Clicking Your Heels Will Not Get You Home or Kansas

In the Spring of 1962 my father had business in New York City. My grandmother volunteered to take care our my younger brothers and sisters, allowing my older brother and me to accompany our parents to the great city to the south of Boston. Upon our arrival my father drove to the southern tip of Manhattan and pointed out the Statue of Liberty across the harbor.

On our way to the hotel our Ford station wagon proceeded up a broad avenue. Men clustered on the sidewalks and I spotted a man lying on the street.

He wasn't moving and I asked my father, "Is he dead?"

I had never seen a dead person before.

"No, he's a bum. He drinks too much. This is the Bowery. The Avenue of Broken Dreams."

"Why doesn't he go home to sleep?"

"Men like him don't have a home." My father didn't explain why and my mother was quiet. They looked at each other, as if they knew people like the sleeping man. If they didn't, those kind of men never came to our house on the South Shore of Boston, not even Red Tate, who Korean War veterans from our church said that he had been a hero in the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir.

Red Tate lived in the town dump.

He drank cheap wine across from the church.

Homeless.

As I got older I moved to the East Village. I realized other homeless people existed in America.

In the 1980s homeless people clustered throughout the city.

The police evicted them from squats and park encampments. City authorities put them on buses to distant cities. The housing shelter were more like cattle pens. No one was allowed to stay the day. Millions were spent on the problem, but I have never seen any of that money going to the poor, who now are displaced families displaced by luxury condos, underpaid working people, the sick, the unfortunates, the tired, hungry, and lost.

New York City spends $35,000 per annum on the tens of thousands of permanent homeless.

No new no-income or lower income projects have been build in the city. The soul of the city has been sacrificed for greed.

$35,000 a year is enough for a good apartment with money left for food and transportation.

Little escapes the grasp of the bureaucracy or the realtors planning to ethnically cleanse the outer boroughs like they did Manhattan.

I know the feeling well.

I am homeless too.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

"Where are we going?" Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour. The low sky muttered distant thunder. To the west clouds gathered in a darkening threat. I had never seen a tornado and stepped on the gas. "North." The rural dirt road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever seen this route through Iowa. "I know that." The Scotsman couldn't drive, but knew the points of the compass. "When you think that family left that house." "Back in the 90s." The paint peels off its wood like potato chips. "Stop." He was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt. I got out of the rented Ford. Metal ticked on plastic and the V6 was in time. Brock set up his movie camera. I had been on film shoots before. His was the most minimum set-up of all. "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 house was timeless. The sky was changing. The May trees bend to the wind. "Let's go." We stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store. "I love a little pyrotechnics." Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan. He spent $100 on rockets and M80s. He was homesick for the noise of war. We blew up the fireworks on a dirt road. Iowa had them by the thousands. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions. "Not even close," he said as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline. We got back in the car. Des Moines was Iowa's capitol. We arrived after 5. The city sidewalks were empty of people. "Is America dead?" Brock meant that a plague had killed everyone. "Only sleeping." I wished it was the truth. We visited the city's hare. Brock focused his camera on the statue. I sat in the car and 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, for a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman. We spent the night in Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs. The restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. "Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I saw no different between hares and rabbits. "One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him it represented freedom. All kinds of freedom." Freedom was hard to find in America of 2009 and I called Rockford in Iowa City. The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us. The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway. "This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America to me. "Corn and wheat." "Tortillas and bread." "And prisons." "My friend Rockford spent two years doing hard time. The cops found something else other than the grass they knew he had." Snitches were a problem everywhere. "And we're meeting him tonight?" "But of course." Rockford and I went back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach. The year was 1975. He was more than good people. Train tracks were quiet out of Des Moines. I took to the Interstate. Rockford had called to say he was holding something special. Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. The years went fast. I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. We spoke to the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq. "It sucked." Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar. A 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. "Calm down, my friend." Rockford 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. Rockford broke out a bottle of Bolivian Pink 1975. "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. 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. Rockford was still at his pile at dawn. We had to go. A museum in Minneapolis was expecting Brock. We said our good-bye and hit the road. It was heading north.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

“We have nothing like this in England,” Brock said, as he filmed the Mississippi spreading onto its broad flood plain north of St. Louis.

