOUS FOR NEVER in Elk Books.

My failure versus the success of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The celebrated artist painted my refrigerator.

I had my girlfriend from West Virginia wiped off the images.

My jealousy had a stiff price tag.

At least a million dollars.

Jocko went off to be the curator of MOCA Tuscon.

No money.

Some prestige, but Tucson was Tucson.

A city most people love to leave before it's too late.

Jocko returned to New York this summer for an opening of his artwork.

Images of ruined Detroit.

Paintings of the mysterious Gowanus Canal.

No nudes.

Jocko was a vagabond.

He was staying out in the Rockaways with his girlfriend.

She could have been his uncool niece, but she was plenty cool.

I crashed at the gallery.

No bed.

No shower.

It was only two blocks away from the 169.

I slept there too.

Last week Jocko had an opening at Printed Matter in Chelsea.

He re-published all the Elk Books.

There were many.

FAMOUS FOR NEVER was one of them.

Jocko was with his girlfriend.

They were a happy couple.

Her name and Alyssa.

She read aloud a paragraph of FAMOUS FOR NEVER.

"After midnight Times Square was awash with wickedness. We posed on the sidewalk with the pimps, whores, and drug dealers. Clover reveled in her role as a rich man’s mistress and I passed for a detective in my pinstriped suit."

1978 was a long time ago.

Decades before Alyssa's birth, but she was cool and we drank beer, toasting the many volumes of Elk Books.

And there were many.

I no longer sleep on the floor.

At least not tonight.

And I still have a drawing from Jean-Michel.

He's not alive, but he remains famous.

And me I'm just living.

A vagabond.

Like Jocko Weyland.

ps besides skateboarding, Jocko is a wicked skier.

A legend.

Especially in Tahoe.

Go see the Elk Books collection at Printed Matter.

231 11th Avenue New York, NY 10001 Today until 7 pm

And you can purchase FAMOUS FOR NEVER at this url https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/49540

The Great One - Jackie Gleason

If you have it and you know you have it, then you have it. If you have it and don't know you have it, you don't have it. If you don't have it but you think you have it, then you have it.

Jackie Gleason

Hollywood Squares Ha Ha

From my brother in law David

You remember the Original Hollywood Squares and itslyndeframer2.jpg
comics, this may bring a tear to your eyes. These great questions and answers are from the days when the "Hollywood Squares" game show responses were spontaneous and clever, not scripted and (often) dull, as they are now. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions, of course.

Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years.
A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes.

Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A. Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

BACK AND FORTH by Peter Nolan Smith CHAPTER 4 - UP HIGH

The afternoon sun hovered over the distant mountains and Sean checked the Inferno Bar’s clock. The hands were stuck on 10:24 and the bartender said, “It’s been broke for years. The regulars like that time. Mid-morning or three hours till closing.”

Sean held out his hand to the gap between the sun and the shining peaks.

“I reckon it’s for about 5 O’clock.”

“Sun sets around 8 this time of year.”

“Three more hours of sunlight then.”

AK tapped his shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“Take a look.”

he early evening rush of hard-faced farmers in dirty overalls crowded the Inferno Lounge. They sat with a weariness born from decades of hard labor. Johnny Cash’s version of SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN was on the jukebox.

“What?”

“We’re getting outnumbered.”

“And what?”

“It’s time to leave, unless you want to stay.”

Three middle-aged ranchers at a corner table stared at them, as if they were to blame for Watergate. This was Nixon country.

EASY RIDER country too.

“No, I’m cool with splitting.” Sean signaled the bartender for the check. “You go find Pam.”

“You leaving so soon?” asked Jake.

“We want to reach the Rockies tonight.”

“It’s doable.” Jake was happy to see them go, since the Inferno Bar supply of trouble easily met demand after his more ornery customers sank deeper in their drink.

Sean placed a $20 on the bar.

“Keep the change.”

“Thanks, you heading west?”

“To the Rockies.”

“Best to take 14 to Fort Collins. There are no police are on that road. You should reach the Frontline in about ninety minutes, then head to Big Thompson Canyon. Try the Big Bear Lodge. The owner’s wife is an excellent cook. Better fetch your girl quick or else my son kidnaps her.”

“Billy. Buck. Now I make the connection.” Sean straightened up on the stool. “Will he be a problem?”

“Billy’s a gentleman unlike some of these fellas.” The bartender nodded to the nearest table of cowpunchers. “He won’t do anything weird.”

“I’m sure that he won’t. See you next time.”

The New Englander exited from the bar trailed by the ranchers’ muttered insults. Back in Boston he might have said something, but Sterling, Colorado wasn’t his hometown.

Sean stopped a few feet and reflected on Jack Kerouac traveling this prairie in the 40s. Nothing had really changed since and he walked to the station wagon more than ready to hit the road.

AK stood by himself.

“Where’s Pam?” Sean asked AK.

“Over there.” He pointed to the crapped-out Chevy pick-up.

The two people inside sat very close. The view of the Rockies was a better show than a drive-in movie, but their heads were locked to each other.

“I think she might have lost track of time.”

“Same as the clock in the Inferno Bar.”

Sean looked back at the bar.

Several men behind the window watched them with an unhealthy interest. Sean handed the Torino’s keys to AK.

“Start the car and blow the horn. If that doesn’t get her attention, then I’ll go over and knock on the window.”

AK sat at the wheel and started the station wagon. Its V8 throbbed with 386 cubic inches of Detroit power. He blew the horn once, waited a few seconds, then blew it twice. The pick-up’s passenger door opened for the blonde to slip out of the truck, arranging her clothing on the walk to the Torino.

The faces in the bar window followed her exit. Girls like Pam came around once a generation in small towns like Sterling. Billy emerged from the Chevy, buttoning his shirt, and ran up to the station wagon.

“Pam, are you leaving just like that?”

“Just like what?” She knew full well what.

“Without a good-bye.”

“We want to make the Rockies tonight.” She motioned for Sean to open the back door of the Torino.

“I wish you could stay.”

Buck’s son had fallen hard for the nursing student, but most men on this trip had succumbed to blonde, including AK.

“In some ways neither do I.” Pam kissed his cheek and settled into the front seat. Sean got in the back. AK revved the engine.

“Write me.” The young cowboy hastily scribbled an address on a piece of paper, which he passed through the open window.

“I’ll try.” Pam accepted the note.

