Re-Alive Again

In early October I headed north to attend my nephew's wedding on the South Shore. First time in a year leaving New York. With Jack Haven. I noticed a hospital tag on my bag. Dated 12-27-2022. The day of my liver transplant. Lazurus II wanders the world.

The Cage Haiku Plus Two

The Cage West 4th Street Ball in hand Shooting Left Right A semi hot hand Hoops

World Wide Destruction

As the world skids out of control with the Endless War penetrating every corner of the globe, a Jewish friend texted that he expected an imminent nuclear exchange, because of The Gaza War.

I had been born with the Caul, the placenta, wrapped around my head. Celts believe it gives you the vision.

Despite the frenzied havoc in Palestine my inner sight doesn't see such maddog destruction. Genocide maybe, but a world-wide holocaust no, but back in the 1970s I had several vivid dreams about nuclear bombs. Once in the East Village sirens sounded and everyone scrambled to the Astor Place Subway. A frenzied terrified scrum. I looked up. Saw the missile. White flash. Vaporized.

Second dream Moscow. Red Square. Sirens. Everyone filing orderly into the Metro. I look up. A missile. White flash.

The last was in the Nebraskan flatland. I was fucking this blonde. A schitzah. Sirens. She leapt up and dressed in a SAC blue uniform. Wished me luck, as she got into a B52 bound for the USSR. Mushroom clouds marched in my direction. A missile. White light.

I realized I had woken before the nuclear blast killed me.

I still see the bombs dropped on Manhattan crossing the Esate River Bridges, however never on my freturn to Brooklyn.

Lucky and I feel lucky now. As would someone who has survived the worst. The best is yet to come

November 27, 1978 - East Village - Journal Entry

for us all.

Two weeks ago Bill Yusk fronted me an ounce of hashish. I've yet to sell any of it. I can't even be a drug dealer adn wrose I've smoke a quarter ounce. Ann brought home Sherry. I have slowly acquire a taste for the British liquor, although sherry tastes too much like altar wine for me to like it. Too many memories.

As an altar boy the priests required our wearing cassocks and suplices, so we looked like devotees to Jesus headed for the black cloth. Latin was the language on the altar, until Vatican II changed the Mass' litanty to the worshippers' language. The magic of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa lost its magic in English. I still remember 'forgivev me, forgi e me,reelly forgive me' as one of the Latin phrases I didn't have to mumble.

I stayed an altar boy into my teens, because my services were required at funerals during the week, whihc meant my brtoerh and I went to St. Elizabeth's at 8 instead of St. Mary of the Foothills. We could go through the motions. The mourners weepy before the close coffin. They were never open in the church.. That was only for the funeral homes. The priest rambled through the liturgy with a short testesmonial for the departed. Mostly old people. The exit procession is very solemn. Priest leading the way with us carrying urns of burning incense. Sometimes rich families had the parish organist play a dirge for their loved one. We stood aside for the casket and the priest sprinkled a blessing of holy water of the casket. We never saw anyone arise from the dead. THe dead stayed dead. Even as a proto-atheists I respected the solemnity of the service.

I was a virgin then.

Somehow I abandoned holiness for libertinism.

Maybe when I first touched Ann McCellan's tits. She was one of a set of identical triplets. Her sisters Beth and Cathy were also fondled freely in their basement. Having impure thoughts was an easy sin to confess, until the thoughts became deeds and lust a goal for the ages.

CBGBs Pinball 1978 VDO

Throughout the late 1970s I stood at the front of CBGBs for the Contortions, Damned, and the Voidoids. Afterwards I drank beer and play pinball at the back of the club. I was never friends with the big names. The bartenders were my friends, the doorman with the yellow construction helmet let me in for me, college co-eds thought I looked like David Johansson from the New York Dolls and by the time they discovered I was simply a poet, it was too late to try for someone else. I was lucky and CBGBs became my home away from home.

Memory 2018

As a Mayflower descendant I celebrated Turkey Day in Thailand with my childern at a deserted beach. The high tide was lapping at the beach road. Higher than I've ever seen in the Gulf of Siam. Scary high. My kids played in the calm water, blissfully young enough to see this world as a happy place. No turkey Rock lobsters and shrimp fresh from the sea.

November 26, 1978 East Village - Journal Entry

I'm completely broke once more after two week's without work. I suppose this depression about money will be my guiding light for the futre, but I can't worry about the trivialities about which I can't do anything. Somehow I have to find a job.

THE HUDSON DOCKS NOVEMBER 1978

November night>

Derelict docks stretch along the Hudson
Empty berths for miles
Once home to
Clipper ships, ferries, upriver ships
The Halve Moon
Robert Fulton's Clermont
The Cutty Stark
All
Gone into a forgotten history
No more ocean liners going to Europe.
Yet the Hudson flows back and forth
Twice a day

The piers home to rats, tramps and sex adventurers
I walk with Libby
A blonde model
All in black panther leather
Long legs, haughty hips, a breastless chest, an aquiline nose.
In the deep dark
She could be a he.

We enter a collapsing wharf.
Under the protection of darkness
Men huddle in silent orgies.
We deeper into the ruins
We stop in a room
Two shadows
A foot apart
Now.
My leather coat on the floor
Libby's clothes on a battered crate.
She
Near-naked
Except for expensive lingerie.
My Levis drop down my legs.
The November wind baffles through the open bays
On the Hudson
The thump of powerful engines

Something big on the river
Very big
An ocean liner
Its diesel engines
Powering the ship
On the tide
Sea bound
Into the Atlantic

Libby pulls me down
Between her thighs
Her legs hooked around my knees
Her
Naked
Yearning
A cool hand guiding me
A thrust
A gasp
Two animals humping
Men watch gather to watch.
A warning glance
Retreat into the shadows
I groan the potential of life
Into Libby
The ships long gone
The ocean liner too.
Into the night.
Now
Done
Libby back in black leather
A dim silouhette
We leave.
Behind
The men in the shadows
By the Hudson
In the November night

PAINTING BY REGINALD MARSH

David Henderson's Vortex 2021

David Henderson's Vortex.

