Other than the fact that I was racing with the moon, I had no clear idea where I was going. It did seem that something wild in my soul wanted to get out of town, though. Wanted to awaken in some unknown place in the morning. It was a little past midnight with the full moon just rising. Its cold light just beginning to peer through the dark woods, as I threw my bag into the trunk, and got in behind the wheel. It was an hour later when I glanced back at the dark city in my rear view mirror getting smaller and smaller. Then, swallowed by the night. I felt a certain lightness, as though I had just soared away from the gravitational pull of my own past, and jettisoned away the spent fuel container that was once a suffocating job. The moon looked down over my left shoulder, seemingly motionless but yet, keeping up with me as I barreled west at 70 miles per hour. By morning I found myself in a strange land. I was somewhere between Amarillo and Tucumcari by then.
Gone were the noisy crickets and the frogs tuning their instruments in the night down by the pond tucked back in the Tennessee hollow. Gone were the rolling hills and woods, and the wild thick blackberry brambles. Gone was every person I had ever known. In the place of a Tennessee night, I was making my way now into a New Mexico morning. There was now, the lack of everything unfolding in front of my eyes. A barren vista, broken by occasional arroyos. The arroyos gave me some hope that, in all this desert, there is the occasional rain. That is when I had the realization that I was starting to get thirsty.
I pulled off the interstate clammy with sweat. Yet, it was evaporating out of my shirt as fast I could sweat it out. My shoes seemed to be dying too. My toes were curling up and stretching, tired of their tight grip. This is all I can take. It is time to stop for a rest, or maybe for the rest of my life. I drove slowly into the town of Tucumcari. The whole stretch of this portion of Rt. 66, seemed like a lost story of some kind. Of forgotten yesterdays. A good place to sit and forget about all kinds of things. A place where you could, in fact, forget your entire past.
I had to get some sleep, and make a plan. It was mid-morning, as I slowly drove down the empty main street, I wasn't sure anyone had even awakened yet. It seemed like an abandoned place. It was a stretch of road full of aging motels, a couple of gas stations, a donut shop, and a greasy spoon. And a dark and aging bar on the corner at each end of the town. I drove it from one end to the other, and circled back around. I saw a motel called "The Safari Motel". A big neon sign was blinking and buzzing overhead, but most of the neon wasn't working any more. The 'S' lit up on Safari, and the 'ari' part. As for the word Motel, only the M and the O lit up, but they looked flickering, and about to fail. There were only a few cars parked along the long adobe colored wall of several dozen turquoise painted doors. I decided to pull in. Besides, they had a pool. I had already rented my room before I noticed, there was no water in the pool. My room was dark and stuffy. The window air conditioner didn't work. It turns out that it costs an additional two dollars a day, if you want the a/c plugged in. I didn't know that until the next day when I complained at the motel desk. But, in that moment, just stepping into my room, I was too tired to think about it. I sat down on the side of the bed and fell wearily back across it.
When I awoke, the sun had just set, and the sky over Tucumcari had turned red. I ran a tub of lukewarm water, and stripped. I almost fell asleep again, the tepid water relaxing my body. I stared at my dripping wet feet propped up on the other end of the tub. I wiggled my toes. They were happy now. Ready to go again. Time to stroll about town and see what this niche in nowhere had to offer. It seems the main thing happening in Tucumcari on a Friday night, was down at the little bar on the corner. It had a blinking green neon iguana sign hanging out over it. It was called The Lizard's Lounge. There was a sign in the window saying 'Kareoke Tonight!'. When I walked in, I felt somewhat out of place, not having a white straw cowboy hat. They seemed to be all over the place. Dressed up cowboys on a Friday night. Girls, in their fanciest cowboy boots and tight jeans,hung around the pool table nursing beers and watching the boys play. The cowboys at the table each had their own calculated cool about chalking their sticks, and eying the balls sprawled out across the felt. They had their ways of sizing up the shot, pacing again, and re-chalking. A pile of bills sat stacked along the rail, so every shot counted. It was a night like this that made their rough and tumble real cowboy work, Monday through Friday, all worth while. Hell, if a man can't blow his hard-earned dough on beer, pool, and cowgirls, what's this world coming to? In the other room I could hear the heavy buzz of amplifiers warming up, and the sound of someone tapping on a microphone. Kareoke night was beginning.
"Testing....testing......Lady cowgirls, and Cowpoke gentlemen, welcome to Kareoke Friday at The Lizard's Lounge. Sign up to sing, and get a free beer on the house." I watched the lady cowgirls, and cowpoke gentlemen strolling over to the bar. There was a grand prize worth one hundred dollars worth of alcohol at The Lizard's Lounge, and there seemed to be no shortage of people signing up. I thought about signing up myself, but without a cowboy hat of my own, it felt intimidating. I sat down at the bar, getting ready to watch the show. The girl behind the counter brought me a fresh beer, then pushed a shot of tequila up next to it.
"Welcome to town, cowboy" she said. I felt suddenly a new confidence, people here are nice to strangers. And better yet, I could be a cowboy, even if I didn't have a hat. I slammed the shot, then spun around on my stool to watch the show. As it turns out, the music was all about Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. I always had a fondness for Hank Williams. As a child, I recall my dad singing along with Hank Williams on the radio, as he drove us around from one town to the next, in search of a place to make a life. He could make his voice crack just like Hank's. Dad was cool, that way. A cute cowgirl stepped up to the mike. She chose one of Patsy's songs. One of those songs where, if you don't fall to pieces listening to it, then you have not known the ache of love, and love lost. The song was, of course, 'I Fall to Pieces'. I remember long ago, hearing Patsy sing it. And since then, I have heard countless impersonations, attempts to re-capture every nuance of Patsy's delivery. Just as there are people who try to re-capture the magic of Judy Garland, and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The cowgirl at the mike was knocking off a pretty nice Patsy. Hitting the notes, and dramatic pauses quite well. I complimented her later, and bought her a beer.
"I don't know what comes over me sometimes," she said tipping her bottle over to mine. Clink. "I just feel sometimes like I am channeling Patsy. Like she is still trying to keep on singing." I nodded, and would have tipped my hat, if I had one.
"Maybe you are," I said. I went on to tell her about the day Patsy and Cowboy Copas went down in a small plane over the Tennessee hills. How I joined one of the search parties scouring the woods, trying to find her, but hoping I wouldn't be the one. All that was true, except the part about where I personally pulled Patsy's body out of the wreckage. That was tequila talking. You'll make up all kinds of things when you have a girl's attention.
She told me to come by her place in the morning, and she would give me a free treat, a free donut and coffee at the donut place across the highway, 'Dotty's Donuts'. And it turned out she was Dotty, herself. She had a store front selling donuts and a few
other goodies, and she lived in a small apartment just above it. Surely, you can guess what I had for breakfast the next morning.
The next morning, bright and early, I took a stroll down the highway, toward the pink blinking "Dottie's Donut" sign. Below it hung a neon green blinking arrow, flashing even more urgently. It pointed to the donut shop over and over and over. I guess when people are zipping up and down Highway 66, you've got to do something to try to slow them down. Make some kind of little light bulb go off in their heads, "Oh! That's what I need! A donut!" I don't know if that sign was working in that sense or not, or if it was just too early yet. The sun had just hit the horizon, big and red. As I approached, I peered into the front window. The place was empty except for Dotty who was wiping down a light green formica counter top. Buffing its chrome border, and wiping off the pink naugahyde seats of the stools. She looked cute, and I could see she had a glass case on the counter, full of fresh donuts. As I walked in, the air smelled sugary sweet, and yeasty, and there was the aroma of freshly brewed coffee cutting through it.
Dotty turned and smiled. "Howdy, cowboy." she said. I walked over to the counter trying to look somehow cowboyish, and said, "Well, howdy, Miss Dotty!" I sat down at one of the stools, as she brought me a small glass of ice water.
"Well, cowboy, whatcha been up to lately?" she asked, as she poured me a cup of coffee. "You been out on the lonesome prairie, ropin' doggies, an' singin' cowboy songs, and stuff like that?" she asked, as she leaned forward, putting her elbow on the counter and her chin in her hand. I looked at her looking at me, and burst out laughing. I tried to put on a Texas drawl, and said,
"Well Miss Dotty, I reckon I oughta be ashamed of myself, cuz' I done went and lost my lasso." She stood and shook her head. "Well, cowboy, I reckon yer cowboy days is over."
She walked over to the glass case and placed two chocolate glazed donuts on a saucer, and returned.
"You aren't really from around here are you?" she asked, as she sat the donuts down in front of me.
"Uh,uh," I replied, reaching out to pick up one up. "You aren't from around here either, are you?" I asked, as I took a bite. "Mmm, you make a mean donut, Miss Dotty" Dotty shook her head,
"Naw, but I've been here awhile. I like it alright, but everything gets old after awhile." I took a sip of coffee, as I watched her wipe the counter again, even though it was spotless. You know how sometimes you get the feeling you just stumbled onto something, or someone extraordinary? That's what I was thinking as I finished off my donut, and watched Dotty.
"Is your name really Dotty?" I asked her. She shook her head.
"Uh, uh... It's Angela. I just decided to call myself Dotty when I took over this store, seeing as how it already had a sign on it. It wasn't even my idea to be Dotty. People just started calling me that when they came in."
"That's sorta funny," I said, "I wonder who Dotty was?" Angela shrugged.
"I don't know, really. People around here don't talk much."
I was getting that feeling again. That feeling I had when looking at Dotty, and now, that feeling I was having as I looked at Angela.
"How did you wind up here in Tucumcari, Angela?" I asked, as she refilled my coffee cup. What she said next, clinched it, that feeling I was having. She sat the coffee pot down, rested both hands on the counter, and looked out the window to the highway.
"Well," she said, in an absent-minded way, squinting her eyes a little, as though thinking back in time. " Other than the fact that I was racing with the moon, I had no clear idea where I was going. It did seem that something wild in my soul wanted to get out of town, though. Wanted to awaken in some unknown place in the morning. It was a little past midnight with the full moon just rising. Its cold light just beginning to peer through the dark woods, as I threw my bag into the trunk, and got in behind the wheel." She paused to look at me. "Why are you looking at me funny?" she asked. I shook my head, as though trying to regain my senses.