“I really like you.” Billy stood like he expected Pam to get out of the car.

“You ready?” AK asked from behind the wheel.

“Yes.” The blonde nursing student lowered her head to keep from seeing the cowboy’s sad face. AK stepped on the gas. Buck’s son waved good-bye.

Sean felt as comfortable as yolk running from a cracked egg and Pam said, “Sorry about that.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. We’re on the road and don’t have to be who we are or who you will be once you reach to the coast.”

“That boy asked me to stay with him and for a little while I became Billy’s girlfriend, thinking we’d marry, have kids, and turn old looking at those mountains.”

“Living someplace like this isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

They came from the suburbs and the open range was scarier than a Boston ghetto.

“We’re not from here.”

Pam gazed over her shoulder.

The Inferno Bar drifted into the prairie.

“You could have stayed.” AK slowed down a little.

“No, one day I’d feel like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ and I’d click my heels to transport me back to Washington or New York or some big city, but it was a nice dream.” She tossed Billy’s address out the window and her hand tapped the dashboard. “Could you step on it before I change my mind?”

AK gave the engine more gas and three seconds later he was driving over the speed limit for the first time on this trip.

“The bartender said there were no cops on this road.” Sean repeated Buck’s information.

“I hope he’s right about that.”

The New Yorker was holding pot and possession of marijuana was a felony throughout the Union.

Neither of them had any intention of spending the summer in jail.

“This road cuts through farms and ranches. The map shows no towns between here and Fort Collins.

We have another two hour of sunlight and seventy miles till the Rockies.”

“What are you saying?”

“Faster, faster.” Sean stole the line from Russ Meyer’s sexploitation film FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL, however that movie’s girls wouldn’t have been caught dead with hippies in a station wagon.

“I second the motion.” Pam wanted distance between her and Billy.

AK acted on the vote and the Torino tore down the road at 90.

14 traversed the prairie and the frosted teeth of the Frontline loomed larger with each minute.

Pam stared out the window without any focus. A man should never ask a woman what she’s thinking, but Sean didn’t have to be a mind reader to divine the blonde’s thoughts and said, “Stop beating up yourself about Billy. It was Cinderella’s last dance.”

He couldn’t recollect her ever dancing with her fiancée.

“Hopefully not the last.” Pam was amused by the fairy tale comparison. “And that sitting in that truck was more like a wrestling match than a waltz.”

“Okay, not the last, but I won’t say anything about this to anyone. Not Jackie or Harry.” Sean had little chance of running into her roommate or boyfriend.

“Me neither.” AK was glad to be rid of a rival for Pam’s attention. “Two days ago we left Boston and now we’re almost a mile high. By night time we’ll be even higher.”

Sean checked the map.

“The passes through the Rockies top out at 9,000 feet.”

“I’ve never been that high.” Pam was excited by the prospect of high altitudes.

“The highest I’ve ever been was the top of Mount Washington and that was when I was a little boy. My father drove our station wagon up the toll road to the summit. At the top the wind rocked the car like it would be blown off the top. The Abenaki Indians called the mountain Agiocochook.”

“What’s that mean? Home of the Big Spirit?”

“I think that’s it, but Mount Washington is only 6000 feet high.”

“Was it hard to breathe?”

“A little.”

“The Rockies are much higher.” AK glanced over to Pam to make sure she was listening to him. “The way you feel atop the continent is called Rocky Mountain High.”

“I love that song.”

Pam sang the opening verses. AK and Sean joined her for the chorus.

“Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky.
The shadow from the starlight
is softer than a lullaby
Rocky Mountain high,
Rocky Mountain high.”

Pam knew the lyrics to John Denver’s hit. Sean didn’t mention that the singer’s real name was Henry John Deutschendorf, since she already disapproved of his disdain for the Beatles. When she finished, AK sang John Denver’s COUNTRY ROAD’s first verse, but then stumbled through the second verse and the two of them broke into laughter.

According to ON THE ROAD Jack Kerouac had traveled by bus down from Cheyenne. His friend Dean Moriarty wasn’t in Denver, but the beat writer connected with kindred spirits for wild revels. Sean didn’t know anyone in the Mile-High City and asked AK, “Do you have any friends in Boulder?”

“Helen used to live here.”

“Helen from San Diego?” Sean didn’t know any songs about that city.

“Only her. No one else. You?”

His question was directed at Pam, who answered, “The only person I know in the West is Henry.”

“In Mendocino?”

“One in the same.”

“Then we have no reason to go to Denver.”

Sean kept heading west.

When they reached Fort Collins, he gassed up the Torino and drove down to Loveland. Turning into the mountains the station wagon wound through the narrow defiles of the Big Thompson Canyon. Steep evergreen forests climbed the towering mountains whose peaks formed an uneven crown beneath a jet-black sky filling with stars.

The Big Bear Lodge was located about fifteen miles up the canyon with a dozen wooden cabins scattered along the fast-running creek. They pulled up to the office and a man in his fifties stepped onto the porch.

“Looking for a room?” His accent came from Back East.

“The bartender back at the Inferno Lounge suggested we stay here.” Sean watched the rising moon, which seemed bigger this high in the mountains.

“Buck comes here in the fall for a long mountain hikes. It was kind of him to suggest our place. I’ll give you the big cabin for the price of the small one. My name’s Ralph.” He was in good shape for a man his age.

“I want my own cabin.” Pam wasn’t sharing a room after two days in the car with AK and Sean.

“Then it’s two for the price of one.”

He led them to a two rustic cabins near the rushing stream.

“I’m sure you’d like to freshen up before dinner. Our specialty is fresh trout from the creek and apple pie for dessert. We also have beer and wine.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Sean was talking about more than the food.

“Then we’ll see you shortly. The small restaurant is next to the office.

“I’ll meet you there.” Pam hurried to the Torino and yanked out her bag. “But this shower might last forever.”

AK and Sean stowed their bags in the cabin. Their showers lasted a minute each and they sat on the porch admiring the fresh scent of spruce trees. AK had changed into his finest hippie attire and lit up a joint.

Sean coughed on the first tuff.

In the next cabin Pam sang a song, which they couldn’t make out over the tumult of the creek.

“She seems happy.”

“Maybe, but Pam’s pissed at her boyfriend. He hasn’t answered a sine on of her phone calls.”