"Is this going to be in your movie?" I hadn't asked too many questions about his Barry Flanagan project.

"You never know what will mean something in a film." Brock was a one-man crew. Two, if you counted me a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry Flanagan. He's in the last stages of his disease. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." I had seen a good part of this world."

"Barry just has the view out his house on Ibiza."

"I imagine it's a good view." My French side of the family came from the northern Catalan of Perpignan. I had never crossed the seas to the Mallorca.

"Santa Eulalia del Río dates back to before the Romans. There are too many tourists, but this time of year."

"Same as here."

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia. We counted twenty-three cars and fourteen pick-ups on the state road. I turned northwest to Paris on US 25. The rental Ford hit 80 on the straightaways. The V6 could go faster given the right conditions.

"Aren't you scared of police?" Brock aimed the camera at me.

"They're out on the Interstates hunting revenue." I hadn't seen a cop car since a Highway Patrol cruiser in St. Louis stopped me for speeding. "Remember this is the Flyover, but it's not a wasteland."

Miles and miles of newly plowed fields wasn't much of a thrill, but a week's parole from New York was soothing to my eyes.

"No, I wouldn't say that." Brock put down his camera.

"How do people live out here?" Brock shook his head, as we passed an abandoned junkyard. Both of us were hungry, but US 24 offered little in the way of eateries. We were holding off for ribs in KC.

"Farming."

"I feel like we're remaking the last chapters of COLD BLOOD." Brock had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas farmer as his travel book.

"Not much has changed out here since then." My book was Herman Melville's TYPEE. He had romanticized the Pacific cannibals of the Marquesas. They were good eaters, but I hadn't even opened the tale of a whaler stranded on a cannibal paradise.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk."

"That's why I wanted you with me. You're American."

I pressed PLAY for Arthur Lee and Love's IF 6 WAS 9 and my foot hit the gas.

The Ford was all go.

It hit 90.

Rain splashed off the four-laner. The sky was an ominous black. The tornado of THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. That flat state lay straight ahead.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about." I slowed the Ford to under 50 to prevent us from aero-planing into the scenery.

The rain stopped after a torrential deluge and the sun broke through the thick clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill. A golden nimbus transform it into Oz.

I was no Dorothy and stepped on the gas.

"I love America." Brock had been filming for two minutes.

I doubted any of it would make his film.

"My friend, Joe, ran away to Kansas City in 1965. He was 13 and wanted to see if there were any pretty girls there."

"As Wilbert Harrison sang in that song." Brock had a good voice typical to the Scots and sang the chorus.

"Joe found none and the cops sent him back to Boston."

"But he got here and here is a long way away from there."

"And that's the truth." I aimed at KC, thinking of pretty girls.

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory. The pretty girls were heifer-fat from fast food. We booked a room in Kansas not far from Ray Santo's house. The South Shore native was free tonight and we met for ribs. Brock and I got sloppy. Ray stayed clean.

"I have to play later." Ray was a drummer in the KC scene.

"We're coming with you." Brock ordered another round. The three of us left the restaurant in a taxi.

"Good idea, Kansas City PD are always on the hunt for drunk drivers.

"But not drunks." Ray gave the driver directions.

"Not yet." I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curves, unless they were connected to a tornado.

Five minutes after we arrived at the crowded nightclub, Ray hit the stage. The band performed a tight set of country-western music. Brock yee-hahed during a break.

"How do you know Ray?"

"He went out with my sister." Ray had driven a red Corvette. He played good hockey and shoot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

"Yep." I hadn't seen Ray in too long. I yee-hahed and Brock joined me.

Drinking beer in Kansas was good and listening to country music was even better.

We were all friends for life and called it a night at closing. We dropped ray at his apartment and the taxi took us to our hotel. I fell asleep dreaming of my wife in Thailand.

Mem was not Dorothy and my son Fenway was my Fenway.

The next morning after coffee and donuts at the motel I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was supposedly in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus. Everything about the school said suburbs, except for one thing.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was specified as 'visitor'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"School's not in session."

JCCC offered its student body of 37,000 the chance of changing lives through learning. It was a big school.