"Angela, I know you may find this hard to believe, but I've been sorta writing this story about leaving home, and the very words you said, was how my story had begun." Angela threw her head back and began laughing.
"Oh, that's a good one, cowboy. I bet you use that one on all the girls."
I dug down into a shoulder bag I had carried with me, the one I kept my camera and my notebook in.
"Look, Angela," I said flipping through the pages of my notebook. I laid it open in front of her. "Read right here," I said, pointing to the opening of my story. She picked it up and was silent for a minute.
"Well, I'll be damned!" she said, as she began to walk about behind the counter, reading what I had written so far. She laid it down again in front of me. "It ends with last night." she said. I nodded,
"That's as far as I've gotten, so far."
"How do you think it will end?" she said quietly. I shrugged my shoulders. I looked up into her eyes while a long silence passed. Finally, I mustered up the next line of the story.
"Do you wanna get the hell out of here, Angela?" She nodded. She closed the store for the day, and we went up to her apartment. We left Tucumcari on the full moon. She put a 'Closed for Vacation' sign on the door of Dotty's Donuts, and we drove away into the night.
I'm working on a new story now. I don't know what to call it. But it begins like this: "Other than the fact that we were racing with the moon, we had no clear idea of where we were going."
The End
Note: My characterization of the Safari Motel is a fiction. The real Safari Motel in Tucumcari is a pristine, vintage, and economical place to stay. I stay there every time I pass through.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Looking Back at What Remains
Flat work from late 1970s-early 1980s. Mostly pen and Prismacolor pencil. Mostly I was working with some loose concept in my mind I called "poetic diagrams". But some are just whimsical subjects drawn while living in Texas. Sorry about camera quality, but mostly I just pulled out some of the older stuff, unrolled it on the desk under the lamp, and snapped shots. Some are showing their years. Some fading, others damaged by moisture, or just my general laziness in storing them.
Armadillo Daydream (poetic diagram)
Two Weather Maps (poetic diagrams)
Flying Cows. For some reason whenever I saw a long horn steer, I imagined them flying.
A faded Valentine. The ink on this one is fading. It was called "The Day I stumbled Onto Your Heart"
A penned doodle, so to speak. Affectionately called "Daymare". Daymares are like nightmares, except they happen in the daytime, and you are not just dreaming.
24"x 30", but now with some water damage, unfortunately. It had something to do with the idea of inspiration.
Another one of my cowboy characterizations. Originally 24"x 30", but water damaged now all along its outer edges.
Thinker type guy.
.
Armadillo Daydream (poetic diagram)
Two Weather Maps (poetic diagrams)
Flying Cows. For some reason whenever I saw a long horn steer, I imagined them flying.
A faded Valentine. The ink on this one is fading. It was called "The Day I stumbled Onto Your Heart"
A penned doodle, so to speak. Affectionately called "Daymare". Daymares are like nightmares, except they happen in the daytime, and you are not just dreaming.
24"x 30", but now with some water damage, unfortunately. It had something to do with the idea of inspiration.
Another one of my cowboy characterizations. Originally 24"x 30", but water damaged now all along its outer edges.
Thinker type guy.
.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Preita's Magic Fingers
The Turning Point
I suppose this is a preface to a story. I am holed up in my house in the middle of a heat wave. Too much time on my hands has always set my mind to brooding. For the past two weeks, my thoughts have gone back time and time again to something that, I guess still haunts me. A dusty incident of long ago that mostly sits on a dark shelf in some back room of my head. So, this is what wandering about inside myself leads me to. I know the story well. Too well. I guess the problem has always been knowing how to tell it. I am hoping that if I make a beginning, if I only try, I can work through it in awhile, and then put it away forever. So, with that said, I take a deep breath, and begin.
It took a long time for it to come to this, and a lot of Chinese take-out. Countless crumbled fortune cookies trailing a hopelessly tangled paper string of failed dreams. My own intractable Gordian knot of things that didn't come true, or were too vague to matter.
" There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief. There is too much confusion. I can't get no relief."
It all sounds dismal and bitter, I know; but that was long ago. That was before Preita. This is the story of her. And about the day we met. 'Met' is not the right word, I suppose. I was 20 then. She, was 14. A child, in the eyes of the law. But out there, in the desert, some 100 miles south of Tijuana, the law is what you make it. Let's just say that when I regained consciousness, my head was on her lap, and she was running her fingers gently through my hair. And I had no idea of who she was, or what she might soon become. I was only aware of the wonderful amber light in her eyes, and of the shadow looming over us. The dark figure of her mother shading us both from the blistering sun, and her dangling silver crucifix. This is how the story began, the story of Preita's Magic Fingers.
Where is the best starting place for such a story? I suppose the things I experienced in my life, and in the lives of others around me in the five years or so preceding Preita, might explain a lot. But, you can read such cultural commentary in countless explanations of what the '60s were all about. Right now, two things come to mind, as I try to explain how I got lost in the desert and stumbled quite literally, into Preita. I don't really remember that moment. But, Preita told me later, she saw me stumbling just before i fell, seemingly dead, to the desert floor. I do recall seeing a slender young girl making her way barefoot along a faint trail through a grove of mesquite bushes. She was carrying a primitive twig birdcage full of what appeared to be Mexican sparrows. And, I vaguely remember how the sky, the girl, the distant mesas, and the ground in front of me had suddenly become a whirling blur that quickly faded into blackness.
As a small child, I remember how young mothers with sick babies would come to the house seeking out my grandfather. He was a faith-healer, of sorts. As I recall, he would gently lay the baby down upon his lap. He would recite a biblical scripture. He would then cup his open fist over the baby's mouth, bend down, and blow his breath into the baby. As a child, you can witness many things that don't seem extraordinary until years later, when you think about them. When you ask yourself questions about your past. What was that, exactly?. What made that ritual work? I remember grandaddy alway had a jaw full of chewing tobacco. He was always spitting on the ground or into a can. Maybe it was the tobacco on his breath, or such brown saliva that was the curative agent. Or, maybe something else.
So, now let me move forward in time, to get closer to the story at hand. I was sitting in a Cultural Anthropology class at a university in San Diego, California. I was listening to one of the many fascinating lectures about the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Spanish Conquest, the supplanting of ancient beliefs by Catholic missionaries, and so on. How, in that epic period, much information of these early cultures was lost. Well, not lost, but deliberately eradicated. And how, despite all that, certain traces of an earlier mentality, even a wisdom, still persist today. And how south of the border, an oral tradition still passes along many of the insights of an ancient time. When the professor began to go on about Curanderismo, by way of example, I felt a shiver of my own history run through me. It seemed that this practice of healing by looking at the balance between health, nature and religion was at its core. This all reminded me of my grandfather. The professor went on about the currently emerging trends in areas of holistic healing, herbalism, faith-healing, and ecstatic religious experiences. But, I only took all that in, peripherally. I was already planning a trip south of the border to try to understand this myself. I realize, I haven't even gotten to the story yet, but I am getting closer. Try to bear with me. I told you up front, its complicated.
I talked to my professor about writing a paper on Curanderismo based on first hand accounts I would gather in a field trip of sorts, down into rural Mexico. He liked the idea, and even wrote me a letter of introduction on university stationery that I could show to any authorities who might question why I was out in the desert talking to people about Curanderismo, and gathering herbal specimens.
The drive down through the sprawling city of Tijuana was tedious. Road blocks here. Detours there. And most peculiar was how each detour taken seemed to take me down squalid streets of waving whores in hot pants. In fact, I was beginning to think those detour signs I was following may have been put up by pimps themselves. Finally though, I was headed out on a seemingly empty highway into the desert. I had seen on the map a place called Demon's Brow. There had to be a story there, and I soon found out I was right.
On each side of this endless highway there was only desert as far as the eye could see. All along the way however, you could make out the occasional shack, or small adobes, set well back from the road. Most conspicuous, were rusty barbed wire fences. They seemed forever adorned by plastic bags. Plastic bags in the desert are the modern equivalent of the tumbleweed. They get rolled about along the ground until they are at last hopelessly snagged along the fence rows. I was more than an hour now south of Tijuana. I pulled off at a deserted gas station where I had spotted a local farmer drying chili peppers on the hot asphalt. I asked him if he knew of Demon's Brow. He nodded, and pointed to a mesa in the distance. It looked to be about three miles away. I asked if I could leave my car there, because I wanted to make my way to the mesa on foot. He looked at me as though I was crazy. I smiled and nodded, as though to assure him that I was, in fact, crazy. I handed him a 10 dollar bill to watch my car. His eyes got quite big. I guess 10 dollars out in the middle of nowhere is a lot of money.
I grabbed my gear, and a couple of bottles of water out of the trunk, and took off. It only took me about ten minutes to realize it was hot as hell. I sat down a few times to take a drink of water. Nothing like a big gulp of hot water on a hot day. I felt a certain light-headedness after awhile. At first, I took it as my giddy happiness to be out of the city. Later, I realized I was on the edge of a stroke. I was captivated by the yuccas in bloom, the cholla, the mesquite and creosote shrubs, and a plant known locally as the devil's claw, witch seemed to be everywhere. It bore, and dropped to the ground below it, strangely beautiful seed pods. The fact that the pod had two devilishly long curved thorns is where it got its name, I suppose. I had heard of this plant before. It was the bane of charros and farmers because of the way its thorns would so easily latch on to the foreleg of a horse, or a burro, or a goat passing by, or any other damn animal. It would then go along for a ride on the frightened beast until it was pawed off. I think it was as I was stooping down to collect a couple of these claws that I saw out of the corner of my eye, someone walking along. That was the last thing I saw. I collapsed. The lights went out. Later, I learned that It was Preita, of course, making her way home with her cage of birds.
When I awoke, with Preita and her mother looking down at me, I was quite confused as to what had happened. Her mother knelt down beside me, and took my hand.
