Back To Birmingham
The child running up to me with her complaint that she was afraid was in truth mostly a distraction to my intended purpose. Which was to take in as much information on a subject as possible within a limited period of time. That photographs of men hanging dead from trees with ropes around their necks while in the background played the haunting overlapping recorded voices of men and women espousing their ignorance and hatred frightened her was not so much a concern to me, rather an ok that's good, check, she's fine, normal in a good way, now run along and let me finish this ride.
We just came back, Bernadette and I, from Birmingham, Alabama, where we enjoyed a most outstanding version of Southern hospitality, with drinks on the lawn flowing freely (the first spying of Johnnie Walker black at an open bar is to me like being accosted on the street by a supermodel, kissed and hugged and fussed over and then slipped a couple of C-notes before a lucky delivery back into the loving arms of Bernadette), and hors d'oeuvres followed by shrimp and oysters on the balcony followed inside by tables and tables of...I can only remember the bloody red meat and biscuits and cakes and cookies but I'm told there was other food as well. Could I have another Johnnie Walker? was never met with resistance, I do remember that.
It was hard not to see and think about the stereotype of exclusively black service staffs attending to the needs of all us white people but no one I talked to about it could come up with any necessary reason a black person should not serve a white person, as long as they were fairly compensated. And as the work environment seemed like one to be envied, those of us with memories fueled by sixties era news footage and our Gone with the Wind criticisms were left, while stuffing our faces with snacks from passing trays and southern influenced cuisine spread across many tables to...well...shut up, and have another miniature crab cake or, hopefully without too much attitude suggest, perhaps a little less ice in my Johnnie Walker this time.
But to the reasoning of or the seed behind the juxtaposing of men hanging and people celebrating, it was the commenting of our hosts who on two succeeding nights, while accepting our thanks and sending us off into the night, inspired me to present this as a good Birmingham, bad Birmingham story. The man, the father of the bride, on the first night said, well I hope we have given you a better impression of Birmingham than you came with. Perhaps it was me standing next to a native New Yorker (a northern agitator?) or that we had flown to this wedding from NY that inspired his comment but in any case, it strikes me as remarkable that the man, and so I think by extension, much of the city's inhabitants, are suffering still from scars almost 50 years old. I suppose though it is these apparent scars that give hope to humanity.
It is hard to ignore that the part of Birmingham that wasn't recreated as suburbs through white flight in the sixties, that old part of downtown, and the area and neighborhoods within proximity to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, is still in need of lots of help. While the area is clean and shows evidence of some renovation it is marked also by a sense of abandonment.
We left the Sunday brunch at the second of two Country Clubs we visited this weekend, after drinking bloody marys and eating bacon and eggs and corn pones on yet another beautiful balcony overlooking a splendid golf course, and drove from the wooded winding hills outside of Birmingham back into the downtown area, past where we had the day of the wedding gone to Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is next to the church where the four teenage girls were killed from the blast of a bomb on September 15th, 1963. The actual neighborhoods surrounding downtown Birmingham have that familiar feel of poverty and the lacking of hope that comes with it.
Inside the institute the pictures, the recreations of diner counters and a bus with a version of Rosa Parks on it and a jail cell and video and audio of humans espousing sincerely that which you wish could not come from a human soul and that small piece of charred stain glass from the church next door, sort of as a punctuation or a kick in the guts or a little piece of rope around your neck or the jaws of German Shepherd on your arm, the blast of a fireman's hose forcing water up your nose to nearly drown you while knocking you senseless, all these things do very effectively what I think they are intending to do—travel you through time and make you feel something that simply reading the facts cannot make you feel.
In the end I do not have anything new to say about any of this important stuff. Subjugation of humans by humans is not nice, that is something I think we, those of us who aren't evil bastards, mostly agree on. However, criticism without construction is meaningless and I do not know how to make people respect each other nor do I know how to fix our broken school systems or bring hope to so many inner cities that once got a lot of attention but now, with day to day problems of equal severity but less eye catching than is created by men in hoods burning crosses or heavily armed black men with berets, go largely forgotten. I do think the citizens of Birmingham should give themselves a break. I have been there several times before this trip and while I am sure that there is lurking somewhere that evil that made the news so compelling for those years in the sixties, I am equally certain that you as a city, populated mostly by good people, have paid your dues. Birmingham has I think carried the weight of racial wrongness disproportionately to that which exists in the United States and in the world. Undeniable though, you did have some pretty compelling ignorant crackers spewing unapologetically all manner of ridiculous bullshit for a number of years. My point is, less compelling racism is and was existing right alongside yours, all over this great land, but don't get me started on that. Not a moment too soon I will close by saying—ya'll do throw one hell of a party. And for that, Merci beaucoup.