“She’s probably thinking the worst.” AK passed the joint and asked, “You think there’s any chance for me and her?”

“On this trip. Zero.”

“What about the cowboy in Sterling?”

“He was a harmless fling, plus she knows you have a girlfriend.”

“How she know? You tell her?”

“No. Women know about things like that. The odds are stacked against you.”

“You’re probably right.” AK shrugged off the disappointment. “At least I have my weed.”

They smoked the joint to the bone and Pam emerged from her cabin cleansed by the long shower, wearing a peasant skirt and blouse without out any sandals.

“Nice to be clean again.”

“And even more so to be out of the car.” Sean stood up. “Hungry?”

“Extremely.”

The three of them walked to the restaurant, where Pam excused herself, “I have to make a call.”

“Good luck.” Sean entered the rustic dining room. After AK sat down Sean asked, “Are you calling Anne-Marie?”

“We don’t need to communicate all the time.”

“If you say so.” Sean ordered a bottle of cheap California wine, which was a welcome change after this afternoon’s beer festival.

A minute later Pam entered the dining room and they ordered trout from Ralph’s wife. Sean cleaned his plate. Dessert was a heavenly slice of apple pie. He ordered seconds and another glass of wine, which he carried outside and sat on the steps.

AK and Pam returned to the cabin. They sat on the porch. A match flared and AK passed the joint to Pam. The black silhouettes of the Rockies loomed around the valley and the river roared with snowmelt.

“I drove past the Queen City many times on my way to the North Country. I even remember the town motto. Labor Vincit.”

“Labor conquers became a joke after with the closing of the Merrimack River mills, which was the reason I joined the army.”

“And you never returned home.”

“After two tours in Korea I mustered out in San Francisco and hitchhiked home from the West Coast. Some hunters dropped me off a few miles up the road. I hiked down to here and stopped for the night. The cook was the boss’ daughter. I loved her apple pie.”

“I can understand why.” Sean had eaten two slices.

“He hired me as the assistant manager. The boss’ daughter and I fell in love. We had kids. The lodge provided for us all. I know it sounds a little wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’, but I skipped more of the downs than the ups.”

The fifty year-old smiled at his wife in the kitchen. Her joyous eyes exposed that they had survived for better or worse with flying colors.

“I like happy endings.”

All Sean’s romances had one, except someone else enjoyed them.

“Who doesn’t?” Ralph went to the beer cooler and brought back four Coors. He handed Sean two.

“Mind if I join you?”

“You’re certainly better company than me.”

“It’s tough shutting off that voice inside your head, but up here it’s not easy to hear yourself over the sound of the water,” Ralph suggested that they move to a picnic table. Sean followed him and they sat on a bench with the beers.

“Don’t stay up late,” his wife shouted from the office. “I know how you New Englanders are when you run into your own.”

“I’ll be in bed before you know it,” Ralph answered with contentment. ”I’m a lucky man.”

“It’s a good place to end up with a good woman.” The Big Bear Lodge had a firm grip on happiness. Sean’s parents had been equally blessed by luck.

“Yeah, I see hundreds of young people coming up and down this road. Thousands of families on their summer vacations. People on the move, but I’ve never thought about leaving here.” Ralph opened his beer. “It’s the mountains.”

“They are special. Even in the dark.”

“I haven’t been Back East in ten years. My wife hates to fly, but New England was hard to get out of your blood. How are the White Mountains looking these
years?”

“Last June I camped beneath Mount Washington. People skied Tuckerman’s Ravine until July. There’s more cars and motels, but once you’re on the trails, you’re in the wilderness.”

“Just like here.”

“In some ways, yes. What do you miss about New England?”

“The trees changing color in autumn. The sound of skates on ice. Fried clams.”

“The best are from Tony’s on Wollaston Beach.”

“Thompson’s in Ipswich.”

The two New Englanders spent an hour jabbering about autumn along Saco River, the logging bars in Berlin, skiing Wildcat in below-zero temperatures, playing pond hockey, and the meat balls subs served at Manchester’s best sandwich shop.

Neither of them were happy about the Boston Bruins losing the Stanley Cup earlier in the month, but the Celtics had beaten the Milwaukee Bucks in seven games to win the NBA championship.

“I didn’t think hippies liked sports.”

“We are who we are no matter how hard we try to be someone else.”

“Now if only the Red Sox could win the World Series.” Ralph raised his eyes to clear cosmos.

“Some things aren’t meant to be.” The decades-old curse of Babe Ruth was stronger than the power of the universe.

“Time to call it a night. I have an early day tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the beer.”

“Sleep well.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. This clean air is a powerful sleeping pill.”

After Ralph entered the office, the lodge’s lights were extinguished one by one.

Sean walked to the cabin, expecting his two companions to be asleep, but Pam sat on her porch, a blanket wrapped around her legs against the cool mountain air.

“Are you okay?” Sean pulled up the leather jacket collar.

“I couldn’t sleep.” Pam played with a loose shank of hair. “I finally spoke with my boyfriend. Harry said that he loved me. This afternoon was wrong.”

“Nothing happened, did it?” Her going all the way shouldn’t have been possible in the front seat of a pick-up truck.

“No, but I wanted it too.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting it. In fact wanting it is normal.”

“Not for women. A man wants a virgin on his wedding night.”

The Pill had liberated women’s bodies. Loosening the chains on their minds was a more difficult achievement.

“Is that what your boyfriend said?” Sean had met the intern twice. The lanky Harry was no Billy.

“Yes, and also that any girl who gives up her virginity before marriage is a whore.”

“I think most men want a little of both.” He had never slept with a virgin.

“Not Harry. He hasn’t even masturbated.”

“Impossible.” Sean had learned the art of self-abuse at the age of 12.

“He swears it’s true.”

“There’s nothing is wrong with you. Same as nothing was wrong with Jackie going back to her old boyfriend. People do what they want, even if that not what other people want. It’s called freedom of choice.”

He sat on the steps.

“Do yourself a favor. Stop thinking you did something wrong. It was only kissing, and even if it was more, then that wasn’t wrong either. The birds and bees do it and so do we.”

“The birds and bees.” Pam laughed at this reference. “My mother tried to explain sex with the birds and bees. Why you think they use that allegory?”

“Because that way you don’t know nothing, but what you learn yourself.” He held Pam’s hand and stood up on the porch. “C’mon, it’s time to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us.”