"You died, my son. But my Preita brought you back to life."
"But, but, that's not possible!" I said. I looked up at Preita who was still gazing serenely down at me, still caressing my face with her hands. For a moment, she turned to look up at her mother.
"But, but, mother..." Preita stammered.
"It's true, my child", the woman said to her daughter, reaching out to cup the girl's face in her hands. "Today, our precious Savior, has anointed you with His healing powers. You have been chosen Preita. My little Preita. My angel."
"But, mother..." Preita said, her eyes filling.
I walked wearily along with them, down a narrow goat path to their home. It was a small deteriorating adobe shack. A single room. It was like stepping into night as we entered. But, as my eyes adjusted, I saw candles everywhere. The air was pungent with the complicated fragrance of herbal plants hanging in bundles from the primitive lodge poles overhead. And crude crucifixes made of sun-bleached mesquite twigs, laced together with some kind of animal hide, adorned the walls everywhere. Preita led me to a small mattress in the corner, and told me to lie down. My head was spinning again. The pillow smelled like Preita. Once again, she was caressing my face.
"Preita, I didn't die. I passed out. It was the heat." She pressed a forefinger to my lips.
"Shhh...shhh...I know. Sleep now."
I awoke to the strange sensation of something moving up and down my back. Preita seemed to be brushing my skin with some kind of branches. And I could feel her thumb pressing down just above my tailbone, and moving in a small firm circle.
"Don't worry," she said. "I am taking care of you." Two men had appeared. They were busy at the table, stripping the meat off of the head of a goat.
"Preita, I didn't die, Preita."
"Shhhh..." she said softly. I drifted off to sleep again. I had a dream about my grandfather. And how he got trapped beneath a slab of coal deep in a collapsed mine in West Virginia. And how he never spoke of God after all that. He was down there for three days. He, to me, had become God. He had somehow, been resurrected. He had more broken bones than bones that were whole. And he never spoke of God again. He became a recluse. Maybe that is why I had become so intent on ignoring the prevailing winds of the times. A realization that I am here from some known date I was born, and some unknown date when I will die. And, the only real question then, was what makes the most sense to do in the meanwhile?
I awoke the next morning with Preita snuggled up against me. Her hand seemed to still be tracing my body, even though she was sound asleep. Outside, there was the sound of roosters crowing. And there were voices. I was far, far away from a telephone. But, somehow, news gets around in the desert. And the news was of how Preita had raised someone from the dead. There was the smell of chorizo cooking. Her mother at the wood stove. The air was smoky, but smelled sweet somehow. Preita awoke, and put on a simple white linen dress. And I stood at the doorway sipping some strange green tea, as one by one, I watched people approach her. She embrced them each and every one. Her mother stood by her side reciting some scripture. I felt my skin prickle, as I realized she was reciting the some verse my grandfather had spoken so many years ago. It was from the Old Testament. From Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16:6, to be precise. Preita reached out and ran her fingers through each one's hair as her mother chanted.
"And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thine own blood, Live. Yes, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live."
This is all I can say for now. I did return to Demon's Brow a few years later to see Preita again. Some people there think I kidnapped her, but I didn't. She came with me willingly. But, that's another story.
The Curious Angel of Demon's Brow
I left Demon's Brow and Preita, after spending another several days there. Before I left though, it became clear that this recent event had a few consequences that seemed to be kaleidoscoping out at the speed of lies, or blind faith. Like the expanding concentric circles on the water of a placid pond, in the aftermath of a thrown pebble, word of Preita's 'miracle' seemed to have spread for miles out into the desert. People seemed to be coming from far and wide to feel Preita's healing touch. They came sometimes, 3 or 4 at a time, in rusted out sedans with peeling paint, or in sputtering, coughing old trucks. They came on foot. In primitive sandals cut and formed from the black rubber of old tires. Or, they came shoeless. There was a family who arrived on burros. Most came with maladies of one kind or another, although some came just to catch a glimpse of Preita. To see 'The Angel of Demon's Brow', as she would soon be referred to.
And then, there were the offerings. As poor as these people were, they did not arrive empty handed. People would stoop and lay a peso or two at Preita's feet, as she ran her fingers through their hair and her mother mumbled the 'healing verse'. Or they presented her with produce they had farmed. One tired old man humbly laid a solitary potato at her feet. Another, brought her two goats. One to milk, and one to eat.
Preita seemed bewildered by it all. And she got little rest. She mostly sat in the shade of a blossoming chinese elm tree at the corner of the house, and 'healed' people as they came and went. I have pictures of Preita in my mind that, I guess, will be there forever. The image of her sitting there on an old sun-bleached wooden box, barefooted. Her simple, hand-made and quite wrinkled, white linen dress. Her hair, a childish dark tangled mop. Her amber eyes, full of questions when she glanced at me. The drab desert ground at her feet colored by the occasional fall of a long and lovely feather of the peacock that sat in the branches overhead, lazily preening. She had become a vision. An apparition. A dream. And, I could have lived in such a dream forever, except for her haunting glances, and the helpless shrugs of her lean and lovely brown shoulders as she ran her fingers through yet another, stranger's hair.
Preita knew as well as I did, what really happened that day she found me. But her mother kept insisting that I had died, and Preita had miraculously brought me back to life. I don't think her mother really believed that herself. In fact, I am convinced it was an invention inspired by certain motives that were becoming increasingly apparent. She seemed more like an entrepreneur designing a business around the needs of people to believe that God is real, and that He cared about their desperate lives. The shrewd embellishment of a lie can become a grand scheme in a short amount of time. Preita's mother seemed adamant in her assertions as she talked to her daughter, and to me. The Lord had given Preita this gift of healing, and with it, a mission. A calling. And she said that the Lord would richly bless Preita for her service to Him. And that many bad things happen to those who disobey God. I tried to tell her, that I was not dead when Preita found me. That I had passed out from the heat of the mid-day sun. But the woman just shook her head 'no', and turned to toss two of Preita's white linen dresses into a galvanized tub of soapy water, and sat down in the wooden chair next to it.
"No, my son," she said, as she swung her bare feet into the water. " You were dead. I am old enough to know a dead man when I see one. You were dead." She looked over at her daughter as she stood, and began to stomp up and down on Preita's dresses. "Preita, get the bottle of bleach, please. You gowns must be as pure as snow. My Preita must radiate the glory of God in her appearance," she added, as though lost in a dream of a deepening scheme. She sat down in the chair, her feet still sloshing up and down in the foamy water. She turned to reach for a small wooden box on the table behind her. She opened it, and called Preita to her side. She reached down into the box and rummaged about for a moment, and then produced a pair of dangling silver crucifix earrings.
"Preita put them on," she said, as she rummaged down into the box again. This time she came up with a long delicate silver chain. A necklace. It had three red garnets dangling from it. They were beautifully formed in the shape of tear drops. She cupped the garnets in her palm. "Look, Preita. The tears of Jesus. I give these to you, Preita, my child.....my angel." Slowly, but surely, Preita was being transformed. From the diminutive little bare footed girl standing by the highway, waving her cage of birds at the occasional passing tourist, she was morphing now into an angelic butterfly for God. And, for her mother. She was beginning to look stunning it's true. Her mother had brushed her mop of dark hair back, and into a long braid down her back. Her face, no longer obscured by her hair, was a perfect oval, the silver earrings dangling freely. Her amber eyes looked bigger than ever. Nevertheless, her glances toward me were full of her helplessness, and her sense of obligation to obey her mother. I found it difficult to look at her, yet, impossible not to.
I returned to my studies at the university, reluctantly. Preita began crying as I prepared to leave. I was torn on the drive back to school. Something very deep in me, felt something very much like cowardice. Very much like betrayal. In the following days, I couldn't get Preita off my mind. Studying was difficult. I kept writing her name down over and over in my journal. And it was difficult to fall asleep at night. Not to mention replaying over and over in my mind, that moment I awoke in Preita's arms. Then, one day I got a letter from her. My hands were trembling as I opened it. A lovely lock of her hair fell into my lap as I unfolded the paper. It was one simple sentence, carefully penned. A question. "Will you ever come back to me?" Beneath that, her charming signature. "Preita, Curious Angel of Demon's Brow."
To Demon's Brow, And Points Beyond
"Well, I've always been the kind of person that doesn't like to trespass,
But sometimes, you just find yourself over the line.
Oh, if there is an original thought out there, I could use it right now." - Dylan
It took me several days to figure out what to do, but even as I pulled out of San Diego and headed south again, I wasn't sure what kind of scenario would play out. I only knew that one way or another, I was going to be with Preita. If I had to kidnap her, then, so be it. Even if I had to kill her mother. I was horrified to think of that, I have never killed anybody, and don't want to. I would be killing my self in the same blow. Who could live with such blood on their hands? So, my non-homicidal plan was quite simple. I would pull up to her mother's house. They would be happy to see me, and I would be cordial. I would take a walk with Preita. I would lead her eventually to my car. We would quietly get in, and I would snatch her away.
And then what? Try to smuggle her back to the states? A young girl, at that? A minor, beyond that. The consequences of getting caught would be severe. I could do jail time, and Preita could be deported home, to return to her entrapment by 'God', or her mother's self interests. Those were really dark, and ominous clouds in my mind, as I got closer and closer to Demon's Brow.
When I pulled up, there were a half dozen or more people milling about in front of Preita, beneath the chinese elm. It seemed the ritual had evolved. She was no longer running her fingers through the hair of kneeling believers, she was lightly running a peacock's feather around the person's face and across their shoulders. Her mother stood at her side reciting the verse. The wooden bucket at Preita's feet was filled with coins. And other offerings were scattered all around, like they fell out of a passing plane. A woven blanket. A red plastic can that appeared to be a gas can cut in half, holding an armful of cut flowers.. And then there was a box with holes punched into it, that seemed to hold a restless chicken making lots of noise. There was a burlap sack that seemed to be squirming about. Four rabbits, soon to be a stew. A pair of black sunglasses with little red stones all around the lenses.