...more recent posts
Rhode Island
Barking Like A Bomb Sniffing Dog
Headed to Harlem but I'm not there yet. Backpacks are subject to random search by the NYC police. Please report suspicious behavior. Am on a Bronx bound D train. I found something in my backpack yesterday that I had forgotten about but I cannot see that it would be of any interest to the authorities. Flying from NO to NY on Sept. 11 and my carry on luggage was searched because I had a small gun in it which showed up on Xray. I had forgotten I put that in there and was happy to let the guy search my bag because I was proud of how nicely I had folded my freshly laundered shirts. When he went right for the compartment where I had my work boots wrapped in plastic I said oh I know what you're looking for now. I had stashed it down in one of the shoes. A Wild West toy bank with a gun on it. You pull back a spring bar along the top of the barrel, then balance a penny in front of it and pull the trigger. You are aiming at the hat of a cowboy behind which is a horizontal slot for the penny. When you knock the cowboy's hat off and thus deposit your penny in the bank his hands go up in that age old gesture of submission. Did that woman just say to her friend we are only as thick as our secrets? Well I made it into Harlem but nice as it was I only stayed long enough to slip inside Morningside Park, which was super nice, and then work my way here to this fenced two acre piece of lush lawn where no organized sports are permitted, just on the other side of the mulching area on the north side of Central Park. I don't want to smother you with observations so I'm only going to offer these three: 1. As I entered the Park I witnessed a woman wearing a bomb laden vest running from, and resisting the constraints of the man who had her under leash. She would stop periodically and put on the ground a small orange cone. 2. I do not know if blondes have more fun but they jog more than any other single hair color. 3. Bicyclers, and the outfits they wear, and their individual methods of peddling, cause me great distraction, which is sort of a confession inside an observation. A woman looking only moderately like Yoko Ono just entered my two acre space. The thai chi behind the tree and her barking is one thing but her lurking nearer and nearer is making me uneasy. I'm going to go ahead and get the hell out of here now.
Headed to Harlem but I'm not there yet. Backpacks are subject to random search by the NYC police. Please report suspicious behavior. Am on a Bronx bound D train. I found something in my backpack yesterday that I had forgotten about but I cannot see that it would be of any interest to the authorities. Flying from NO to NY on Sept. 11 and my carry on luggage was searched because I had a small gun in it which showed up on Xray. I had forgotten I put that in there and was happy to let the guy search my bag because I was proud of how nicely I had folded my freshly laundered shirts. When he went right for the compartment where I had my work boots wrapped in plastic I said oh I know what you're looking for now. I had stashed it down in one of the shoes. A Wild West toy bank with a gun on it. You pull back a spring bar along the top of the barrel, then balance a penny in front of it and pull the trigger. You are aiming at the hat of a cowboy behind which is a horizontal slot for the penny. When you knock the cowboy's hat off and thus deposit your penny in the bank his hands go up in that age old gesture of submission. Did that woman just say to her friend we are only as thick as our secrets? Well I made it into Harlem but nice as it was I only stayed long enough to slip inside Morningside Park, which was super nice, and then work my way here to this fenced two acre piece of lush lawn where no organized sports are permitted, just on the other side of the mulching area on the north side of Central Park. I don't want to smother you with observations so I'm only going to offer these three: 1. As I entered the Park I witnessed a woman wearing a bomb laden vest running from, and resisting the constraints of the man who had her under leash. She would stop periodically and put on the ground a small orange cone. 2. I do not know if blondes have more fun but they jog more than any other single hair color. 3. Bicyclers, and the outfits they wear, and their individual methods of peddling, cause me great distraction, which is sort of a confession inside an observation. A woman looking only moderately like Yoko Ono just entered my two acre space. The thai chi behind the tree and her barking is one thing but her lurking nearer and nearer is making me uneasy. I'm going to go ahead and get the hell out of here now.
Earn Valuable Coupons
Had a couple of tacos across the street. The Spanish talk show on the TV was equaled and then surpassed in it's offensiveness by the two young women who came in shortly after me. They ordered Huevos Rancheros and then the one with her back to me began mimicking in tone the grating quality which was coming from the TV host. Stand clear of the closing doors please. We are picking up speed now. Quickly followed by another stop. I am not listening to where I am, inasmuch as that is possible. I do like to overhear though. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was complaining about overhearing. All I can tell you is that the Spanish speaking host and the English speaking customer seemed upset in concert. If the tickets to this show had not been free I would have asked for a refund. Stand clear of the closing doors please. I got on the first train coming through the Essex street station, going in I'm not sure which direction. Every time we stop there is a lot of chatter about where we are, where we are heading and, if applicable, to which lines you can connect. I probably should get out soon and see what it looks like. The names being announced for many stops now give me absolutely no clue as to where I am but actually I do have a general idea...I was in Queens, Jackson Heights, underneath the elevated track on Roosevelt. I was the only so called Caucasian out there. I saw Indians, Asians, Latinos, a few black people and I'm pretty sure one Eskimo. The air quality was not great. There was a good bit of particulate floating down from the elevated. I stared up at it in wonder before remembering that my eyes are sensitive and prone to collecting and becoming perhaps seriously irritated by heavy particulate. Escaped without injury. I'm not really doing anything too challenging in today's exploration. Am now on an F train (took the M on the way out) and the next stop is the one I started at. I'm going to keep going though and cross the river into Brooklyn, probably get out at Prospect Park for awhile, commune with some of that Nature...yep, that's where I have ended up, in the park, sitting in the dugout of one of the baseball fields, next to a sweaty partially unwrapped piece of Trident chewing gum. Upon entering the park I passed a woman in business attire (except for the brown cotton gloves on her hands), carrying a briefcase, and who to my limited short term observation appeared completely without ironic intent as she gently tip toed down the sidewalk. Today in Prospect Park it is apparently white people day. Bring your baby in a stroller get a free hot dog. First person to complete 5 unnecessary phone calls gets a stuffed alligator. Joggers, cyclists, and Frisbee players receive valuable coupons. First skinny white boy to write and post to his blog from an empty dugout gets a two dollar credit on his MetroCard and I should think, when he gets home, a hot fudge sundae. Hey batter batter, swing.