“I appreciate your listening.”

Her kiss on his cheek was as tender as a mother’s good-bye.

“Listening’s what I’m here for sometimes.” Sean watched Pam enter the other cabin. He went to his. AK snored in his bed. Sean spread a blanket on the couch and opened the window. The air was fragrant with fallen pine needles.

He opened ON THE ROAD. Kerouac was traveling into the mountains with friends from Denver. The book lowered onto his chest.

Several seconds later Sean fell asleep.

It had been a long day.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Alligator Protection


Florida has about 1,000,000 Mesozoic inhabitants i.e. alligators and 800-1000 crocodiles. None exist on Palm Beach, except as shoes, belts, and pocketbooks for the filthy rich, however alligator attacks occur in the Sunshine State and every resident and visitor should know the proper response.

First scream.

Won't scare the 'gator, but it'll alert people to the fact that something bigger than a mosquito wants a chunk of you.

Alligators are stronger than they look, but their eyes are sometimes bigger than their stomach, so fat people can try a Sumo move of the giant reptiles to maneuver the beast onto its back.

Covering its eyes helps because then it can't see you and might forget what it's doing. Alligators have short attention spans.

If its jaws are shut, then smack it in the nose after covering its eyes. That way it won't suspect you were the attacker. Man bite dog theory.

If you are in the jaws, avoid being shaken by holding the gator's both shut, because once you're in the death roll it's all over.

"What happened to Jimmie?"

"He forgot to cover a gator's eyes, while punching it in the snout."

"Was he holding its mouth shut too."

"No, he only had two arms."

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/the-demise-of-naked-gay-discos-in-miami.htm

Monday, December 11, 2017

A Messenger From Afar Visting First

Hawaiian astronomers spotted a cigar-shaped asteroid traversing the solar system at 87,000 mph. The star gazers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory determined that the 1400 foot long object's origins were from an unknown star system and named it 'Oumuamua' or a 'a messenger from afar arriving first'. Astronomers added that they had never seen this shape before, which surprised me, since the first STAR TREK series featured just such an asteroid in the THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE episode.

Commander Decker was the first to encounter the weapon of destruction. His ship as destroyed by the inter-galactic intruder. To prevent the device from reaching Earth Decker steers his damaged ship into the maw of the death machine, thereby saving the Federation from doom.

Mission accomplished.

Which is good , because Earth has no spaceships.

Not one.

Untying The Knot Of Thai Wires

Last year Microsoft's Bill Gates visited Thailand and upon seeing the tangles of wires hanging over the streets complained about the masses stealing electricity from the power companies. The Harvard drop-out is considered to be one of the richest men in the world and in his youth spent hours developing new phones and computers, so he should have recognized that most of these wires were for the internet and phone service.

Instead he posted the following:

Due to faulty infrastructure, many urban areas suffer from frequent blackouts and power cuts, and the electrical grid often doesn’t serve the people who need it most.

I’ve visited many cities filled with tangled wires such as those in this photo from Thailand, where people have illegally tapped into the grid on their own to get the power they need—at great personal risk.

I lived for years in Thailand and the only person I witnessed cutting into the electrical wires was my stupid farang neighbor, who would have been electrocuted, if a Thai hadn't pushed him off the wire with a ten-foot pole.

Of course the Thai government announced plans to bury the wires.

Result?

ครั้น ครั้น or Mai kraan or didn't happen.

Same as Trump's Great Wall of Mexico.

All talk.

With one finger typing by # 45.

BACK AND FORTH by Peter Nolan Smith - CHAPTER 3 - LOOKALIKE

The Torino crossed the flooded Mississippi and passed heavily loaded semi-trailers laboring up a steep bluff. Davenport, Iowa wasn’t a big city, but river town had been even smaller, when a trucker had dropped Jack Kerouac in 1947. The sun had set without the beat writer catching a ride and Keroacc had backtracked to Davenport for the night

In the morning another truck driver drove him to Iowa City.

Twenty-seven years later the Recession of 1974 had badly battered the American economy and the Ford Torino was the only passenger car on the Interstate. Sean checked the dashboard clock. It was 5:10 Central Standard Time.

Morning.

A local AM station broadcasted country-western music.

Following the promo plug for the Quad City Angels baseball team the DJ played Melba Montgomery’s # 1 hit NO CHARGE followed by Ronnie Millsap’s PURE LOVE. Sean looked at the other passengers.

AK huddled against the front door and Pam slept in the back of the station wagon. Sean repressed a yawn and cracked open the driver-side window, then splashed water on his face.

After the municipal airport I-80 beelined through the vast fields of grain. In the distance was the silhouette of an unlit farmhouse. Other than the stars there were no lights. A quick glimpse at the map informed Sean that the next truck stop was about thirty-five minutes away at 75mph.

Once he had some coffee, he would be fine.

The DJ cued up Dolly Parton’s I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU. The long love ballad led to a series of yawns. On the third Sean rested his right eye and fifteen seconds later opened it to give his left eye a short rest.

Seesawing between eyes was a dangerous game and Sean splashed more water in his face.

He sang along Charlie Rich’s chart-climber I DON’T SEE IN ME IN YOUR EYES for about a minute, then both eyes shut and his hands fell off the steering wheel.

“Yo, man.” AK shouted, as the Torino’s driver-side tires edged off the asphalt onto the grassy meridian.

A jerk of the steering wheel righted the car onto the empty interstate and Sean pulled over to the shoulder. I

“What happened?” Pam asked, rubbing her eyes. She had slept through all of Illinois.

“He fell asleep at the wheel.”

“Just for a second.”

“Another second and we were dead.”

“Pam, it’s your turn at the wheel.” Sean stepped out of the Torino and opened the door for the blonde co-ed. “

It was probably was my turn last time you stopped.” Pam stretched with the wind dancing with her loose shirt.

“You looked too comfortable to wake up.” AK’s finger brushed order into his sleep-tangled hair.

“Where are we?” The twenty year-old gazed at the black plains stretching west.

“A little west of the Mississippi in Iowa.” Sean gave her the map.

“Another ‘I’ state?”

“Yes, but the last. Next up is Nebraska and it’s a long one.”

Omaha was over four hundred miles from Colorado. Kerouac had ridden in trucks to Cheyenne and caught a bus south to Denver.

“How far from here?”

“A hundred and sixty miles. We should get there around dawn.”