THe mixture of mathematics and magic welded together by a lost mind.

Dives of Pattaya - Entry Date - Aug 3, 2007

Aug 3, 2007

Wikpedia defines a 'dive' as a rundown drinking establishment offering the cheap drinks of a high alcohol content to a questionable clientele frequenting the bar for the sole purpose of drinking and not petty drinking either.

New York City had been loaded with such dubious haunts on the Bowery ot the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. 50 cents a beer and $1 a shot and no red-faced stockbrokers lusting after big-haired secretariesb on a Friday night. Only busted-down drunks with a couple of front teeth like Pattaya during low season.

Wendy Mitchell who wrote NYC's BEST DIVE BARS considered a good jukebox, a seat at the bar, an affable bartender, and not-too-bright lighting as essentials for accreditation as a dive. Gotham Books' staff prided itself on having drank in most of them. My favorite was the beach bar in the Rockaways. Drunken Indians and transients at a end of a subway line. Everyone knew this was nowhere.

Pattaya is reputed to have 1400 bars

No one can claim to have drank at all of them, although some Englishmen have sacrificed their livers in the attempt.

For Queen and Country.

None really qualify as a dive, but a few come close.

I've never seen a juke box in my 20 years in Thailand. Not a pin ball machine either, although many have condom dispensers in the bathroom. The music tends to be HOTEL CALIFORNIA or pop music for the girls. Lights too bright with bar stool stressed by overweight drinkers and bartenders with moods rivaling the Wicked Witch of the West. Drinks might be cheap but the measures are more a whisper for hard-drinkers.

There are few exceptions.

The Welkom Inn on Soi 3 with its dim lighting comes close. You can usually get a seat and the old ladies behind the bar are good-tempered despite having to listen to the drivel of drunken farangs day after day after day.

Soi 6 bars are sleazy and dark, however no one goes to a short-time bar to drink. 90 baht for a thimble of vodka and tonic. The Bus Stop isn't bad because the music is almost punk. Viking Bar is awful, but Mint used to work there. maybe she will again once her boyfriend's money runs out.

The only actual dive is Maggie May's on Soi Chaiyapoon.

It only features drinking.

No girls.

Stale peanuts.

Sports on the TV.

The dregs of society on the bar stools.

"Drinks for me and my drink," Mickey Rourke called out in the movie BAR FLY about the poet Charles Bukowski's drinking life. People are shouting out the same in Maggie May's. The music sometimes sucks, but the beer is cold and during happy hours as cheap as it gets in Pattaya.

The other day I saw Dave from the old Dang Bar. We had fought on Soi 6 last winter. He had called me a spineless cunt too many times. Something about not liking that I didn't drink in his bar. 50 year-old men fighting on Soi 6. My mother should be crying in heaven over that sad spectacle.

At least I won, Ma.

I hadn't seen Dave since the fight and said, "Hello."

The bald Aussie nodded and drank his beer.

Maggie May's.

You wear it well.

#1 Dive of Pattaya

Still open in 2023

Maggie Mays, 383, 21 Soi Chalermphrakiat 25, Pattaya City, Bang Lamung District, Chon Buri 20150, Thailand

Black Friday Beer

Written 11/30/2013

On Black Friday millions of Americans hit the shopping malls to purchase marked-down electronics and toys. This frenzied spending spree kicks off the Christmas shopping season. This year's Black Friday was an all ugly affair and getting uglier by the year.

The term 'black Friday originated from Philadelphia retailers' description of the four-week holiday season as one that turned the red on their books into black.

The BBC estimated that nearly half America participated in the madness.

Yesterday I restrained from assaulting the XXXL Mall on Fulton Street and purchased two cans of beer from Ralph's Meats on Lafayette Street in Fort Greene. He wasn't opened, but Ralph had some beer for me. We are old school.

They went down so good that I'm thinking of drinking some more today.

Happy Boozy Saturday.

ps the bronze Ballantine beer cans are from Jasper Johns.

Wintah Maine 1959

Walking on a back road

From school
No sign of the sun
Leaden clouds overhead
Fields frozen by deep snow.
A northerly wind from Montreal
A long slog home.

Grey slush underfoot
The wet seeping
Through boots
Cold wet feets.

Another mile to Grandmother’s house.

Where waits
A warm pot belly stove
Dreaming
Pull off boots
Peel off soxes
Stick frozen toes
Under the heat

Aaah

A cup of tea With milk and sugar

Aaah

No more the cold
Grandmother’s house Maine winter
Only another half-mile
To go
Till
Grandmother’s house

Spring
Another four months away.
Till then
Counting the days.
To April
Flowers
And no snow.

Aaaah

I spent my early childhood in Maine, sledding the winters on Blackstrap Hill. There were really winters then, still are in Fort Kent. Painting by Winslow Homer A New EnglanderFrom school No sign of the sun Leaden clouds overhead Fields frozen by deep snow. A northerly wind from Montreal A long slog home.

Grey slush underfoot Cold wet seeping Through soles Another mile to Grandmother's house.

Where waits The warmth of a pot belly stove Pull off boots Peel off soxes Stick frozen toes Under the heat

Aaah

A cup of tea With milk and sugar

Aaah

No more the cold Grandmother's house Maine winter Only another half-mile To go Till Grandmother's house And Winter Another four months away Till Not winter. Till then Counting the days. To April Flowers And no snow.

I spent my early childhood in Maine, sledding the winters on Blackstrap Hill. There were really winters then, still are in Fort Kent.

Painting by Winslow Homer

A New Englander.

There are two season in Maine. The season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding. - Doctor Frank A Smith, who rode a sled on his visits around Gorham, Maine, when wintah was truly wintah.