And then, there was the falcon. Yes, someone brought Preita a falcon. He perched on a nearby post, and seemed a bit spooky to me. He was chained to the post with a tiny metal collar around one leg. And, he had a black hood on his head. Add to that, the fact that the peacock was nowhere to be seen. I didn't have to ask why. There was every kind of peacock feather scattered all around on the ground. Miracles come. Miracles go. And then, there's only nightmares.
Preita stood when she saw me, and ran toward me. We embraced. The mere, faint scent of her hair turned me into a junkie, on the spot. It was just that easy, that instantly, to know for real. I had fallen in love. Then she returned to her post, and I stood watching the parade of people in a line, waiting patiently to see Preita. It was a scam, no doubt. Nevertheless, people walked away smiling, though they were clearly in one kind of agony or another upon their first arrival.
It seems people need something to believe in. Something stronger than themselves. The longing to experience something special. Something inexplicable and wonderful. Something to take their grief away, even if only briefly, and replace it with hope. Here, in Demon's Brow, they had the curious angel, Preita. They came with an expectation. A belief. Or, at least, a suspension of disbelief. They performed along with Preita, a ritual, enacting and re-enacting the miracle of healing, again and again. Somehow, they each went their way feeling better, stronger. The magic wasn't in Preita's fingers at all, nor in the peacock's feather. It was in their own minds, and in what they chose to believe. That is what seemed to empower them. And it is the same with beliefs that enslave. Like Preita, in her mother's cage, feeling unable to fly away, even if the door was opened. And, her mother has trapped herself, as well. Corrupting and bankrupting her own soul, with self interest and greed destined to some day, eat her alive. I suppose that if I should take Preita away from here, I might be also freeing her mother from her own self-destruction. A rationalization, I suppose. Another form of belief, enabling me to plan what to do here. Now.
As sunset neared, Demon's Brow became silent except for an occasional cluck or cackle from the chickens strolling about. And even they, were drowsily waddling to the fence. There, they would flap their wings, as though they just suddenly realized they had wings, and clumsily fly to the topmost rail, From there, a mere hop onto the branch of a nearby tree and they were settling in for the night. The sun's last rays were creeping up the face of the mesa, I looked toward it, and the fall of light and shadow on the steep and rocky slope had painted the reddish face of Satan. It seemed to glow and glower there on the mesa wall, then slowly fade away as the sun dropped lower.
Preita's mother fixed some scrambled eggs, and chorizo, with piping hot tortillas. We ate quietly outside at a flimsy weathered card table, as the sky deepened, and the silence all around us became palpable. It was pleasant and hard to bear, in the same breath. Some pregnant aura seemed to encircle us. The feeling of things yet to come. The labor pains of how to make it be.
Finally, Preita's mother looked over at me and spoke.
"Tomorrow, my son, you must go before the people, and tell them of how you died, and of how Preita restored you with her touch. How she snatched your soul from the clutches of death. How she...." I nodded, and stood up from the table, and stretched. She was pretty damn good at this business of making things up.
"Tomorrow will a big day. An important day." I replied. Somehow, I knew that the hour had arrived. I turned to Preita, and extended my hand. "Come, Preita, let's walk about, and watch the night unfold." As I felt the touch of her hand in mine, in that instant, I knew it would be a long time before Preita's mother saw her daughter again. Behind us, as we walked out toward the mesa, I could hear the clattering of clay dishes as her mother cleared the table. The conversation was simple, as we stopped and turned to each other. I heard the muffled sound of a door closing behind us. Preita's mother went in to the house to get ready for tomorrow.
"Are your ready to go with me, Preita?" She nodded in reply, and pressed her face to my chest. We turned, and walked more quickly then, to my car, and pulled away. We never said goodbye to her mother, and Preita never looked back. Neither did I.
All that was some time ago. I teach at a small college now. Most of my courses are about the sociology of religion. Preita is happy enough for now, to mind our three children. But she says she wants to go to school herself some day. And that is fine with me. To this very day, I still like to lie on the couch and lay my head on Preita's lap, and feel her fingers running through my hair. Each time she does, I feel as though born again. I suppose that is the power of love. As for Preita's mother? Last time we went to visit her, it looked like she was figuring something out about herself, or about life in general.
The End
.
I suppose this is a preface to a story. I am holed up in my house in the middle of a heat wave. Too much time on my hands has always set my mind to brooding. For the past two weeks, my thoughts have gone back time and time again to something that, I guess still haunts me. A dusty incident of long ago that mostly sits on a dark shelf in some back room of my head. So, this is what wandering about inside myself leads me to. I know the story well. Too well. I guess the problem has always been knowing how to tell it. I am hoping that if I make a beginning, if I only try, I can work through it in awhile, and then put it away forever. So, with that said, I take a deep breath, and begin.
It took a long time for it to come to this, and a lot of Chinese take-out. Countless crumbled fortune cookies trailing a hopelessly tangled paper string of failed dreams. My own intractable Gordian knot of things that didn't come true, or were too vague to matter.
" There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief. There is too much confusion. I can't get no relief."
It all sounds dismal and bitter, I know; but that was long ago. That was before Preita. This is the story of her. And about the day we met. 'Met' is not the right word, I suppose. I was 20 then. She, was 14. A child, in the eyes of the law. But out there, in the desert, some 100 miles south of Tijuana, the law is what you make it. Let's just say that when I regained consciousness, my head was on her lap, and she was running her fingers gently through my hair. And I had no idea of who she was, or what she might soon become. I was only aware of the wonderful amber light in her eyes, and of the shadow looming over us. The dark figure of her mother shading us both from the blistering sun, and her dangling silver crucifix. This is how the story began, the story of Preita's Magic Fingers.
Where is the best starting place for such a story? I suppose the things I experienced in my life, and in the lives of others around me in the five years or so preceding Preita, might explain a lot. But, you can read such cultural commentary in countless explanations of what the '60s were all about. Right now, two things come to mind, as I try to explain how I got lost in the desert and stumbled quite literally, into Preita. I don't really remember that moment. But, Preita told me later, she saw me stumbling just before i fell, seemingly dead, to the desert floor. I do recall seeing a slender young girl making her way barefoot along a faint trail through a grove of mesquite bushes. She was carrying a primitive twig birdcage full of what appeared to be Mexican sparrows. And, I vaguely remember how the sky, the girl, the distant mesas, and the ground in front of me had suddenly become a whirling blur that quickly faded into blackness.
As a small child, I remember how young mothers with sick babies would come to the house seeking out my grandfather. He was a faith-healer, of sorts. As I recall, he would gently lay the baby down upon his lap. He would recite a biblical scripture. He would then cup his open fist over the baby's mouth, bend down, and blow his breath into the baby. As a child, you can witness many things that don't seem extraordinary until years later, when you think about them. When you ask yourself questions about your past. What was that, exactly?. What made that ritual work? I remember grandaddy alway had a jaw full of chewing tobacco. He was always spitting on the ground or into a can. Maybe it was the tobacco on his breath, or such brown saliva that was the curative agent. Or, maybe something else.
So, now let me move forward in time, to get closer to the story at hand. I was sitting in a Cultural Anthropology class at a university in San Diego, California. I was listening to one of the many fascinating lectures about the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Spanish Conquest, the supplanting of ancient beliefs by Catholic missionaries, and so on. How, in that epic period, much information of these early cultures was lost. Well, not lost, but deliberately eradicated. And how, despite all that, certain traces of an earlier mentality, even a wisdom, still persist today. And how south of the border, an oral tradition still passes along many of the insights of an ancient time. When the professor began to go on about Curanderismo, by way of example, I felt a shiver of my own history run through me. It seemed that this practice of healing by looking at the balance between health, nature and religion was at its core. This all reminded me of my grandfather. The professor went on about the currently emerging trends in areas of holistic healing, herbalism, faith-healing, and ecstatic religious experiences. But, I only took all that in, peripherally. I was already planning a trip south of the border to try to understand this myself. I realize, I haven't even gotten to the story yet, but I am getting closer. Try to bear with me. I told you up front, its complicated.
I talked to my professor about writing a paper on Curanderismo based on first hand accounts I would gather in a field trip of sorts, down into rural Mexico. He liked the idea, and even wrote me a letter of introduction on university stationery that I could show to any authorities who might question why I was out in the desert talking to people about Curanderismo, and gathering herbal specimens.
The drive down through the sprawling city of Tijuana was tedious. Road blocks here. Detours there. And most peculiar was how each detour taken seemed to take me down squalid streets of waving whores in hot pants. In fact, I was beginning to think those detour signs I was following may have been put up by pimps themselves. Finally though, I was headed out on a seemingly empty highway into the desert. I had seen on the map a place called Demon's Brow. There had to be a story there, and I soon found out I was right.
On each side of this endless highway there was only desert as far as the eye could see. All along the way however, you could make out the occasional shack, or small adobes, set well back from the road. Most conspicuous, were rusty barbed wire fences. They seemed forever adorned by plastic bags. Plastic bags in the desert are the modern equivalent of the tumbleweed. They get rolled about along the ground until they are at last hopelessly snagged along the fence rows. I was more than an hour now south of Tijuana. I pulled off at a deserted gas station where I had spotted a local farmer drying chili peppers on the hot asphalt. I asked him if he knew of Demon's Brow. He nodded, and pointed to a mesa in the distance. It looked to be about three miles away. I asked if I could leave my car there, because I wanted to make my way to the mesa on foot. He looked at me as though I was crazy. I smiled and nodded, as though to assure him that I was, in fact, crazy. I handed him a 10 dollar bill to watch my car. His eyes got quite big. I guess 10 dollars out in the middle of nowhere is a lot of money.