"That's fine. We're here to see the Hare." Brock broke out his equipment, as we entered the Administration Building.

"Well, here it is." The director stood before the 11-foot statue of a Hare on a Bell. I liked the one in St. Louis better. It had been more Nijinsky.

Brock asked our host about the Hare. I made myself scarce during the interview. I liked to know nothing and pulled out my cellphone to call New York.

No one answered, so I visited the Nerman Museum attached to JCCC. The sky was threatening heavy rain and hard winds. This was tornado country.

The statues and paintings appealed to the flatness of the Midwestern psyche. I tried to Vulcan mind-link with the atmosphere without success. I left the museum and reached the car before the sky opened for a deluge. I popped in a CD and read TYPEE.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford in a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW.

"Sorry about the wait." The Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off him.

"The movie's more important than me." Brock wiped his face with a paper towel.

"That was great. I interviewed seven people. They really understand the Hare."

"So they don't think it's a rabbit?"

"They think it's something much more."

"Like what?" I was curious.

"You'll see."

"See what?"

"The difference between a rabbit and a hare."

"If you say so." I backed out of the parking spot. "Where to now?"

"North to Iowa." There was a Flanagan statue in Des Moines.

"Right." I headed toward the highway. It was the fastest way out of here and I was happy, because 'North to Iowa' was as good a destination as any and my friend Rockford would be waiting in Iowa City.

We Ain't In Kansas Anymore

After her wondrous adventures over the rainbow in the Kingdom of Oz, Dorothy Gale clicked her heels to return to Kansas and was quick to tell her family and friends, "There's no place like home."

Kansas despite the tornados has always been considered the heartland of America and the prairie state has steered clear of any change to the social fabric of the Bible Belt with attempted bans on abortion, a temporary elimination of evolution from school books, a campaign to proscribe the American Heritage Dictionary for the inclusion of bad words, the rejection of gay marriage, and the lowering of the marriage age to 15 in accordance with its Taliban morals.

Being a square state gives a state a complex to be square.

We can only hope that Kansans don't try and make the rest of us squares.

I like to think of myself in five dimensions.

Run Boy Run

a bunch of years ago Mark King posted this photo on FB and wrote the following;

"Would you run? A ditch would be handy and probably safer than trying to outrun a tornado. I was 'chased' by one as a kid in Cyprus and my first instinct was attraction. Then, as tin roofs and telegraph poles started swirling in the air, my best friend and I turned tail and dived into a doorway and under someone's sofa until it passed. Complete silence for a few moments and then the birds went berserk. An old Turkish woman on that road disappeared off the face of the earth that afternoon, but we just laughed about it as another Saturday escapade."

Personally I've never seen a tornado.

If I did and it was coming my way, I walked away from its path in awe. I'm too slow to run these days.

THIS AIN'T KANSAS / Bet On Crazy

Every morning in 2010 I checked the weather for New York City. The forecast determined my attire for the diamond exchange, especially as the seasons of September seesawed between summer and autumn. The weather bureau predicted a temperature of 75 with rain later in the afternoon. I dressed in a lightweight suit. My umbrella was in the closet at work.

Morning passed into afternoon with the air growing heavy around 3. I stepped outside the exchange and studied the western sky. I tensed my fingers into a fist. None of the knuckles crackled with age, indicating a falling barometer. The air was thick with humidity. A storm was on its way and I figured it would hit around closing time.

I had to be at an art opening by 6:30 and I returned to my desk to old customers. It had been a slow day. The telephone rang at 4:30. Manny my boss was calling on his cell. My 80 year-old boss had taken off the day. His hip was bothering him.

"You be careful." His voice was edged with urgency. He was calling from his Midtown apartment rented from his second son.

"I'm always careful." 47th Street was plagued by thieves.

"There are reports of tornadoes."

"Tornadoes?" I dismissed his weather report as the hysterical reaction to the fear-mongering tactics of the TV news.

"Yes, severe thunderstorms are expected and the clouds are getting dark. I can see them from my window." Manny was from Brownsville, whose motto was "Never ran. Never will."

"You're not joking, are you?"

"No." Very little scared Manny, but he was worried about his son.

"Where's Richie Boy?"