COLD TURKEY john lennon

I like nothing better than left-over turkey for a post-thanksgiving jolt of big bird coma, then John Lennon says it best in COLD TURKEY To view his holiday gem, please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEnNEIVR9EM

Bad Behavior Thanksgiving

After Bad Bob's description of the insane weekend with my former husband and in laws, I can only refer to the quote in your last email. It's something my mother would have loved, even though she always betrayed her own advice. She once said to me, after the first time she met the whole lot of them at Thanksgiving,

"How can people that poor be that fucked up?" She was shit faced at the time and certainly not a snob given her predilection for stable hands, plumbers and drug dealers but it was absolutely dead on accurate because that family, every last one of them, is completely whacked and not in a ha ha, amusing way.

We invite people like that to tea, but we don't marry them.

Lady Chetwode on her future son-in-law, John Betjeman. Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add The profits of the stinking cad; It's not their fault that they are mad, They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Lady Penelope Chetwode, the poet's wife and grand Indian explorer of Himal Pradesh

ANDRETTA'S HAT - Video - 169 BAR

Sadly I lost that hat on a plane from Detriot in November 2021.

Why Detroit.

The Rolling Stones.

Paint It Black you Devils

Irish Cold Revenge

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

It was a beautiful autumn day.

Then Mother Mary Superior spoke over the intercom and tearfully announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

These words did not change our lives for more than a few weeks as America accepted the single gunman theory.

But not for all of us.

Irish Cold Revenge tells a different story than the Warren Commission.

It's a true as anything else.

Peter Nolan Smith filmed by Kai Effron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goI6LuLco2E&t=166s

Who Killed the Kennedys?

The night Barack Obama was elected president, people danced in the streets of New York. Our man had beaten the GOP. I looked into the eyes of a man my age and we started crying, not out of joy, but in relief of having endured the lost years since November 22 1963.

Obama was one of us. He took office two months later. The presidential limousine drove him from the inauguration stage to a series of parties. Thousands of supporters glad-handed their president and at the end of the festivities Barack Obama found himself in the White House.

He had it all.

The Oval Office.

The Red Phone to Moscow.

The Briefcase.

They were his along with two wars in Asia and a shattered economy by billionaire tax breaks.

That evening he must have looked at his wife and said, “What now?”

If I was Michelle, I would have said, “What about the Kennedys?”

"What do you mean?"

"Who killed the Kennedys?"

"That's a dangerous question." And he dropped the subject.

The President had eleven years of access to the deep, dark secrets buried by various agencies; Roswell, Martin Luther King, Pearl Harbor et al. We had too many questions, yet nothing new came to light during his administration and considering the body count for asking the wrong questions, I can appreciate his patience.

It takes time to unbury the truth and even fifty years after the fact and it doesn't look like Obama is going to get it for us either before his access is gone.

So who killed the Kennedys?

Someone knows, but they ain't saying, but according to the Rolling Stoners, "It was you and me."

Wear What November 22,1963

Not only do I know where I was 53 years ago when I heard about JFK, I know exactly what I was wearing.

The school uniform for St. Mary of the Hills.

We miss you JFK.

Always have.

Always will.

Fuck the debunkers of Camelot.

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and the coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margarita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing?" I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time, but his was the modern times and gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

Irish Cold Revenge - 11/22/1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Approximately twenty minutes after the JFK shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist supporter, was stopped by Officer Tippit for questioning. According to the Warren Commission Oswald pulled out a pistol and fired four shots, killing the patrolman.

Oswald was arrested in a movie theater playing WAR IS HELL.

Two days later Oswald was shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission confirmed that Oswald was the one gunman.

Over the years fewer and fewer people bought their findings.

I have another conspiracy theory culled from Norman Mailer's novel TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE.

Check out this youtube entry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goI6LuLco2E

It tells all, especially that for the Irish revenge is a dish best served cold

שוב רצח עם עז

Facebook has censored most of my comments on Gaza. I believe in the one state for all the peoples. Isrhael stole the land of Palestine with the help of the British and French after World War I, but that history don't matter now. All the wars fought and the uprisings crushed and the apartheid oppression and suicide bombings don't matter after October 7.

Hammas fighters burst from the invincible high tech stalag and unleashed a 9/11. <>

For the forty-three days Gaza has suffered the wrath of Yahweh.

Dead children, women, and men.

ไม่มีความเมตตา

None at all.

The Gaza ghetto to be razed to the ground and the people forced into the al-Abyaḍ] al-Mutawassiṭ or the Middle White Sea or the Negev desert in the dead of winter ala The Ottoman's Final Solution. The bombings and tanks are only spurs to force the people into death of their choosing.

Not everyone in the world is behind this genocide, but the American Seventh Fleet is stationed off Gaza to insure Israel has a free hand in acheiving the annilation of the Palestinians in Gaza as well the West Bank. Like the Nazis they will fail, because like the Jews the palestinians are everywhere in this world.

All we want is peace.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN UNLESS YOU MEAN IT FOR ALL

ไม่เคยอีกเลย

April 11, 1985 Paris - Journal Entry

One Easter morning in Paris I'm playing backgammon for money with a Chilean coke dealer in a basement apartment across from Notre Dame. I have two Moulin Rouge dancers with me. Dressed in their show gear. Snorting coke, drinking whiskey coke and beating Jose every game.

Dawn comes and the cathedral bells are bonging out the call to masses. I call it a night and the two girls in their skimpy attire head into the April morning across the bridge to the courtyard of the grand church. I'm dressed in leather.

A magnificent procession led by a large cross carried by altar boys approached the doors and we cut right in front of the cardinal in his dog outfit. He stops seeing us. I salute him. His lips moved with his eyes seeking to scorch my reprobate soul. His followers; priests, brothers, nuns, and the faithful scowl us. I offer them an atheist's smile and continue to my Ile St. Louis apartment to fuck the bejesus out of Bernadette. She was a good girl and ready to be wicked and I was a bad man in the eyes of the Holy Roman Church. Ah, the life of a sinner.