I grabbed my gear, and a couple of bottles of water out of the trunk, and took off. It only took me about ten minutes to realize it was hot as hell. I sat down a few times to take a drink of water. Nothing like a big gulp of hot water on a hot day. I felt a certain light-headedness after awhile. At first, I took it as my giddy happiness to be out of the city. Later, I realized I was on the edge of a stroke. I was captivated by the yuccas in bloom, the cholla, the mesquite and creosote shrubs, and a plant known locally as the devil's claw, witch seemed to be everywhere. It bore, and dropped to the ground below it, strangely beautiful seed pods. The fact that the pod had two devilishly long curved thorns is where it got its name, I suppose. I had heard of this plant before. It was the bane of charros and farmers because of the way its thorns would so easily latch on to the foreleg of a horse, or a burro, or a goat passing by, or any other damn animal. It would then go along for a ride on the frightened beast until it was pawed off. I think it was as I was stooping down to collect a couple of these claws that I saw out of the corner of my eye, someone walking along. That was the last thing I saw. I collapsed. The lights went out. Later, I learned that It was Preita, of course, making her way home with her cage of birds.
When I awoke, with Preita and her mother looking down at me, I was quite confused as to what had happened. Her mother knelt down beside me, and took my hand.
"You died, my son. But my Preita brought you back to life."
"But, but, that's not possible!" I said. I looked up at Preita who was still gazing serenely down at me, still caressing my face with her hands. For a moment, she turned to look up at her mother.
"But, but, mother..." Preita stammered.
"It's true, my child", the woman said to her daughter, reaching out to cup the girl's face in her hands. "Today, our precious Savior, has anointed you with His healing powers. You have been chosen Preita. My little Preita. My angel."
"But, mother..." Preita said, her eyes filling.
I walked wearily along with them, down a narrow goat path to their home. It was a small deteriorating adobe shack. A single room. It was like stepping into night as we entered. But, as my eyes adjusted, I saw candles everywhere. The air was pungent with the complicated fragrance of herbal plants hanging in bundles from the primitive lodge poles overhead. And crude crucifixes made of sun-bleached mesquite twigs, laced together with some kind of animal hide, adorned the walls everywhere. Preita led me to a small mattress in the corner, and told me to lie down. My head was spinning again. The pillow smelled like Preita. Once again, she was caressing my face.
"Preita, I didn't die. I passed out. It was the heat." She pressed a forefinger to my lips.
"Shhh...shhh...I know. Sleep now."
I awoke to the strange sensation of something moving up and down my back. Preita seemed to be brushing my skin with some kind of branches. And I could feel her thumb pressing down just above my tailbone, and moving in a small firm circle.
"Don't worry," she said. "I am taking care of you." Two men had appeared. They were busy at the table, stripping the meat off of the head of a goat.
"Preita, I didn't die, Preita."
"Shhhh..." she said softly. I drifted off to sleep again. I had a dream about my grandfather. And how he got trapped beneath a slab of coal deep in a collapsed mine in West Virginia. And how he never spoke of God after all that. He was down there for three days. He, to me, had become God. He had somehow, been resurrected. He had more broken bones than bones that were whole. And he never spoke of God again. He became a recluse. Maybe that is why I had become so intent on ignoring the prevailing winds of the times. A realization that I am here from some known date I was born, and some unknown date when I will die. And, the only real question then, was what makes the most sense to do in the meanwhile?
I awoke the next morning with Preita snuggled up against me. Her hand seemed to still be tracing my body, even though she was sound asleep. Outside, there was the sound of roosters crowing. And there were voices. I was far, far away from a telephone. But, somehow, news gets around in the desert. And the news was of how Preita had raised someone from the dead. There was the smell of chorizo cooking. Her mother at the wood stove. The air was smoky, but smelled sweet somehow. Preita awoke, and put on a simple white linen dress. And I stood at the doorway sipping some strange green tea, as one by one, I watched people approach her. She embrced them each and every one. Her mother stood by her side reciting some scripture. I felt my skin prickle, as I realized she was reciting the some verse my grandfather had spoken so many years ago. It was from the Old Testament. From Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16:6, to be precise. Preita reached out and ran her fingers through each one's hair as her mother chanted.
"And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thine own blood, Live. Yes, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live."
This is all I can say for now. I did return to Demon's Brow a few years later to see Preita again. Some people there think I kidnapped her, but I didn't. She came with me willingly. But, that's another story.
The Curious Angel of Demon's Brow
I left Demon's Brow and Preita, after spending another several days there. Before I left though, it became clear that this recent event had a few consequences that seemed to be kaleidoscoping out at the speed of lies, or blind faith. Like the expanding concentric circles on the water of a placid pond, in the aftermath of a thrown pebble, word of Preita's 'miracle' seemed to have spread for miles out into the desert. People seemed to be coming from far and wide to feel Preita's healing touch. They came sometimes, 3 or 4 at a time, in rusted out sedans with peeling paint, or in sputtering, coughing old trucks. They came on foot. In primitive sandals cut and formed from the black rubber of old tires. Or, they came shoeless. There was a family who arrived on burros. Most came with maladies of one kind or another, although some came just to catch a glimpse of Preita. To see 'The Angel of Demon's Brow', as she would soon be referred to.
And then, there were the offerings. As poor as these people were, they did not arrive empty handed. People would stoop and lay a peso or two at Preita's feet, as she ran her fingers through their hair and her mother mumbled the 'healing verse'. Or they presented her with produce they had farmed. One tired old man humbly laid a solitary potato at her feet. Another, brought her two goats. One to milk, and one to eat.
Preita seemed bewildered by it all. And she got little rest. She mostly sat in the shade of a blossoming chinese elm tree at the corner of the house, and 'healed' people as they came and went. I have pictures of Preita in my mind that, I guess, will be there forever. The image of her sitting there on an old sun-bleached wooden box, barefooted. Her simple, hand-made and quite wrinkled, white linen dress. Her hair, a childish dark tangled mop. Her amber eyes, full of questions when she glanced at me. The drab desert ground at her feet colored by the occasional fall of a long and lovely feather of the peacock that sat in the branches overhead, lazily preening. She had become a vision. An apparition. A dream. And, I could have lived in such a dream forever, except for her haunting glances, and the helpless shrugs of her lean and lovely brown shoulders as she ran her fingers through yet another, stranger's hair.
Preita knew as well as I did, what really happened that day she found me. But her mother kept insisting that I had died, and Preita had miraculously brought me back to life. I don't think her mother really believed that herself. In fact, I am convinced it was an invention inspired by certain motives that were becoming increasingly apparent. She seemed more like an entrepreneur designing a business around the needs of people to believe that God is real, and that He cared about their desperate lives. The shrewd embellishment of a lie can become a grand scheme in a short amount of time. Preita's mother seemed adamant in her assertions as she talked to her daughter, and to me. The Lord had given Preita this gift of healing, and with it, a mission. A calling. And she said that the Lord would richly bless Preita for her service to Him. And that many bad things happen to those who disobey God. I tried to tell her, that I was not dead when Preita found me. That I had passed out from the heat of the mid-day sun. But the woman just shook her head 'no', and turned to toss two of Preita's white linen dresses into a galvanized tub of soapy water, and sat down in the wooden chair next to it.
"No, my son," she said, as she swung her bare feet into the water. " You were dead. I am old enough to know a dead man when I see one. You were dead." She looked over at her daughter as she stood, and began to stomp up and down on Preita's dresses. "Preita, get the bottle of bleach, please. You gowns must be as pure as snow. My Preita must radiate the glory of God in her appearance," she added, as though lost in a dream of a deepening scheme. She sat down in the chair, her feet still sloshing up and down in the foamy water. She turned to reach for a small wooden box on the table behind her. She opened it, and called Preita to her side. She reached down into the box and rummaged about for a moment, and then produced a pair of dangling silver crucifix earrings.
"Preita put them on," she said, as she rummaged down into the box again. This time she came up with a long delicate silver chain. A necklace. It had three red garnets dangling from it. They were beautifully formed in the shape of tear drops. She cupped the garnets in her palm. "Look, Preita. The tears of Jesus. I give these to you, Preita, my child.....my angel." Slowly, but surely, Preita was being transformed. From the diminutive little bare footed girl standing by the highway, waving her cage of birds at the occasional passing tourist, she was morphing now into an angelic butterfly for God. And, for her mother. She was beginning to look stunning it's true. Her mother had brushed her mop of dark hair back, and into a long braid down her back. Her face, no longer obscured by her hair, was a perfect oval, the silver earrings dangling freely. Her amber eyes looked bigger than ever. Nevertheless, her glances toward me were full of her helplessness, and her sense of obligation to obey her mother. I found it difficult to look at her, yet, impossible not to.
I returned to my studies at the university, reluctantly. Preita began crying as I prepared to leave. I was torn on the drive back to school. Something very deep in me, felt something very much like cowardice. Very much like betrayal. In the following days, I couldn't get Preita off my mind. Studying was difficult. I kept writing her name down over and over in my journal. And it was difficult to fall asleep at night. Not to mention replaying over and over in my mind, that moment I awoke in Preita's arms. Then, one day I got a letter from her. My hands were trembling as I opened it. A lovely lock of her hair fell into my lap as I unfolded the paper. It was one simple sentence, carefully penned. A question. "Will you ever come back to me?" Beneath that, her charming signature. "Preita, Curious Angel of Demon's Brow."
To Demon's Brow, And Points Beyond
"Well, I've always been the kind of person that doesn't like to trespass,
But sometimes, you just find yourself over the line.
Oh, if there is an original thought out there, I could use it right now." - Dylan
It took me several days to figure out what to do, but even as I pulled out of San Diego and headed south again, I wasn't sure what kind of scenario would play out. I only knew that one way or another, I was going to be with Preita. If I had to kidnap her, then, so be it. Even if I had to kill her mother. I was horrified to think of that, I have never killed anybody, and don't want to. I would be killing my self in the same blow. Who could live with such blood on their hands? So, my non-homicidal plan was quite simple. I would pull up to her mother's house. They would be happy to see me, and I would be cordial. I would take a walk with Preita. I would lead her eventually to my car. We would quietly get in, and I would snatch her away.
And then what? Try to smuggle her back to the states? A young girl, at that? A minor, beyond that. The consequences of getting caught would be severe. I could do jail time, and Preita could be deported home, to return to her entrapment by 'God', or her mother's self interests. Those were really dark, and ominous clouds in my mind, as I got closer and closer to Demon's Brow.