“Then I suggest you go to sleep.” Pam sat behind the wheel.

“I don’t mind if I do.” Sean crawled into the back to lay his head on the pile of sleeping bags. One of them smelled of Pam’s lilac oil. Sean liked flowers. She put on the 8-track BLUE. Like most college girls of the 70s she was a Joni Mitchell fan and Sean asked, “What is it about Joni that you like so much?”

“Her songs are magic to my soul. I know it’s not cool for men to like her, but she sings about our lives.”

“I saw Dave Van Ronk perform BOTH SIDES NOW at the Club 47 in Harvard Square. Before that show I thought she had nothing to offer me. I was wrong. Tom Rush covered URGE FOR GOING. I’m probably in this car as much for that song as Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. I’d love to hear it now.”

“I can play it on my kalimba.” AK lifted his African thumb piano.

“You can?”

“I know all the words.” Pam stepped on the gas. A billboard advertised the truck stop in Atalissa. The tank was three-quarters full. They weren’t stopping there.

“I can help on the chorus.”

AK plucked the plaintive chords of Joni’s song on the thumb piano. Pam sang a decent soprano backed by Sean’s baritone. They repeated URGE FOR GOING and the second time tears stained the corners of Sean eyes, because Joni sang for everyone with an ear for music and a soul to feel life. At the fourth chorus Sean slipped into sleep with the wheels mumbling, 
“And I get the urge for going.”

Sean woke with AK behind the wheel.

Outside the car the rays of the rising sun tipped the infant corn. The radio transmitted Kenny Rodgers’ RUBY. They were approaching a broad river, which unlike the Mississippi wasn’t in flood.

“Morning, sunshine.” Pam offered with a sleep-sweetened smile.

“Is this the Missouri?” Sean tossed back the sleeping bags and pulled up the back seat, then climbed over to sit behind Pam.

“You were right about your talent for Geography,” AK said without turning his head away from the road.

“We’re just east of Omaha.”

A city on the bluff shone in the bright morning light.

“We’re making time.”

“Thanks to Old Leadfoot.” AK pointed his thumb at Pam. “But I don’t think we’ll break your record.”

“So now you believe I made it cross country in fifty hours.”

AK had scoffed at his claim back in Boston.

“Not really, but we are 100% disbelievers and since there’s nothing on the radio, so tell us again.”

“Two years ago this speed freak picked up my friend and me in Iowa. Lucky was driving a Super Bee. The only time he below 100 was to buy gas. He had trouble staying awake. A couple of times his head fell on the steering wheel and I steered from the passenger seat. Lucky was heading to LA and should have been on I-40 instead of I-80”

“Nice guys.”

“We didn’t tell him about this error until Winnemucca, then he headed south. Forty-four hours after leaving Boston.”

“I almost believe you, but only almost.” AK opened the window. The cornfields had been replaced by wheat, low hills bordered the horizon, and men in pick-ups wore cowboy hats. They weren’t in the east anymore.

“Me too.” Pam resumed reading her book.

“Like Jake said. All stories are true, if interesting.”

They drove through Omaha in a matter of minutes and followed a mist hiding the Platte River.

A century ago pioneers had traveled this route into the West.

“We’re getting low on gas,” announced AK.

“And I could use a wash.” The blonde nursing student tugged at her windblown hair.

“Then we’re in luck.” AK pulled off I-80 into a truck stop offering showers.

A young black teenager with reddish hair was pumping gas. Pam slid out of the car and his eyes followed, as if she was someone famous.

“Fill it with high test,” AK told the young man.

His friend might have been a hippie, but he was also white and the teenager lowered his eyes before asking,

“Anything else, sir.”

“Could you clean the windshield?” The glass was smeared with insects.

“Yes, sir.” Fear edged his politeness was edged with fear, for back in 1919 Omaha’s whites had brutally lynched a black man suspected of rape and leveled the prairie city’s colored section. That savage event had been forgotten by most Americans, but not this young black man from Nebraska.

“Where are the showers?” Pam asked the service attendant.

“Over there, ma’am. The bath facilities are attached to the diner. A shower it’d costs a dollar.”

“It could cost $10 and be worth it.” She grabbed a towel and left smiling at the black gas attendant. Sean tipped him a $1 once the tank was full.

“Thanks, mister.” Nobody tipped gas attendants. “For doing what you’re doing.”

“Doing what?”

Thousands of hippies crossed America this time of year.

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” The black attendant checked the gas station. “Where you going?”

“San Francisco.”

“Damn, the city of love. Wish I wuz goin’ with you.”

“You could come with us.”

“Naw, I’ll stay here with my family, but you be careful with the speed. The police don’t like people like you, but you know that.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“We have to stick together.”

The teenager flashed a secretive black power fist and replaced the gas nozzle before attending to the next car.

Sean motioned for AK to park the Torino and walked behind the car, which the New Yorker slotted between two campers with out-of-state plates. A wind devil swirled across the parking lot. The fine grit bit at his eyes and layered his skin with another layer of road dirt. AK left the station wagon and glanced back at the attendant, saying, “Bet he’s the last black we see before California.”

“You’re probably right about that. We’re entering white man territory.”

“The last time I drove cross-country I only saw Indians on Route 66.”

“Same as me. I saw Navahos in Gallup, New Mexico and rode in the back of a pick-up truck in the dead of night with some. No one said a word.”

“I doubt there are any Indians out here.”

“Nebraska has six reservations on the map, but they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, but I can’t throw any rocks. The Yankee side of my family seized the Abenaki lands in Maine long before a single white man stepped foot on the plains.”

“Same as Long Island. The Shinnecocks have a reservation the size of Yankee Stadium.”

“Better than nothing. My Irish Nana’s family had been forced off their farm by the British landlords.” Sean reached into the car for his leather jacket and a tee shirt. A shower could wait until the Rockies.

“And my father’s family fled the Russian pogroms.” AK locked the car.

“Like the Mormons fled their persecutors?” Sean checked his wallet, which was in his back pocket.

“The Mormons are more a cult than a people, plus we won’t see them until the western reaches of Colorado. So after here we longhairs are one of the minorities.”

“You know I’m related to Joseph Smith?”

“You’ve told me that before.” AK also picked out a tee shirt and a towel.

“And my grandmother said it more than once and she never lied to me.”

“Mormons are a cult. They believe that blacks will be slaves in heaven.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be making it into their heaven either.”