Points of View for the Shabbat Goy

Since my return from the Land of the Dead, my friends have been phoning to hear my voice. They all say I sound better than before and this afternoon Big Abe called from $7th Street to say that he had seen an advertisement online for a Shabbat Goy ie that is a gentile to turn on the lights and anything else during the weekly Holy Day. I laughed and he asked if I had any clients selling jewelry for the holidays.

"Zal zeyn." Maybe was a better answer than no, which was more the truth.

"You get someone I'll cut you in."

"I get someone, I'll show them the stone and I'll give you a piece." I had to find new customers. Most of my old clients thought I was dead and my new young friends had no interest in diamonds, since their only possessions were their phones and the attached apps.

Our conversations immediately vectored to Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

"I don't want to hear any history. There are only three possibilities; occupation of Gaza, genocide, or re-set."

"We have to right to defend Israel."

"Yes, but there is not one Hassidim serving in the IDF."

"I'm religious and not Hassidim."

"I know this, but this does not affect the outcomes. The IDF gave up on occupying Gaza. It's too expensive and deadly for the young troops."

"The IDF is the best troops in the Middle East."

"Except that Shin Bet has trained them to shoot stone throwers instead of fighting 20,000 gunman." The border troops had been stripped by the PM before October 7 and 15,000 fighters had flooded the Negev to wreak bloody havoc.

"Now the IDF will teach them a lesson."

"Zal zeyn." "Yesterday troops had occupied the al-Shifa hospital and found fifteen AK47s and computers with Arab videos of October 7. There were no fighters in the tunnels.

"Never again."

"The Holocaust, no. Never, but one of the solutions and Netanyahu's options is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure and march the Palestinians en masse into the desert where they will perish in the winter like the Turks did to the Armenians in 1915."

"What?"

Abe like most people possessed a very limited history sculpted by their side. Everything was colored by the Holocaust, one of the many attempts by the Gentiles to exterminate the Christ Killers.

We would never do that."

"So occupation and genocide are out, leaving only reset."

"Reset?"

"Yes, start from the beginning. Before October 7, the Infatidas, the wars, back to before the Partition of Palestine and redraw the land. There are more than two people, so create one nation with rights for all people. Peace is the only outcome. Humane outcome, but no one wants peace now. So it's back to genocide."

"The wisdom of the Shabbat Goy, feh."

"I am also a sheygutz." It was a perjorative term for a goy, but also offered the connotation of a wise starker or tough guy. Before my operation I had been both. Gedenk tat." I intoned a South Shore accent with a touch of Yiddish.

"That you are."

Shalom." The word meant peace in Hebrew and Arabic.

I hung up hoping for a customer or a G, which meant Goyim on the street. Peace was my mission. It was an impossibility, but so had been my chances for life. Gut glik far ale. It was the only way to go.

GUNGA DIN

GUNGA DIN You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. Now in Injia’s sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them blackfaced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din, He was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din! ‘Hi! Slippy hitherao ‘Water, get it! Panee lao, ‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’ The uniform ’e wore Was nothin’ much before, An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind, For a piece o’ twisty rag An’ a goatskin water-bag Was all the field-equipment ’e could find. When the sweatin’ troop-train lay In a sidin’ through the day, Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl, We shouted ‘Harry By!’ Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all. It was ‘Din! Din! Din! ‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been? ‘You put some juldee in it ‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute ‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’ ’E would dot an’ carry one Till the longest day was done; An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin’ nut, ’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear. With ’is mussick on ’is back, ’E would skip with our attack, An’ watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,’ An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide ’E was white, clear white, inside When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire! It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’ With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could hear the front-ranks shout, ‘Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!’ I shan’t forgit the night When I dropped be’ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been. I was chokin’ mad with thirst, An’ the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. ’E lifted up my ’ead, An’ he plugged me where I bled, An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green. It was crawlin’ and it stunk, But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was 'Din! Din! Din! ‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen; ‘’E's chawin’ up the ground, ‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around: ‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’ ’E carried me away To where a dooli lay, An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean. ’E put me safe inside, An’ just before ’e died, 'I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din. So I’ll meet ’im later on At the place where ’e is gone— Where it’s always double drill and no canteen. ’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals Givin’ drink to poor damned souls, An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

NOVEMBER 11, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Kenya, the River Platte, Flanders
Vienna, Istanbul, Berlin
Versus
Moscow, London, and Paris
1914 to 1918
An assassination in Sarajevo to the Treaty of Versailles
World War I
Machine guns, trenches, blood
Airplanes, Zeppelins, blood
Gas, barbed wire, blood
Death in a thousand fields
Verdun
Gallipoli
Tannenburg
Emperors' armies
Nations' will
Men's blood
Victory and defeat
The kaiser in exile,
The sultan deposed,
The Tsar eliminated by the New Men
Yanks, Krauts, Limeys, Frogs, Aussies
Ivans, Turks, Pollacks
Greeks, Serbs, Slavs,
Japs, I-ties, and Scots
Dead by the millions and at the eleventh minute
Of the Eleventh hour
Of the Eleventh day
Of the Eleventh Month
In the year of 1918
A ceasefire for the War to End All Wars.
For a few years.

I'm alone in bed, reading John Toland's 1918 THE LAST YEAR. Alice rose early and went to Club 57. Her true home. I have classic music from a Philadelphia radio station, a bottle of 1972 Bordeaux, and a joint. No naked body. Alice still thinks she's too fat to have sex. I think the opposite, but the mirror tells the truth to everyone with their own reflection.

My evening plans are to go to a party and then hit CBGBs. I avoid Club 57. Susan and my old friends, the boys from East 6th Street; Frank Holiday, Andy Reese, and William Lively make me uncomfortable IN that club. Someone spread a rumor that I had robbed Tim Dunleavey. I suspect Andy Reese and Frank Holiday. They are junkies, plus I prefer CBGBs. The bartenders like me. I flirt with girls. Guadalcanal and I snort coke. Not everyone is so friendly. A drunk from New Jersey wanted to fight me. Guadalcanal grabbed the thug and chucked him out with Merv, the Gentle Giant, at the door.