When I pulled up, there were a half dozen or more people milling about in front of Preita, beneath the chinese elm. It seemed the ritual had evolved. She was no longer running her fingers through the hair of kneeling believers, she was lightly running a peacock's feather around the person's face and across their shoulders. Her mother stood at her side reciting the verse. The wooden bucket at Preita's feet was filled with coins. And other offerings were scattered all around, like they fell out of a passing plane. A woven blanket. A red plastic can that appeared to be a gas can cut in half, holding an armful of cut flowers.. And then there was a box with holes punched into it, that seemed to hold a restless chicken making lots of noise. There was a burlap sack that seemed to be squirming about. Four rabbits, soon to be a stew. A pair of black sunglasses with little red stones all around the lenses.
And then, there was the falcon. Yes, someone brought Preita a falcon. He perched on a nearby post, and seemed a bit spooky to me. He was chained to the post with a tiny metal collar around one leg. And, he had a black hood on his head. Add to that, the fact that the peacock was nowhere to be seen. I didn't have to ask why. There was every kind of peacock feather scattered all around on the ground. Miracles come. Miracles go. And then, there's only nightmares.
Preita stood when she saw me, and ran toward me. We embraced. The mere, faint scent of her hair turned me into a junkie, on the spot. It was just that easy, that instantly, to know for real. I had fallen in love. Then she returned to her post, and I stood watching the parade of people in a line, waiting patiently to see Preita. It was a scam, no doubt. Nevertheless, people walked away smiling, though they were clearly in one kind of agony or another upon their first arrival.
It seems people need something to believe in. Something stronger than themselves. The longing to experience something special. Something inexplicable and wonderful. Something to take their grief away, even if only briefly, and replace it with hope. Here, in Demon's Brow, they had the curious angel, Preita. They came with an expectation. A belief. Or, at least, a suspension of disbelief. They performed along with Preita, a ritual, enacting and re-enacting the miracle of healing, again and again. Somehow, they each went their way feeling better, stronger. The magic wasn't in Preita's fingers at all, nor in the peacock's feather. It was in their own minds, and in what they chose to believe. That is what seemed to empower them. And it is the same with beliefs that enslave. Like Preita, in her mother's cage, feeling unable to fly away, even if the door was opened. And, her mother has trapped herself, as well. Corrupting and bankrupting her own soul, with self interest and greed destined to some day, eat her alive. I suppose that if I should take Preita away from here, I might be also freeing her mother from her own self-destruction. A rationalization, I suppose. Another form of belief, enabling me to plan what to do here. Now.
As sunset neared, Demon's Brow became silent except for an occasional cluck or cackle from the chickens strolling about. And even they, were drowsily waddling to the fence. There, they would flap their wings, as though they just suddenly realized they had wings, and clumsily fly to the topmost rail, From there, a mere hop onto the branch of a nearby tree and they were settling in for the night. The sun's last rays were creeping up the face of the mesa, I looked toward it, and the fall of light and shadow on the steep and rocky slope had painted the reddish face of Satan. It seemed to glow and glower there on the mesa wall, then slowly fade away as the sun dropped lower.
Preita's mother fixed some scrambled eggs, and chorizo, with piping hot tortillas. We ate quietly outside at a flimsy weathered card table, as the sky deepened, and the silence all around us became palpable. It was pleasant and hard to bear, in the same breath. Some pregnant aura seemed to encircle us. The feeling of things yet to come. The labor pains of how to make it be.
Finally, Preita's mother looked over at me and spoke.
"Tomorrow, my son, you must go before the people, and tell them of how you died, and of how Preita restored you with her touch. How she snatched your soul from the clutches of death. How she...." I nodded, and stood up from the table, and stretched. She was pretty damn good at this business of making things up.
"Tomorrow will a big day. An important day." I replied. Somehow, I knew that the hour had arrived. I turned to Preita, and extended my hand. "Come, Preita, let's walk about, and watch the night unfold." As I felt the touch of her hand in mine, in that instant, I knew it would be a long time before Preita's mother saw her daughter again. Behind us, as we walked out toward the mesa, I could hear the clattering of clay dishes as her mother cleared the table. The conversation was simple, as we stopped and turned to each other. I heard the muffled sound of a door closing behind us. Preita's mother went in to the house to get ready for tomorrow.
"Are your ready to go with me, Preita?" She nodded in reply, and pressed her face to my chest. We turned, and walked more quickly then, to my car, and pulled away. We never said goodbye to her mother, and Preita never looked back. Neither did I.
All that was some time ago. I teach at a small college now. Most of my courses are about the sociology of religion. Preita is happy enough for now, to mind our three children. But she says she wants to go to school herself some day. And that is fine with me. To this very day, I still like to lie on the couch and lay my head on Preita's lap, and feel her fingers running through my hair. Each time she does, I feel as though born again. I suppose that is the power of love. As for Preita's mother? Last time we went to visit her, it looked like she was figuring something out about herself, or about life in general.
The End
.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Tying Up Loose Ends
I finally got around to finishing three pieces of furniture. A table, a small book cabinet, and a stool. This amounted to a fine steel wool rub-down of surfaces. (0000-wool), followed by two applications of satin polyurethane, another steel wool rub-down, and finally, paste wax, and a lot of buffing.
The stool and the book cabinet are headed to a home in Nashville. I will hold onto the table for awhile, since it has practical use in my house.
Top of the table is sweet gum with nice color, grain, knots.
Shelves of book cabinet are tiger stripe maple. Sides are made of sweet gum, and the back is thin-cut (1/4") cedar.
Top of the book cabinet is tiger strip maple with nice color, grain, and striping.
Mahogany top is fastened to the leg base with countersunk screws, and capped with poplar pegs. Pegs are cut flush with the top.
Legs for the stool are 2"x2" sweet gum. Pegs are poplar.
The stool and the book cabinet are headed to a home in Nashville. I will hold onto the table for awhile, since it has practical use in my house.
Top of the table is sweet gum with nice color, grain, knots.
Shelves of book cabinet are tiger stripe maple. Sides are made of sweet gum, and the back is thin-cut (1/4") cedar.
Top of the book cabinet is tiger strip maple with nice color, grain, and striping.
Mahogany top is fastened to the leg base with countersunk screws, and capped with poplar pegs. Pegs are cut flush with the top.
Legs for the stool are 2"x2" sweet gum. Pegs are poplar.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Lost highway
Part One
You look back on some times and wonder how you lived through them. Cut to Chicago, circa 1970. I'm teaching psychology in a small college. Pretty burned out, to tell you the truth. The whole decade behind me seemed a blur of war, assassinations, student riots, and so on. I was living in an urban commune, or sorts. A large house known as 'the Castle' with a changing number of inhabitants. Two friends, who also lived there, had decided they were going to escape to Guadalajara for awhile. And I thought, if they can do it, why can't I? So, I decided to do that too. This notion of 'why not?' was quite rampant in those days. So, I traded in my VW bus for a motorcycle. It seemed to make sense at the time. Back at the college, I put all my some 120 students on 'independent study', and within 48 hours I was at an all-night diner at 2am having breakfast, and studying the road map. My plan was quite simple. Get out of the city before dawn, and somehow get to Guadalajara. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
The thing is, I didn't really want to take my bike all the way across Mexico. I don't recall how I got this next idea, but it went something like this. I could take the bike from Chicago to Laredo, Texas. Store the bike there, and cross the border on foot into Neuvo Laredo, Mexico. I had learned somehow of a train that went from Laredo all the way to Guadalajara. It was known as 'the chicken train', because mostly it was hauling cages upon cages of chickens. So, really, all I had to do was somehow get on that train. It would be a piece of cake after that. Like I say, it wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
So now we cut back to me on my lunatic motorcycle. I was in Indiana by 4 am, and I wound up having a late lunch with my mom and my sister in Nashville, Tennessee, and listening to caring admonitions such as "Are you kidding me?!", and "You have really lost it this time!". By late afternoon, I was somewhere outside of Nashville headed toward Memphis and pulled off for a cup of coffee. That's where I ran into Homer. Back then, hippies knew one another in a glance. So, he tells me he is living in a tree house in a hollow nearby. To make a long story short, I took a detour back into the woods, and spent the next two days eating magic mushrooms. This is just an aside, but I throw it in, since Homer shows up later in the story.
So, anyway, back to my plan. I headed on out to Memphis on a blistering hot day, and about 50 miles shy of getting there, I blew the motor on my bike. Mind you, this is before cell phones. Somehow, I got Suzuki in Memphis to come and get me and the bike, and spent two more days in Memphis waiting for them to re-build my burnt-out motor. Nothing much eventful took place during this time. I mostly laid around in a motel room watching tv. I was eager to get back to my 'plan'.
On the road again. The next phase of this ridiculous trek got really rough. For awhile, I was thinking I was going to have to return to reality. The first 100 miles I had to keep it under 50 mph, to let the new motor get broken in. I think I took about a four hour nap around Little Rock, Arkansas. I never got off the bike. I just leaned back on my backpack and conked out. Then, on the road again. My next goal was to make it to Amarillo, Texas. I had friends there, and could get a shower, some food, and a good night's sleep. Let me just say, it was a helluva ride. About 70 miles out, my whole body was aching. And then came this plague of dragon flies out of nowhere. These creatures hurt when they hit you at 70 mph. And when they hit my helmet or visor, it was like gunshots going off. I made it to the outskirts of Amarillo. Called my friends to come and get me. They were very nurturing, and I spent two days there. Since one of my friends was a dentist, part of my recuperation involved nitrous oxide in a dental chair, and really lovely music. And now, I am onto Plan B.