“Certainly won’t since you don’t even believe in God.”

“Guilty as accused.”

The morning wind blew dust into his eyes.

“No god, huh?”

“None at all.”

“Don’t tell anyone out here that. This is Bible thumping territory.”

“I know how to keep my mouth shut.” Sean said, as they entered the truck stop. “I need to make a phone call.” “Jackie?” “Not Jackie.” “Nope.” “What about a shower?” “Not now.” “Suit yourself, but you’re getting a little ripe.” “I am?” Sean sniffed his shirt. Nixon’s Silent Majority was right to call longhairs ‘dirty’, but all cross-country travelers were dirty after a few days on the road. Families were dirty, hippies were dirtier, and hoboes were dirtiest of all. “See you in a minute.” AK went to shower off the road. Sean called his parents collect at the hallway payphone. No one picked up on the South Shore and he phoned Jackie in Buffalo. After thirty seconds Sean slammed down the receiver and entered the diner, half-filled with sleepy truckers in desperate need of a lift stronger than coffee. He sat at the counter. Several seconds later AK joined him. “You can’t believe what some guy said to me in the toilet.” “Something about sucking and fucking.” Truck stops were notorious cruising spots. “Worse than that.” “Worse?” “Yes, guess I’ll stay dirty until California.” “Won’t bother me, but Pam might complain.” “Yeah, maybe we’ll stay in a motel tonight.” AK scratched his hair, as the waitress served hot coffee. None of the truckers commented about hippies. They wore their hair long too.

Sean picked up a discarded local paper and scanned the sport pages for baseball results. The Red Sox remained his team, despite last season’s epic collapse in September. They had lost the previous day and he read the front page.

Watergate dominated the headlines. Nixon grew guiltier each passing day. The other big story was Patty Hearst on the run from the police. The kidnapped heiress-SLA radical topped the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

AK read the menu, as if he might chose a breakfast other than eggs over easy with bacon, but lowered the plasticized folder to watch Pam saunter into the room.

He wasn’t alone.

The men in the diner ogled the twenty year-old, but several stared at the newspapers in their hands, then studied the blonde with an interest greater than sex. Suddenly the black gas attendant’s comments made sense.

“I feel like a new woman.” Pam beamed with the pleasure of a hot shower, and then she noticed the attention of the men in the diner. “They stare at me, as if they haven’t ever seen a woman in their life.

“They might have another reason.” Sean showed her Patti Hearst’s photo in the newspaper.

“They think I look like her?”

“Yes.” “I look nothing like her.”

“I agree, but a reward has a funny way of making people see things that aren’t there. Mr. Hearst has offered $50,000 for his daughter’s return.”

A fortune in 1974.

“If she’s Patty Hearst, then they must think that we’re the SLA. You think any of these cowboys have a gun?”

“Some.”

Two men glared, as if they had robbed the Hibernia Bank in California.

“Let’s get out of here,” Pam folded the menu.

“No, we stay or else some idiot will call the State Police for the reward.” Sean waved to the middle-aged waitress.

“What’s up?”

Her nametag said ‘June’.

“That’s my aunt’s name.”

“How nice. You ready to order?” She posed a pencil over her pad.

“Yes, June, but we have a small problem.”

“I hope that it isn’t a vegetarian thing, because this diner serves bacon, ham, and steak with breakfasts.”

She impatiently planted both hands on her hips.

“No, we love bacon.” AK reversed the newspaper. “But a few of your customers might think that our lady friend here is Patty Hearst.”

“Patty Hearst?” the waitress gasped, then her eyes flitted between the picture and Pam two times before chuckling, “These boys are as dumb as a cow tied to a post. You’re much prettier than that poor rich girl. Let me handle this.”

“Thanks.”

The waitress faced the other diners.

“You idiots keep your eyes on your food. This pretty girl ain’t no Patti Hearst. She’s like the rest of us. Plain people, so get back to your grits and eggs.”

“How can you be sure?” a fat man asked from the back of the diner.

“Jack, you want extra coffee or a check?”

“Extra coffee, please.” Jack lowered his head.

“That should take care of them. What will you kids have?” The waitress had enjoyed her tirade.

“Bacon, eggs over-easy, home-fries, toast and OJ.” Pam smiled with the delight in another woman’s power over men.

“Make it two.” Sean loved breakfast in America.

“Three.” AK added his order, which Helen gave to the short-order cook.

Thirty minutes later they exited from the truck stop. The young black attendant was filling the tank of a state trooper’s cruiser. The officer’s gaze tracked Pam to the station wagon, then tipped his hat. To him the blonde was just another beautiful hippie girl on the way west. Pam sat in the back.

AK and Sean stood by the station wagon, basking in a dry breeze.

“You smelled that?” Sean breathed the scent of a continent’s center.

“Alan Lerner called this wind ‘Mariah’ in his musical PAINT YOUR WAGONS.”

“It’s almost the West.”

“By the end of the day we should see the Rockies.”

“The miles keep piling up.”

“Even at 55.”

AK got in the co-pilot seat and turned on the radio. An Omaha rock station was playing HEY JUDE. Sean drove at 55 for the next two miles, as the Beatles wailed the chorus of ‘HEY JUDE’.

“That was weird.” Pam looked over her shoulder to see if the trooper had followed the station wagon.

“What was?”

“Those people thinking I was Patty Hearst.

“Tania’s on the Top Ten Most Wanted list.”

“Her name’s not Tania,” Pam spoke with reactionary conviction.

“It’s her name now.”

“You have no idea what they did to her.”

“Who did what? The SLA are revolutionaries.”

“Who kidnapped her? Not Nixon. Not General Westmorland. Not the Pope. She was grabbed by a gang of criminals.”

“Her father controls a newspaper backing the war.”



“So she was fair game?”

“He’s an enemy of the State.”

HEY JUDE was lasting forever.

“My father is a lawyer. Yours works for the phone company. They support the System.” AK had a strong aversion to hypocrisy.

“But I don’t.”

“So we’re all targets?” Pam was a member of the Silent Majority.

“Same as a kid in Vietnam.”

“That’s another reason Jackie didn’t like you. You believe that there will be a revolution in this country. Those men in that diner voted for Nixon. They outnumbered you twenty to one. They will never let there be a revolution.”