"That was nothing," says Guadalcanal.

Yeah, that's all everything is."

"I meant that guy."

Alice and her crowd show up. I wave to Lisa Crystal, Holly's daughter, let in my girlfriend and tell the others to pay. They've come to see Pere Ubu, an art band from Cleveland. Sort of a punk Meat Loaf. Alice comes to the bar.

"Can't you get Susan in for free?"

"It's not my bar."

"I'll pay for her."

"Why can't she pay for herself?"

Alice makes a face. I figure the two area couple. We haven't made love this week. Maybe not last week either.

The Club 57 set come in without saying 'hello'.

I leave with Guadalcanal.

"Before I came here, I thought Boston was small, but everyplace is small, if you only go to the same places every night."

"You could always broaden your horizons by joining the real world. Get a 9 to 5. Wear a tie."

"Yeah, I could always do that." I have a fear of ending up like Peter Willen, my Aunt Mary's beau. A socialist with smoke-stained teeth. My mother is scared of that fate for me too.

The GOP scored massive gains in the 1978 mid-term elections. White men hated President Jimmy Carter, They want a strong America to face the USSR.

Prior to the vote the GOP controlled twelve states, now they have eighteen thanks to the media's portrayal of America losing its way; i.e. the grip of white people over the rest of Americans; Black, Spanish, Asian, and under-paid working classes.

Massachusetts was served by Republicans Senator Edward Brooke and Governor Frank Sargent. My father hated Sargent for not financing I-95 across the North Shore wetlands. I like them the way they are.

No one says a word about World War I. It ended sixty years ago.

Autumn # 71

Kicking leaves in the air Forever a pleasure Autumn # 71

11-11-1918

Tomorrow I will toast the millions of sad sacrifices of men to imperialism. I also thanked the stars that I’ve never had to fire a shot in anger.<

The truce between the Axis and Allies was signed at 5am, but ceasefire didn't take effect, until the 11th second of the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and for six hours guns along the Western Front unloosed their last cannonade.

Soldiers on both sides had ammo and they weren't taking none of the death home from 'over there'.

It is estimated that over 10,000 men were killed or wounded between 5am and 11am.

The last casualty was reputed to be a Canadian, Private George Lawrence Price.

He was struck in the chest by a German sniper at 10:58am.

One of the 60,000 dead from the Great North.

Pacem in Terrem.

Tomorrow I will ask New Yorkers about Armistice Day, which is a national holiday.

I doubt that less than 10% can say why they had a day off from work.

None of them will know Private George Lawrence Price

"As you get old, you forget. As you get older you are forgotten."

But not by me.

I'm a true old git.

End the Endless War.

11-11-11-11-18

The Great War of 1914-1918 ended on the 11th minute of the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. My grandfather and grandmother were in France, serving as doctor and nurse with the Royal Canadian Medical Expedition. They returned to Maine with German helmets, bayonets, zeppelin debris, and medals as souvenirs of that horrible conflict. My grandfather died shortly after my birth, but my grandmother never spoke of her years tending to the wounded and dying soldiers. She never mentioned how the shooting went on well beyond the ceasefire hour, only how she met my grandfather and how they fell in love.

Today I thank them that I've never had to fire a shot in anger and appreciate the sacrifice of the fallen so that I can remain a pacifist.

Bring the troops home.

11-11-11-11-11

On the 11th minute of 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 a permanent ceasefire was called along the Eastern and Western fronts, although troops continued to shoot at each other for several hours after the armistice ended the 4-year global conflict.

11-11-11 occurs once a century.

Someone in the armistice committee must have been heavily influenced by numerology to have chosen this powerful progression of the first prime number.

As if this magical combination could stop soldiers from killing each other.

George Lawrence Price was hit by the sniper's bullet at 10:58 and the Canadian is thought to be the Great War's last casualty.

Of course the time could have been a coincidences like 9/11/2001.

Today the major combatant nations of World War 1 commemorated their fallen dead.

Over 65 million soldiers participated in the struggle.

My grandfather and grandmother served in France for the Canadian Medical expedition. They came home on an ocean liner and married soon after their arrival in Maine. The two veterans lived together for thirty-two years. My grandfather died the year I was born and my grandmother passed away twenty years later.

She was the last World War I vets I knew.

The last surviving veteran was Claude Choules, who served Royal Navy during WW1. He died in 2011 aged 110. Rest in peace, soldiers!

Peace will come one day.

Fort Greene Obsevatory

Autumn en Ile St. Louis

Autumn en Ile St. Louis

November Paris 1984
Early morning
Cold and wet rain
Rue des Deux Ponts
Ile St. Louis

A gray morning
Comme chaque autumn
Sur le Rue Des Deux Ponts
Kicking leaves into the gutter
Heading to the corner cafe
With my mistress' Scottie in tow
Angus
Sniff sniff sniff
For the scents of dogs.

Arrive at the Cafe Louis IX
Push the door open
Angus I enter.

Gitane smoke
Three workers a le bar
There
Chaque matin comme moi et Angus

On their third Calvados
A nod
A nod back.
Another nod to the barman.
Henri serves a cafe, croissant, et Calva.

Rain outside
Angus rests his head
On my boots
The floor smell of cigarette ash.
Tobacco and men.
Outside
Cold and wet
No hurry in none of us
Except Angus
Eager to press his nostrils
To the street
To treasure the bouquet of dogs.

Pas encore
A nod to Henri
Un'autre Calva
Si vous plait.
The three workers nod approval.
We have never spoken a word.
Just that nod.
We all believe in Sloth.
Especially with the autumn rain
Sweeping the Rue des Deux-Ponts
Paris
Autumn
1984
Une bonne matin
Le pluie
Angus and me
Ile St. Louis.