"He's talking to a customer." Richie Boy was listening to a beautiful female client explain how her fiancee gave her the ring in Vietnam.

"Tell him to stay inside."

"I don't think there's any problem of that." The Ford model had long legged and girlish breasts. Richie Boy wasn't going anywhere.

"Go outside and tell me about the sky."

"Just a sec." I exited the store and checked out the western horizon.

It was very dark.

"I went back into the exchange and picked up the phone.

"We're not going anywhere until it's over."

"Good, because the TV is warning people to seek refuge in their cellars."

"Just like THE WIZARD OF OZ." Dorothy and her dog Toto had been sucked into the heavens by a Kansas twister. Their house had landed atop the Wicked Witch. The munchkin EMS had declared her dead on the scene. Manny was a life-long Democrat and I said, "Maybe if we're lucky the exchange will fall on GOP."

"I'm being serious." Manny sounded like one of the extras from LA tornado scene in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. "A line of black clouds is approaching."

Storm chasers describe this phenomena as the 'bear's cage'.

"We'll stay inside." Gloomy rain pelted 47th Street. Pedestrians sought shelter under the alcove of the exchange. Richie Boy's had yet to break from the tall model. He was close enough to smell her perfume.

It was an innocent flirtation.

Richie Boy was always faithful to his wife.

Same as me to mine.

The wind whooshed through the canyon of 47th Street. The storm blew past in five minutes. I called Manny to tell him that we were all right. The old man was relieved by the news. He was heading downstairs to his local bar. The model left and Richie Boy said, "Let's close."

It was only 5:15. His father never shut the store before 5:30. My co-worker Ava hit the interior showcase like a Pirate of the Caribbean. We were out of there by 6.

I got home to Brooklyn at 6:30. A tree had fallen on my street. My apartment was soaked by rain. I had left the windows open. An actual tornado had struck my neighborhood. I phoned Manny. He was in the bar.

"You were right. There was a tornado."

"I don't joke about shit like that."

"I know."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." I was drinking a little wine and eating yellow tomatoes.

"And my son?" Manny was a father of four and only one thing mattered to men like us.

"Fine I last saw."

I'll see you tomorrow."

"Barring wind, sleet, rain or snow."

I was glad to have the work. These were strange times in many more ways than the weather.

Oklahoma Isn't Kansas

Back in May 2013 Oklahoma City was devastated by a massive tornado whipping winds over the prairie at speeds greater than 200 mph.

The BBC reported that a record-breaking tornado that struck in precisely the same region in 1999, during which the fastest winds ever seen on the Earth's surface were recorded: over 500km/h (310mph).

While the early warning system alerted many people to the impending tornado, the two-mile wide storm ravaged the suburbs with a murderous intensity. Over twenty people were declared dead and hundreds were missing in the storm's aftermath. Schools and hospitals were not spared from the devastation and hundreds of houses were smashed to toothpicks by the EF5 or Enhanced Fujita rated tornado.

Meteorologists point to a number of factors leading to the creation of such a powerful event; the collision of hot and cold fronts of varying temperatures, but they are not discussing a major cause of its intensity which has to be the ground heat generated from the drought-stricken plains same as a hurricane gathering strength over the tropical warmth of the Gulf Stream.

This Monday the New York Times published an article about the vanishing aquifer.

Less water in the High Plains Aquifer, less cooling effect to the Bible Belt states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

And it isn't going to get any better.

The ancestors of Tom Joad from THE GRAPE OF WRATH will be hitting on the road again.

To read about the collapse of the High Plains Aquifer, please go to the following URL

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/high-plains-aquifer-dwindles-hurting-farmers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

THE CLOSET OF LOST THINGS - YOUTUBE VDO BY Peter Nolan Smith

"If you lose something, then it wasn't yours to begin with." Nana Nolan, my Irish grandmother.

To view THE CLOSET OF LOST THINGS filmed by Andrew Kozak, please go to the following Youtube URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoX0dnlliNs&t=62s

Jerusalem 1920

Population 1922.

Jewish 33,971 Muslims 13,413 Christian 14,669

And about 4000 others.

Of course the rest of Palestine was another story.

Jewish 84,000 Christian 71,000 Muslims 589,000

It was a different world.

Jerusalem was a different place.