Part Two
Well, Plan B wasn't much more thought out than Plan A. But, I had to reckon with some issues there in Amarillo. I had just spent a whole lot of dough in Memphis getting my bike back, not to mention the motel bill. I reluctantly abandoned my initial plan of getting to Guadalajara. As though I wasn't low on money already, I had found a deal on two carpets from Caucasus, I couldn't resist. So I bought them, and rolled them as tight as I could and strapped them onto the back of my bike, behind the backpack, and decided to head home. By now, I was expected back in the classroom in four days. The dean was already irritated with me, having sent me a memo before I left saying "You need to be more business-like with your students." So, I was determined to get back to Chicago. Like I say, it wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
Somewhere approaching Arkansas, I realized my bike was getting hot again. So, I pulled off the interstate to take the remaining miles to Little Rock under better conditions. Shady winding country roads through the Ozarks. This worked fine for awhile. Quite beautiful. Then I hit the fork in the road. And I remember thinking, "Let's see, Highway 9?....Or Highway 10?" It came up faster than I had imagined. I realized, too late, I should take the left fork. Highway 9. Let's make this long story a bit shorter. I took the curve anyway, throttled down too late, had to lean the bike down quite a bit, perchance to make it. But, didn't. The bike hit the gravel shoulder, and everything is a blur after that. I awoke with a broken arm and the sound of my bike still running, but nowhere to be seen. It turns out, the bike went on without me, down a ravine. The good news was that a guy in a pick-up truck stopped and took me to a rural clinic to get patched up. The bad news was that I was a long ways from home. After getting cleaned up and getting my arm braced in a sling, I was released. The sheriff's deputy helped me re-claim my backpack and the carpets, and I called the Suzuki dealer in Little Rock. "Could you please send someone to pick up my bike. It is on Highwy 9, just past the fork. It is down in a ravine in a blackberry thicket. Thanks a lot." After that, the deputy dropped me off on the interstate towards Nashville, and wished me well. I don't think he was being sincere, however. It was time now for Plan C : Get my ass back home.
I walked up an exit ramp to some fast food joint to get something to eat. As I sat there eating my burger, I was looking out the window at the parking lot. There must have been two dozen small birds hopping about, excitedly picking up french fries someone had thrown away. Suddenly some big birds made the scene, sending the little birds flying. The big birds promptly devoured all the remaining french fries, and left. The little birds came rushing back. But they seemed really confused as they hopped about. Like "What the hell happened to all those fries?" I determined then and there, that when I was done eating, I would give these poor birds my remaining fries. I also made a quick note of this great philosophical moment of existential clarity on a napkin. This is what you call 'thinking ahead'. I knew I was going to be really tired whenever I made it back to the classroom. So, when the kids ask, "How was your vacation?", I can deliver this weighty treatise about birds and french fries. I also noted that between Plan A and Plan B, you might just bump into X, Y, and Z. So, be prepared. Another important lesson I can teach my students, who like me, don't have a clue what is going on these days. Or, what's coming next. Now, back to the highway, and my evolving plan.
I must have stood there on the side of the interstate for an hour or more. Everybody was whizzing by like maniacs racing toward a cliff. I was getting discouraged. There I was, with the sun going down. I was earnestly holding my thumb out with my remaining good arm. Can't they see that I, with my other arm in a sling, my bashed-in motorcycle helmet on the asphalt next to my backpack and two oriental carpets, seriously need a ride? Don't they have any empathy? Do they not understand that I am a maniac too? Realizing I had just come across yet another moment of existential clarity, I determined to make a note of this right underneath the one about the birds, the fries, and XYZ. But, lo and behold, suddenly a big rig came to a squealing halt on the shoulder. A big rig, as you may know, has 18 wheels. I was saved. I had left home on two wheels, and now was headed back on 18!! Oh, praise the Lord!
Well, it turns out the trucker had left Ohio some 3 days earlier, dropped a load in California, and was on his way home too. He hadn't slept the entire time, thanks to the modern pharmaceutical miracle known as "Black Beauties", or as he called them, "West Coast Turn Arounds." And that was news to me since I thought they were called 'White Crosses'. Make another note about how it is an ever changing world. On the radio came a song about how the road goes on forever and it never really ends. I was going to make a note of that too, but then a truck driving song came on. It was about some trucker who had died, but his ghost was still driving around. He rescued people in trouble. I glanced over at the guy behind the wheel. He was rambling on about how he planned to retire and become a hippie too. He started asking me questions about 'free love'. I tried to tell him that its not all its cracked up to be, but he seemed oblivious and lost in his dream. Funny, the crazy romantic ideas people have sometimes.
I suppose I should move on now, to how I wound up at a huge outdoor rock festival in Indiana the next day. But let me take a break and fix a cup of coffee.
Part Three
The trucker let me out a few miles from Nashville, at a truck stop. So, I called my sister from a pay phone and asked if she could come pick me up. "Where's your motorcycle?" she asked. I told her I would tell her later. In the car, and driving to our mother's house, I told her of my ridiculous adventure. She agreed that we should not give mom all these details, since, you know how moms are. But of course, when my mom saw my arm in a sling, she said, "What the hell did you do to yourself?" I tried to downplay it by quoting a line from a Bob Dylan song. I said, "Its all right ma, I'm only bleeding." After a great home-cooked dinner, I fell asleep promptly.
In talking to a friend from Chicago on the phone next morning, I learned that a huge outdoor rock concert was happening on the coming weekend. It turned out to be the infamous Bull Island Soda Pop Festival on the Wabash River in Indiana. So my friend agreed to drive down to it and pick me up, if I could get that far. I love it when, just as you are about out of plans, another one emerges. So, I promptly hopped a bus at the Greyhound station and headed for the festival.
Well, as it turns out a whole lot of people were headed to this festival. I had to walk about 7 miles to get to the venue since traffic was hopelessly jammed up along the highway. The estimated audience of about 50, 000 had turned into an estimated 200, 000. The whole thing turned into the classic mud-fest as I arrived at last in a drenching rain. I dragged my gear through the mud and through the crazy throngs of people. I was looking for a place to set up camp, so to speak. My camping equipment consisted of two oriental carpets that were getting heavier, the wetter they got. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Homer. I found him relaxing on a hammock strung between a tree, and his converted school bus. The classic hippie mode of transportation. Especially after you've already blown out your VW bus hauling too many people, to too many concerts, one time too many. He was soaking wet, but didn't seem to care. I was beginning to feel the same way. After awhile though, I crawled under his bus where it was nice and dry, and fell asleep listening to the distant sound of thunder, and Canned Heat on stage. Why did I crawl under the bus, when I could have crawled into the bus? To this day, it remains an unsolved mystery to me. All I can say, is that when large numbers of people all come together out of nowhere, they often do strange, inexplicable, and sometimes awful things. I learned that a few years back at the '68 Democratic convention in Chicago. There, 1000s of demonstrators got into what can only be described as a city-wide brutal riot with the police.
Well, the Soda Pop Festival did not get as bad as all that, but it got bad. I went to sleep in the rain, and I woke up in the rain. I couldn't even get near the stage, but I could hear Cheech and Chong doing their crazy schtick, trying to bring comic relief to what was turning into an ugly situation. People were milling about looking like a muddy mess after a war. Trash, and fallen tents were everywhere. A truck delivering food got somehow hi-jacked. And a number of vendors' booths had been up-ended and ransacked. Three festival-goers drowned in the river. Just as I was at wit's end, and about to pull my hair out, here comes my friend from Chicago. He was laughing and in great spirits. Turns out he was tripping. Anyway, we finally got out of there. Where the stage used to be was, by then, a huge bonfire behind us. It had been torched. So much for the Peace movement.
At last, I made it back to the castle quite happy to see my friends again. I might add that they were falling all over one another in laughter, as we passed a joint, and I told them of my unheroic, epic misadventure. And laughing at myself was the most fun of all.
Next day I returned to the classroom to address my students. I cleared my throat and spoke sternly. "I hope you will take good notes today, since what I am about to tell you will be on the final exam next week." I then wrote the key words of my lecture on the chalkboard. Birds, French Fries, XY and Z. I expounded on these weighty topics at great length. Finally, I picked up the chalk again, and wrote "Does the road really go on forever?" I didn't answer that question. I left it for them to think about.
As it turned out, it was one of only two questions on the entire test. They were essay questions. I retired from teaching at the end of the semester. It was the end of one thing, and the beginning of everything else. Oh yes, the other question. It was this: "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. But what is the most meaningful way to get from here to there?" My students' essays were quite interesting, and I left teaching with a renewed hope that, just maybe, we will survive these times. And I do emphasize 'maybe'.
You look back on some times and wonder how you lived through them. Cut to Chicago, circa 1970. I'm teaching psychology in a small college. Pretty burned out, to tell you the truth. The whole decade behind me seemed a blur of war, assassinations, student riots, and so on. I was living in an urban commune, or sorts. A large house known as 'the Castle' with a changing number of inhabitants. Two friends, who also lived there, had decided they were going to escape to Guadalajara for awhile. And I thought, if they can do it, why can't I? So, I decided to do that too. This notion of 'why not?' was quite rampant in those days. So, I traded in my VW bus for a motorcycle. It seemed to make sense at the time. Back at the college, I put all my some 120 students on 'independent study', and within 48 hours I was at an all-night diner at 2am having breakfast, and studying the road map. My plan was quite simple. Get out of the city before dawn, and somehow get to Guadalajara. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
The thing is, I didn't really want to take my bike all the way across Mexico. I don't recall how I got this next idea, but it went something like this. I could take the bike from Chicago to Laredo, Texas. Store the bike there, and cross the border on foot into Neuvo Laredo, Mexico. I had learned somehow of a train that went from Laredo all the way to Guadalajara. It was known as 'the chicken train', because mostly it was hauling cages upon cages of chickens. So, really, all I had to do was somehow get on that train. It would be a piece of cake after that. Like I say, it wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
So now we cut back to me on my lunatic motorcycle. I was in Indiana by 4 am, and I wound up having a late lunch with my mom and my sister in Nashville, Tennessee, and listening to caring admonitions such as "Are you kidding me?!", and "You have really lost it this time!". By late afternoon, I was somewhere outside of Nashville headed toward Memphis and pulled off for a cup of coffee. That's where I ran into Homer. Back then, hippies knew one another in a glance. So, he tells me he is living in a tree house in a hollow nearby. To make a long story short, I took a detour back into the woods, and spent the next two days eating magic mushrooms. This is just an aside, but I throw it in, since Homer shows up later in the story.