TV Sign Off Snow

Oh the beauty of the sign off into the TV blizzard of snow until dawn when the world was only 24/7 for us.

The Cage - West 4th Street 11/1/2023

<

B-ball

Over the years

Two mornings ago I exited from the West 4th Street station Early for my eldercare of Professor Ollman. A forty year-old player spoke with two ballers. I had seen the bearded ace before. He had a great handle And even better shot.

I asked if I could take a few shots. It had been ten months since my transplant. He passed me the ball and challenged me to a game. For money. He didn't play for free he said. I replied that I only play for free. For the game. I've played everywhere. Boston, the Cage, East Tenth and A, Isla Mujeres, Lake Atitlan, North Hollywood, Doi Mae Salong, Sumatra, Penang, les Jardins de Luxembourg, Nottinghill Gate, Moscow, Lhasa.

He chllanged me to play to 11. I said a game to three. He nodded and started his trick dribbling. I wasn't buying the magic. I cut off his right. It didn't matter. I lost 3-0. Maybe better next time.

TODOS SANTOS HORSE RACE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the autumn of 1992 I worked as a diamond salesman on West 47th Street for Richie Boy and his father, Manny. Business had improved under President Clinton and customers from around the USA traveled to New York for a good buy.

That Christma Ms. Carolina had bought 2-Carat diamond studs in September. The blonde southerner and I had celebrated her purchase with dinner at La Bernadin. I never saw our long-distance affair coming and we became more than friends over that weekend.

Ms. Carolina was beautiful, but not free.

She had a loving husband below the Mason-Dixon line.

We didn't talk about him much.

Richie Boy and his father were happy for me. I hadn't had a girlfriend in years.

"“Ms. Carolina is into you. Get her to buy more jewelry.” Manny liked a lock into a good customer, but I didn’t push her into any sales. We traveled once a season. Originally from the Adirondacks Ms. Carolina enjoyed getting away from the South.

"Some of those people have small minds," she drawled with a sigh.

“Same as the people up here.”

New York was a city of the rich and whatever they said mattered, because everyone wanted to be a millionaire.

In October of 1992 Ms. Carolina journeyed up to to New England. The Red Sox were not in the World Series and I informed her of the Babe Ruth curse.

“No curse lasts forever.”

1918 to 1993 seemed forever to me and I said nothing more about the Bosox.

She loved the lobster in Bar Harbor. I told her everything that I knew about Maine. My family had lived there for generations.

On the long ride back to to the city, Ms. Carolina said, "I like traveling with you. What if we take a trip to another country?"

"What will your husband say?"

Ms. Carolina was a good person. Richie Boy had told me that her husband was a good man. I was starting to feel bad about our affair.

"He doesn't ask questions." The blonde southerner's partner was twenty years her senior. They shared some interests, but traveling to foreign countries wasn't one of them, unless it was to play golf in Scotland. Ms. Carolina touched my hand. "It will be all right."

We were approaching Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The lobster shack on Badger Island served a wicked lobster roll. I ate mine and half of Ms. Carolina's roll.

"The perfect end to another road trip."

"I want to go someplace really different next." Ms. Carolina had a rare sense of adventure.

I held up the book which I had been reading.

John Lloyd Stephens' Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán.

"The Yucatan?"

I've already been to the Mayan ruins of Tikal."

Those pyramids were lost in a jungle. I had slept atop one listening to the howler monkeys under a tropical moon.

"So where?"

"I have a hankering to see the volcanos above Lake Atitlan and the temples of Copan are right over the border in Honduras and there's this crazy horse race in Todos Santos on the Day of the Dead."

"Is Guatemala safe?"

The Castillo class had been waging a CIA-approved war against the indigenous Mayan population. The worst atrocities occurred in the 80s under Ríos Montt. This year's truce had halted most of the army's massacres of the Mayans.

"Safe as New York, no, but as long as we don't drive at night we should be fine."

According to the NY Times ruthless right-wing militias controlled the roads after dark, but I hadn't read about any recent violence directed against tourists or gringos.

"I'll book the flights."

Ms. Carolina dropped me on East 10th Street. She had a golf tournament the next day. We kissed good-bye. It was a fifteen hour drive to North Carolina. She could make it in twelve.

A month later Ms. Carolina and I flew from JFK to Guatemala City. I had packed a baseball glove, ball, and Red Sox hat. The United flight lasted nine hours. We landed at night and rented a car from Hertz. I told her that we were staying in Antigua, the old colonial capitol, and pointed the car north into the mountains.

"What about not driving at night?" Ms. Carolina looked like she wanted her .45. She was a good pistol shot and even better with a shotgun.

"It's only forty-five minutes on the Pan-Am Highway. I'll follow a car."

Within five minutes we were in a caravan of twenty vehicles."

"Safe?"

"In numbers, si?" I had to practice my Spanish.

We arrived in Antigua and booked into a hotel, which had once been a nunnery.

Ms. Carolina and I had a dinner of Pepián de Indio stew and Pollo a la cerveza along with a bottle of white wine purchased at JFK's duty-free. The dining room emptied before we finished our meal and the staff looked eager for us to leave. We were the last two customers.

"Red Sox?" asked the owner seeing my hat.

"Si."

"I like the Yankees. Time to go." He flicked off the lights.

The street was dark. No one was on it.

Ms. Carolina stood behind me.

"Stay close." I didn't open the flashlight and we treaded slowly through the night to our hotel.

Once inside we bolted the heavy iron-studded door.

"Now we're safe."

The danger of darkness was vanquished by the dawn.

Antigua was a colonial jewel unsullied by modernization. A fountain babbled in the courtyard and Ms. Carolina murmured from her pillows.

"Safe."

Flowers bloomed in every corner of the old convent.

Ms. Carolina called me to bed.

I had no power to say no.

We spent the day wandering around Antigua.

The pleasant town was filled with ex-patriates and Spanish-learning gringos.

On a back street I spotted a man getting into a classic Mercedes convertible.