“Pam’s right.” AK agreed with the musing student. “The police beat us in Chicago, the National Guard shot us in Kent State. RFK, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King are dead. They even shot George Wallace.” AK didn’t clarify who ‘they’ were, because their names remained a mystery.

“What about the Struggle?”

“The Struggle?” AK laughed at the word. “People in this country have forgotten the Days of Rage, Stop the War, and the Black Panthers. This country is tired of the fighting.”

“So all they want is a peaceful barbecue on Memorial Weekend.”

“With well-done burgers and warm Bud beer and the troops home from Viet Nam”

“But B52s are still bombing targets big and small in Indochina."

“Americans don’t care about the War anymore. They have shut off Viet-Nam like it was an old Green Acres re-run on TV.”

“The SLA and Weather Underground are fighting for freedom.”

“Yes, and a week ago four hundred LAPD attacked an SLA safe house. The SWAT team shot tear gas through the windows. The gun battle lasted until the house caught fire. America doesn’t fool around with revolutionaries.”

“The SLA deserved what they got from the police.” Pam’s family lived in the suburbs outside of Washington DC.

“Deserved?” Sean parents’ split-level ranch house was painted pink, but he felt more urban than suburban. “The LAPD killed all the people in that house without any attempt to peacefully end the siege.”

“Thankfully Patty wasn’t among the dead.”

“That’s another reason I hate the Beatles.” Sean snapped off the radio to kill HEY JUDE. “Their song REVOLUTION. “If you want to talk about destruction, then count me out.” I expect nothing else from a group who sold out rock for pop, so they could say they were more popular that Jesus.”

“Time out, time out.” AK lifted his hands to quiet his friend more than Pam.

“Jackie thought you had a bad temper. Not to her, but against anyone who supported the war people.”

Her list of his failings lengthened state by state.

“Because I care.”

“About what?”

“The end to injustice.”

“You and a few others, but the rest are sell-outs. Seniors cut their hair and put on suits to meet with corporate recruiters.

“Not me.”

“And no company hired a longhair in 1974.” Pam glimpsed into the rearview mirror and said, “I care, but I’m no revolutionary.”

“Neither am I.” Bombs, kidnappings, and bank robberies were beyond his commitment to change and Sean said,

“Sorry, Pam.”

“I’m sorry too. I have a bad temper."

I know, but so do I."

Sean turned on the radio to catch the second chorus of STREET FIGHTING MAN.

Neither of them explained their apologies and they listened to a medley of hits from the Rolling Stones, as

I-80 crossed Nebraska like a snake nailed to the prairie. The distance increased between the small towns and trucks accelerated to 70. Sean pushed the Torino to 75. There was no place off the road for a state trooper to hide, but he slowed at each off-ramp.

Approaching Kearny he spotted a bearded hitchhiker on the side of the road.


“It’s Bill.” Pam recognized the ragged longhair.

They had thrown him out of the Torino back in Boston over 1600 miles from Kearney.

“How’d he get in front of us?” asked AK.

“Same way I did the USA in 50 hours. Long steady rides.”

“Are we stopping?” asked Pam.

“Not a chance.” Sean stepped on the gas.

Bill glared at the station wagon and flipped them the finger.

They did the same and laughed.

“Didn’t he say that he was joining a carnival in the Midwest?”

“Someone likes Bill tells the stories people want to hear.”

“Like Jack Kerouac.” Pam had banned hitchhikers after Bill.

“I think Kerouac was nicer than Bill.”

“Anyone is nicer than Bill.” Pam re-opened her book FEAR OF FLYING. Sean sped up to 80. Spring wheat fields covered the undulating prairie. At the next exit stood two tattered hobos. They barely bothered to lift their thumbs.

“Not stopping for them?” Pam was riding Sean.

“Not them. No anyone.”

After Gothenburg Pam switched places with Sean. Parched buttes escorted the interstate. The Torino cruised at 90. Sean attempted to tell Pam to beware of cops, but she refused to believe that one would give a beautiful blonde a ticket. She was more right than Sean once again.

I-80 split at Julesberg, Nebraska.

Kerouac had taken the northern route to Cheyenne.

They changed over to I-78.

It headed to Denver.

“First one to see the Rockies wins a beer,” Sean said to break the silence.

“You’re on.” Pam accepted the wager.

He spotted the mountains a little east of Sterling, Colorado and said, “Turn here.”

“Why here?” Pam pulled off the highway.

Distant peaks shined white with snow and Sean held up the map.

“Route 14 runs west to Fort Collins and the Rockies, plus I don’t think Bill will be coming this way.”


“And you think there’s a bar in this town?” Pam was rewarded for heeding the speed limit. A cop car sat at an intersection. The officer was eating a sandwich. Pam waved to him and he waved back.

“Probably on the outskirts.”

At the edge of Sterling was a bar called the INFERNO LOUNGE. Two battered pick-up trucks were in the parking lot. The bar appeared like the previous owners might have served whiskey and beer to westward bound pioneers in the last century. The road beyond the bar bisected calf-high wheat to the mountainous horizon.

“This looks like the place.” It was here or nowhere.

“I can make a call.”

“To Harry?”

“Yes.”

Pam parked the Torino near the entrance and got out of the station wagon.

AK followed her into the bar. The stuffed heads of wild animals decorated its wooden interior, proclaiming the clientele’s fondness for guns. The two older men at the bar regarded them for a second and returned to their beers. They had seen hippies before.

“Guess you stopped looking like Patty Hearst.” Sean sat on a stool with a cracked leather pad.

“I hope you’re right.” Pam wasn’t looking to repeat the scene back at the truck stop.

“Sorry about before.”

Pam faced him. “And I’m sorry about you and Jackie. Some things don’t out the way we hope, plus you and her weren’t in love.”

“It wasn’t?” It had felt like love.

“No, you two were just a thing.”

Sean tried to recall if he had ever said the love word.

His memory came up empty.

“Just a thing?”

“She was killing time until she and her old boyfriend got back together. You must have known that.”

”No, I didn’t.” Sean wished that he was talking to Jackie instead of Pam, but his wish wasn’t coming true any time soon.

“What you folks want?” The bearded bartender placed both hands on the bar, whose ancient wood was scarred with carved names.

“Coors.” The brand wasn’t available in the East.

“Three.” AK stood at the jukebox and reached into his pocket for change.

Sean picked up the cold Coors can and gulped down his, while Pam sipped hers and handed the bartender $2.