So, anyway, back to my plan. I headed on out to Memphis on a blistering hot day, and about 50 miles shy of getting there, I blew the motor on my bike. Mind you, this is before cell phones. Somehow, I got Suzuki in Memphis to come and get me and the bike, and spent two more days in Memphis waiting for them to re-build my burnt-out motor. Nothing much eventful took place during this time. I mostly laid around in a motel room watching tv. I was eager to get back to my 'plan'.
On the road again. The next phase of this ridiculous trek got really rough. For awhile, I was thinking I was going to have to return to reality. The first 100 miles I had to keep it under 50 mph, to let the new motor get broken in. I think I took about a four hour nap around Little Rock, Arkansas. I never got off the bike. I just leaned back on my backpack and conked out. Then, on the road again. My next goal was to make it to Amarillo, Texas. I had friends there, and could get a shower, some food, and a good night's sleep. Let me just say, it was a helluva ride. About 70 miles out, my whole body was aching. And then came this plague of dragon flies out of nowhere. These creatures hurt when they hit you at 70 mph. And when they hit my helmet or visor, it was like gunshots going off. I made it to the outskirts of Amarillo. Called my friends to come and get me. They were very nurturing, and I spent two days there. Since one of my friends was a dentist, part of my recuperation involved nitrous oxide in a dental chair, and really lovely music. And now, I am onto Plan B.
Part Two
Well, Plan B wasn't much more thought out than Plan A. But, I had to reckon with some issues there in Amarillo. I had just spent a whole lot of dough in Memphis getting my bike back, not to mention the motel bill. I reluctantly abandoned my initial plan of getting to Guadalajara. As though I wasn't low on money already, I had found a deal on two carpets from Caucasus, I couldn't resist. So I bought them, and rolled them as tight as I could and strapped them onto the back of my bike, behind the backpack, and decided to head home. By now, I was expected back in the classroom in four days. The dean was already irritated with me, having sent me a memo before I left saying "You need to be more business-like with your students." So, I was determined to get back to Chicago. Like I say, it wasn't much of a plan, but it was a plan.
Somewhere approaching Arkansas, I realized my bike was getting hot again. So, I pulled off the interstate to take the remaining miles to Little Rock under better conditions. Shady winding country roads through the Ozarks. This worked fine for awhile. Quite beautiful. Then I hit the fork in the road. And I remember thinking, "Let's see, Highway 9?....Or Highway 10?" It came up faster than I had imagined. I realized, too late, I should take the left fork. Highway 9. Let's make this long story a bit shorter. I took the curve anyway, throttled down too late, had to lean the bike down quite a bit, perchance to make it. But, didn't. The bike hit the gravel shoulder, and everything is a blur after that. I awoke with a broken arm and the sound of my bike still running, but nowhere to be seen. It turns out, the bike went on without me, down a ravine. The good news was that a guy in a pick-up truck stopped and took me to a rural clinic to get patched up. The bad news was that I was a long ways from home. After getting cleaned up and getting my arm braced in a sling, I was released. The sheriff's deputy helped me re-claim my backpack and the carpets, and I called the Suzuki dealer in Little Rock. "Could you please send someone to pick up my bike. It is on Highwy 9, just past the fork. It is down in a ravine in a blackberry thicket. Thanks a lot." After that, the deputy dropped me off on the interstate towards Nashville, and wished me well. I don't think he was being sincere, however. It was time now for Plan C : Get my ass back home.
I walked up an exit ramp to some fast food joint to get something to eat. As I sat there eating my burger, I was looking out the window at the parking lot. There must have been two dozen small birds hopping about, excitedly picking up french fries someone had thrown away. Suddenly some big birds made the scene, sending the little birds flying. The big birds promptly devoured all the remaining french fries, and left. The little birds came rushing back. But they seemed really confused as they hopped about. Like "What the hell happened to all those fries?" I determined then and there, that when I was done eating, I would give these poor birds my remaining fries. I also made a quick note of this great philosophical moment of existential clarity on a napkin. This is what you call 'thinking ahead'. I knew I was going to be really tired whenever I made it back to the classroom. So, when the kids ask, "How was your vacation?", I can deliver this weighty treatise about birds and french fries. I also noted that between Plan A and Plan B, you might just bump into X, Y, and Z. So, be prepared. Another important lesson I can teach my students, who like me, don't have a clue what is going on these days. Or, what's coming next. Now, back to the highway, and my evolving plan.
I must have stood there on the side of the interstate for an hour or more. Everybody was whizzing by like maniacs racing toward a cliff. I was getting discouraged. There I was, with the sun going down. I was earnestly holding my thumb out with my remaining good arm. Can't they see that I, with my other arm in a sling, my bashed-in motorcycle helmet on the asphalt next to my backpack and two oriental carpets, seriously need a ride? Don't they have any empathy? Do they not understand that I am a maniac too? Realizing I had just come across yet another moment of existential clarity, I determined to make a note of this right underneath the one about the birds, the fries, and XYZ. But, lo and behold, suddenly a big rig came to a squealing halt on the shoulder. A big rig, as you may know, has 18 wheels. I was saved. I had left home on two wheels, and now was headed back on 18!! Oh, praise the Lord!
Well, it turns out the trucker had left Ohio some 3 days earlier, dropped a load in California, and was on his way home too. He hadn't slept the entire time, thanks to the modern pharmaceutical miracle known as "Black Beauties", or as he called them, "West Coast Turn Arounds." And that was news to me since I thought they were called 'White Crosses'. Make another note about how it is an ever changing world. On the radio came a song about how the road goes on forever and it never really ends. I was going to make a note of that too, but then a truck driving song came on. It was about some trucker who had died, but his ghost was still driving around. He rescued people in trouble. I glanced over at the guy behind the wheel. He was rambling on about how he planned to retire and become a hippie too. He started asking me questions about 'free love'. I tried to tell him that its not all its cracked up to be, but he seemed oblivious and lost in his dream. Funny, the crazy romantic ideas people have sometimes.
I suppose I should move on now, to how I wound up at a huge outdoor rock festival in Indiana the next day. But let me take a break and fix a cup of coffee.
Part Three
The trucker let me out a few miles from Nashville, at a truck stop. So, I called my sister from a pay phone and asked if she could come pick me up. "Where's your motorcycle?" she asked. I told her I would tell her later. In the car, and driving to our mother's house, I told her of my ridiculous adventure. She agreed that we should not give mom all these details, since, you know how moms are. But of course, when my mom saw my arm in a sling, she said, "What the hell did you do to yourself?" I tried to downplay it by quoting a line from a Bob Dylan song. I said, "Its all right ma, I'm only bleeding." After a great home-cooked dinner, I fell asleep promptly.
In talking to a friend from Chicago on the phone next morning, I learned that a huge outdoor rock concert was happening on the coming weekend. It turned out to be the infamous Bull Island Soda Pop Festival on the Wabash River in Indiana. So my friend agreed to drive down to it and pick me up, if I could get that far. I love it when, just as you are about out of plans, another one emerges. So, I promptly hopped a bus at the Greyhound station and headed for the festival.
Well, as it turns out a whole lot of people were headed to this festival. I had to walk about 7 miles to get to the venue since traffic was hopelessly jammed up along the highway. The estimated audience of about 50, 000 had turned into an estimated 200, 000. The whole thing turned into the classic mud-fest as I arrived at last in a drenching rain. I dragged my gear through the mud and through the crazy throngs of people. I was looking for a place to set up camp, so to speak. My camping equipment consisted of two oriental carpets that were getting heavier, the wetter they got. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Homer. I found him relaxing on a hammock strung between a tree, and his converted school bus. The classic hippie mode of transportation. Especially after you've already blown out your VW bus hauling too many people, to too many concerts, one time too many. He was soaking wet, but didn't seem to care. I was beginning to feel the same way. After awhile though, I crawled under his bus where it was nice and dry, and fell asleep listening to the distant sound of thunder, and Canned Heat on stage. Why did I crawl under the bus, when I could have crawled into the bus? To this day, it remains an unsolved mystery to me. All I can say, is that when large numbers of people all come together out of nowhere, they often do strange, inexplicable, and sometimes awful things. I learned that a few years back at the '68 Democratic convention in Chicago. There, 1000s of demonstrators got into what can only be described as a city-wide brutal riot with the police.
Well, the Soda Pop Festival did not get as bad as all that, but it got bad. I went to sleep in the rain, and I woke up in the rain. I couldn't even get near the stage, but I could hear Cheech and Chong doing their crazy schtick, trying to bring comic relief to what was turning into an ugly situation. People were milling about looking like a muddy mess after a war. Trash, and fallen tents were everywhere. A truck delivering food got somehow hi-jacked. And a number of vendors' booths had been up-ended and ransacked. Three festival-goers drowned in the river. Just as I was at wit's end, and about to pull my hair out, here comes my friend from Chicago. He was laughing and in great spirits. Turns out he was tripping. Anyway, we finally got out of there. Where the stage used to be was, by then, a huge bonfire behind us. It had been torched. So much for the Peace movement.
At last, I made it back to the castle quite happy to see my friends again. I might add that they were falling all over one another in laughter, as we passed a joint, and I told them of my unheroic, epic misadventure. And laughing at myself was the most fun of all.
Next day I returned to the classroom to address my students. I cleared my throat and spoke sternly. "I hope you will take good notes today, since what I am about to tell you will be on the final exam next week." I then wrote the key words of my lecture on the chalkboard. Birds, French Fries, XY and Z. I expounded on these weighty topics at great length. Finally, I picked up the chalk again, and wrote "Does the road really go on forever?" I didn't answer that question. I left it for them to think about.
As it turned out, it was one of only two questions on the entire test. They were essay questions. I retired from teaching at the end of the semester. It was the end of one thing, and the beginning of everything else. Oh yes, the other question. It was this: "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. But what is the most meaningful way to get from here to there?" My students' essays were quite interesting, and I left teaching with a renewed hope that, just maybe, we will survive these times. And I do emphasize 'maybe'.
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