"Donald Sutherland." Ms. Carolina knew her movie stars.

I called out his name. The star of MASH waved to us and drove away on the cobblestoned street.

He seemed a happy man.

"Maybe it is safe." Ms. Carolina hooked her arm within mine and we entered a small cantina to drink Gallo beer and eat Chicharrones y carnitas.

I became fluent at saying, "Una orta cerveza."

I drank more than my share of beer.

It went well with crackling pig skin.

The next morning Ms. Carolina took over the wheel and said, "Let's see the Pacifico."

"Ocean?"

"Por que no?" Ms. Carolina was picking up Spanish too.

The ride to Port San Jose passed through miles of coastal sugar cane fields. Worn men walked along the road. They all carried machetes.

Port San Jose had seen better days. The dock was warped by decades of weather and the weight of overloaded cargo. Most of it had been sugar or bananas.

"It's still Guatemala's biggest Pacific port." No other cities dotted on my Nelly map. A small swell rose from a wave's passage over a sandbar. The air was hot and I asked, "How about a swim?"

"Better you than me." Ms. Carolina liked her tropical waters crystal clear and this ocean was the color of mud.

"

Ms. Carolina waited in a rundown seafood restaurant. She befriended the staff during my short swim. A plate of jumbo shrimp waited on a table with a frosty beer. She knew what I liked.

I wore my Red Sox hat.

I still got a sunburn.

We were all smiles until she said, "I've been thinking about leaving Albert."

Albert was her husband.

"Why?" I knew the answer and she continued, "I want to live with you."

"In my one-room apartment?" The East Village apartment barely fit me.

"It's more than enough space for me."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I had no intention of breaking up a marriage.

"So you don't love me?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you never say 'you love me'."

And that was the truth.

Leaving the coast I sat behind the wheel and put on music. Ms. Carolina stared out the window, as we climbed into the mountains. Last night she had been so happy.

Now even Tommy James and the Shondells' DRAGGIN' THE LINE improved her mood.

She read a Mayan-English phrasebook and I wondered if she was searching for a magic phrase to make me love her.

We traveled the back roads to Patulul and turned north toward the Pan-Am Highway. Donald Sutherland was probably having a good time.

A man in a Mercedes by himself.

I wasn't him.

Several miles on I slowed down for a crowd of people in the road. A bus had crashed down a ravine.

I got out to help.

The Mayan faces in the crowd dated back to the greatness of Tikal and Copan.

Miraculously no one was hurt in the accident. Another bus wasn't due to late afternoon and we loaded a single family of five into the rear of the car. They spoke very little Spanish.

Probably as much as me.

A field of sunflowers lay off the road.

"De donde?" I asked the family.

"San Lucas Toliman." The husband repeated three times. It was the next town. We reached their destination in twenty minutes. The family got out of the car, saying, "Dios bo’otik."

"De Nada," said Ms. Carolina, which was the first words she had spoken since Port San Jose. Her finger punched the reject button and she put on Bob Dylan's ON THE ROAD AGAIN.

"When are we going to get it to Atitlan?"

"Soon." The sun had already dropped behind Volcan Atitlan, however there was a little of sunlight left in the day.

"Good. I could use a drink."

"Me too."

The descent from the Pan-Am Highway passed waterfalls.

The view across the lake was spectacular.

"This is beautiful. Thanks for coming." Ms. Carolina reached across the console and held my hand. She wasn't giving up on us so easy.

"Thanks for inviting me."

Our bungalow was cheap and cheerful. I opened the last bottle of white wine. We drank it on the patio.

Ms. Carolina cried a little. I held her close.

"No one ever broke my heart before."

She had once bragged to me about being an ice queen.

"I'm no good." Most of my girlfriends had left me.

"I know and I don't care."

After sunset we dined overlooking the lake. Ms. Carolina was done with tears. She ordered two double rhum and cokes made with Zacapa Centenario Rum. The waiter raised an eyebrow.

"Muy fuerta."

"Yo se." Ms. Carolina's Spanish was getting better day by day.

The drinks arrived to the table.

"Here's to the road and just because you don't love me doesn't mean I can't love you."

"To the road."

I knocked mine down. We were done driving for the day. Ms. Carolina sipped at hers.

Later after a dinner I tried Quetzalteca Rosa de Jamaica twice. It tasted like moonshine.

The next morning I woke up in Ms. Carolina's arms.

My head felt like someone had kidnapped me with a blackjack.

"Time to get up." I nudged my bedmate.

She wasn't in much better shape.

The restaurant served a Caldo de huevos broth for breakfast.

"Por le salud." We weren't the only guests dining on the consommé.

I drank every drop of the hangover cure.

After breakfast we caught the early ferry to San Pedro de Laguna with a minute to spare.

The lake was calm. I couldn't have handle a ripple.

Rich people were building big houses on the shore.

"Drug money," a mestizo passenger muttered in English.

"Guatemala is a trans-shipment destination for cocaine from Columbia," I explained to Ms. Carolina.

"Looks like business is good."

"Not for everyone."

Poor people lined the lake.

The modern world was getting farther away with every spin of the propellers.

San Pedro de Laguna was on the other side of now.

We got off the ferry, which was headed to Santiago Atitlan.

These were Mayan lands.

Corn loomed high over our heads.

"Let me take your picture." Ms. Carolina was wearing a smile.

I tried to join her mood.

My hangover wasn't having any part of it, however the clean air and high altitude cut through the haze and by the time we reached the small town I was feeling 50% human.

Two boys were playing basketball.

I motioned for a shot. They gave me the ball. Ms. Carolina signaled for a pass. I bounced it to her and she scored a jump shot.

She was a good athlete.

An old man yelled at us in front of a souvenir shop.

I had no idea what he was saying in Mayan and told Ms. Carolina, "He probably doesn't like gringos. The Guatemalan Army was very active on this side of the lake. They killed thousands and their officers were white. On my trip from Belize to Tikal I had seen three dead man at an army outpost. They held their decapitated heads in their hands."