“Can I make a call?”

“Payphone is out back.” The bartender gave her eight quarters and she walked to the rear of the bar.

“Pretty girl. How long you know her?” He had clever eyes.

“I know where you’re headed with this. You think she’s Patty Hearst. She isn’t.”

“She isn’t?”

“No, Pam’s a college co-ed from Boston. She’s friend’s of my ex.”

“Damn.” He shrugged with a well-aged disappointment. “I could have used the $50,000.”

“Couldn’t we all. That much money is the price of ten GTOs.”

“I only needed one.”

“Me too.” Sean introduced himself.

“Buck, it’s not my real name, but no one here knows that.” Buck shook his hand. “By the way where’s your ex-?”

“She’s spending the summer with her high school sweetheart.”

“High school sweetheart are always trouble.” The bartender nodded, as if he was an expert at old boyfriends. “Yeah, I confronted her about him.” “How'd that work out?” The bartender winced, having heard enough bad endings involving old girlfriends. “We sort of made up over a bottle of tequila and I decided to drive home rather than spend the night, since she shared a bedroom with her roommate.” “The girl on the phone?” “One in the same.” “A bad decision.”

Tell me about it. I ran over some bushes and an unmarked car pulled up on my left. Two policemen were inside. They ordered me to stop. I decided to run for it. I was driving a VW hatchback.”

“Not the best vehicle for a getaway.”

“No, and pretty soon the town’s entire police force was on my tail.”

“Must have been a slow night.”

“Yeah, but not for me. I pulled into a dead end and jumped out of the car like it had been had been stolen.”

“Was it stolen?”

“No, I had borrowed it from a friend.” Sean had seen Pam put the coins into the slot several times without speaking on the phone. Harry wasn’t home and he wasn’t at the hospital. She had both numbers. “But I figured my friend would tell them it was stolen and I’d get off.”

“Did the cops believe your friend’s story?” Buck was used to relatively smart people doing stupid things after a few too many drinks.

“They didn’t have to. I ran into a backyard and fell over a low ledge into a big bush. The cops had a laugh at that.”

“Bad night for you and bushes.”

“Yeah, the first bushes had friends. The cops threw me in jail. My uncle arranged bail in the morning. He was a big-time lawyer and settled the charges. In the end I only had to pay $200 for the ruined bushes.”

“Damn expensive bushes.”

“That they were.”

“We have bushes out back you could run over for free.”

“Probably thousands of them.”

“Millions.”

Sean’s beer was almost empty.

Buck served him another Coors.

“My girlfriend wanted nothing to do me after that night.”

“Can’t say that I blame her.” The bartender was a master at listening to a sad tale.

“Me too.” Sean turned his head at the slam on the payphone.

Pam strode up to the bar in a bad mood.

“Don’t say a word.”

It was a demand and Sean stepped away from the bar to give her the time to calm down. A young cowboy shot pool. He wasn’t too bad.

“That’s your girlfriend?” a teenager asked with a pool cue in his hand.

“No, we’re just traveling together.”

“You wanna play a game of pool?” Hay covered his shirt, dirt stained his jeans, and cow paddy rimmed his boots. Farm work was a messy job.

“Not for money.” Sean wasn’t into gambling.

“A game that’s all. I’m no hustler too.” His toothy smile beamed with small town honesty.

“Eight Ball.”

“Fine with me. I like a game needing luck as much as skill. The name’s Billy.”

Sean was warming up to the Inferno Lounge.

The two men shook hands and flipped a coin for break. The young cowboy won with heads and his first shot sunk a solid with a steady hand and a keen eye. The nineteen year-old sunk three more balls before missing a bank shot.

Pam drank her beer on the stool without a smile on her face, while AK selected songs. The first to play was

Joni Mitchell’s URGE FOR GOING, but as much as Pam loved Joni Mitchell, she ignored AK’s selection, because her eyes were on the farm boy.

Sean miraculously sunk six balls in a row, only to scratch on the 8-ball and Pam called next.

“This is Billy.”

“Your father’s name isn’t Bill, is it?”

The violent hitchhiker was either in or close to Colorado.

“No, my old man’s Buck.” He nodded to the bartender.

“A good man.”

“Certainly no Bill.” She waved to AK. “Two on two. Billy won. We break.”

Pam somehow sank the eight ball on her break.

In the next game Pam ran the table, as if she were related to Minnesota Fats. Billy was impressed with her skill as were the other three men in the Inferno Lounge.

“Playing pool well in the sign of a misspent youth.” Pam laid the cue pool on the table.

“Herbert Spencer, English philosopher said that,” AK identified the quote and Jake replied, “Ain’t no one around here been named Herbert since Herbert Hoover.”

“Only Billy.” Pam held his hand. “Let’s take some air.”

The young cowboy and Pam exited the bar and Sean ordered another Coors.

AK stood before the jukebox.

Sean’s second beer tasted as fresh as the first and he ordered a third. His driving was done for the day.

Several minutes later AK sat and asked, “You think she’s all right.”

“We’re on the road. She’s fine.” Pam was taking a break from being someone’s girlfriend. Flirting ain’t a sin.

“I mean…”

“I know what you mean.” AK liked Pam in the same way that Sean had liked Jackie. They were girls made to love. “She’s just having some fun same as me holding hands with a cold beer and a dark bar.

“Are you sure?” AK peered out the window.

“Take a look.”

Pam was taking photos of the farm boy with her Kodak. The blonde nursing student lowered her camera and held hands with Billy. The Beatles had scored a huge debut hit with I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND in 1964. As a twelve year-old boy on the South Shore Sean had sung the song to a thirteen year-old blonde girl named Ginnie. Sean put down his beer and bought three songs at the jukebox.

They cost a quarter.

GIMME SHELTER rang true after three beers. Sean sang along with Mick on RUBY TUESDAY and nodded his head during SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, but Pam was right. The revolution was over in America, The SLA and Weather Underground were too small to threaten millions in the Silent Majority. Sean wandered to the front window.

Pam and Billy sat in the dented pick-up truck. The prairies crawled to the wall of mountains crowding the horizon from north to south. He returned to the bar to sit with AK.

“You okay?”

“Never better.”

“The same for me.” They clinked glasses and toasted the moment without saying a word.

Both of them John Wayne quiet.

It was good to be back in the West.