"How long ago?"

"1989. That war was long." President Serrano had been ousted earlier in the year and the new leader de Leon had brokered a fragile peace. "But it's over now."

There wasn't much to see in San Pedro de Laguna. Most of its inhabitants were working the fields. Tomorrow was the Day of the Dead. Preparations had yet to made at the church.

We drank beers at the ferry landing.

The bar's serving girl had a shy smile.

Ms. Carolina gave her sunglasses, as the ferry approached the dock.

"Dios bo’otik." The girl showed her teeth.

"Mixba’al." Ms. Carolina was getting good at speaking Mayan.

The mother wanted my Red Sox cap. I shook my head and wished them good luck.

"Ka xi’ik teech utsil."

I was getting good at Mayan too.

Atitlan was a beautiful place to leave, but Quetzaltenango was two hours away and I wanted to get there before sunset.

Ms. Carolina stopped for vegetables along the highway.

"I love the color."

She snapped photos.

My attempts to hurry her were futile.

Women move at their own speed when shopping.

We passed another accident.

People were driving faster.

No one wanted to be on the road after dark.

A roadblock loomed ahead.

We had blown it.

Cars were stopped on the verge.

Men were kneeling on the grass.

"Who are they?" Ms. Carolina was nervous.

"Militia." I slowed to a halt and rolled down my window.

A rough-looking man walked up to the car. His soiled clothes almost looked like a uniform in the dusk and I thought of the bandit from the movie THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. A sawed-off shotgun was in his hand.

I had a bad feeling about this.

His flashlight sliced into the car. Its beam fell on my face.

"Red Sox?"

"Si, estoy un scout looking para un Secundo baseman in Quatzaltenango. Muy bueno."

"Amo Jim Rice."

I was shocked to hear this admission. The Boston media hated the black MVP outfielder. I handed the gunman my cap.

"Mucho gracias." He waved us through the roadblock.

"Safe?" Ms. Carolina smiled in the murk.

"For Red Sox fans, yes."

We arrived in Quatzaltenango after sunset.

A white Mercedes convertible was parked before the best hotel in town.

"Looks like Donald made it too." Ms. Carolina liked being on a first name basis with everyone. "How about a beer?"

"Por que no?" It was my favorite Spanish phrase.

The autumn night was cold in the highlands and at dinner we ate Fiambre salad, a Day of the Dead speciality, Chuletas fascinante, and a hearty Pulique stew.

Between bites of the Fiambre I told Ms. Carolina a family story.

"One Halloween my mother made me eat beets before going out trick or treating. I've hated them since."

"Take a taste." She forked a beet into my mouth.

"Good, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Which goes to show you that you can learn to love things you don't love."

"I guess it does."

I knew better than to argue with a woman when she was right.

That night I dreamed about a ghost in a graveyard. The militia were shooting men. One was wearing a Red Sox cap. I woke up in a sweat.

"What's wrong?" Ms. Carolina was 90% asleep.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep." I got out of bed and checked the locks on the door. Safe was never safe twenty-four hours a day.

A little after dawn we hit the Pan-Am Highway.

Behind the ragged ridge to the north lay Mexico.

We were far away from the USA and I turned on Wes Montgomery's IN AND OUT.

Ms. Carolina liked its swing.

Thirty minutes later the white Mercedes convertible passed us.

Donald was driving the road alone.

I tried to catch up to the Benz.

"Too much power." Ms. Carolina's tone suggested that I ease off the gas. The highway was in good condition for a bad accident.

"He's probably headed to Mexico."

Oaxaca was ten hours away by car. Puerto Escondido had a great beach. I remained true to our plan.

"We're going to Todos Santos."

We turned off the Pan-Am highway. The dirt road rattled the rented car like King Kong in a rage.

A mudslide had taken out some of the road. We were used to these detours. Ms. Carolina posed by the debris. A massive rock tumbled down the slope. I backed up the car and she ran out of its path.

"Safe," she huffed inside the car.

"Siempre."

Off the road it was the 14th Century before the conquest.

A stretch of paved road led to an army base. The soldiers were protecting the 20th Century from the past.

The dirt road resumed after a quarter mile.

Ms. Carolina loved the land.

"We are the only gringos in the world."

She was right again.

We descended steep slopes into a valley. We picked up two passengers. With them in the car we couldn't make it up the hills.

Ms. Carolina had no trouble walking with our passengers.

Everyone was headed to Todos Santos. The Day of the Dead was a big day for the Mayans.

It was time to speak with Cum Hau.

He was the god of the death.

The road got steeper.

Then we hit the bottom of the valley.

We were in Todos Santos.

A white Mercedes was parked by the church.

"Donald," Ms. Carolina and I said in unison.

Mayan children greeted us with 'Ba’ax ka wa’alik'.

It meant 'what do you have to say'.

Ms. Carolina gave them postcards from Virginia.

They loved her for showing them another world.

She bought woven blanket and a straw hat.

I got a bottle of pulque.

It was the traditional drink of choice for the Day of the Dead.

And other days too.

Thunder sounded from below. The first race was on. Crowds of Mayans lined the course. Shouts spurred on the riders.

A few gringos were watching the race.

The entire scene was chaos.

"It's Donald," Ms. Carolina shouted pointing to approaching horsemen.

The blonde older man raced past us with a chicken in his hand. He wasn't Donald Sutherland, but he was happy and Ms. Carolina was happy believing that he was the movie actor.

"Go, Donald, go."

She hugged me.

"You think he won?"

"Anyone who races wins."

We drove out of Todos Santos before the last race.

Ms. Carolina was happy.

She moved closer to me.

I let her be happier.

On the Day after the Day of the Dead what other choice did I have.

Wale hun or as the Mayans say, "Maybe only one."

And one was always better than none.

Fotos by Peter Nolan Smith other than those of the Todos Santos Race from Lucy Brown.