Had a couple of tacos across the street. The Spanish talk show on the TV was equaled and then surpassed in it's offensiveness by the two young women who came in shortly after me. They ordered Huevos Rancheros and then the one with her back to me began mimicking in tone the grating quality which was coming from the TV host. Stand clear of the closing doors please. We are picking up speed now. Quickly followed by another stop. I am not listening to where I am, inasmuch as that is possible. I do like to overhear though. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was complaining about overhearing. All I can tell you is that the Spanish speaking host and the English speaking customer seemed upset in concert. If the tickets to this show had not been free I would have asked for a refund. Stand clear of the closing doors please. I got on the first train coming through the Essex street station, going in I'm not sure which direction. Every time we stop there is a lot of chatter about where we are, where we are heading and, if applicable, to which lines you can connect. I probably should get out soon and see what it looks like. The names being announced for many stops now give me absolutely no clue as to where I am but actually I do have a general idea...I was in Queens, Jackson Heights, underneath the elevated track on Roosevelt. I was the only so called Caucasian out there. I saw Indians, Asians, Latinos, a few black people and I'm pretty sure one Eskimo. The air quality was not great. There was a good bit of particulate floating down from the elevated. I stared up at it in wonder before remembering that my eyes are sensitive and prone to collecting and becoming perhaps seriously irritated by heavy particulate. Escaped without injury. I'm not really doing anything too challenging in today's exploration. Am now on an F train (took the M on the way out) and the next stop is the one I started at. I'm going to keep going though and cross the river into Brooklyn, probably get out at Prospect Park for awhile, commune with some of that Nature...yep, that's where I have ended up, in the park, sitting in the dugout of one of the baseball fields, next to a sweaty partially unwrapped piece of Trident chewing gum. Upon entering the park I passed a woman in business attire (except for the brown cotton gloves on her hands), carrying a briefcase, and who to my limited short term observation appeared completely without ironic intent as she gently tip toed down the sidewalk. Today in Prospect Park it is apparently white people day. Bring your baby in a stroller get a free hot dog. First person to complete 5 unnecessary phone calls gets a stuffed alligator. Joggers, cyclists, and Frisbee players receive valuable coupons. First skinny white boy to write and post to his blog from an empty dugout gets a two dollar credit on his MetroCard and I should think, when he gets home, a hot fudge sundae. Hey batter batter, swing.
Continued Mobile Testing
I added 15 dollars a month to my 29 dollar a month Sprint cell phone plan so that I can post this drivel from anywhere, and not be dependent on a wifi signal. And unlike the wifi dependent ipod touch from which I posted the recent gripping daily updates from New Orleans (over at email from NOLA), this test is happening on the new second hand Palm Treo, which does at least allow me to go back and edit after posting. The ipod attempted but did not really allow that. I just paused to take an incoming call. Bernadette was, thinking me upstairs, inviting me to lunch, but I told her I was at the East River, not playing with another miniature electronic device but rather running important tests, experimenting, prodding the boundaries of modern communication. We are all one now you modest readership, sitting side by side on this curving wooden bench with its pink beige concrete back, linked by whatever it is I deem appropriate. For example there is a condom wrapper between my feet. It is at least possible that beneath one of your shoes is the wet fulsome content of that wrapper.
I added 15 dollars a month to my 29 dollar a month Sprint cell phone plan so that I can post this drivel from anywhere, and not be dependent on a wifi signal. And unlike the wifi dependent ipod touch from which I posted the recent gripping daily updates from New Orleans (over at email from NOLA), this test is happening on the new second hand Palm Treo, which does at least allow me to go back and edit after posting. The ipod attempted but did not really allow that. I just paused to take an incoming call. Bernadette was, thinking me upstairs, inviting me to lunch, but I told her I was at the East River, not playing with another miniature electronic device but rather running important tests, experimenting, prodding the boundaries of modern communication. We are all one now you modest readership, sitting side by side on this curving wooden bench with its pink beige concrete back, linked by whatever it is I deem appropriate. For example there is a condom wrapper between my feet. It is at least possible that beneath one of your shoes is the wet fulsome content of that wrapper.
Butterfly By The Pool
The Enema Museum
A couple of things ran through my mind on the way to the enema museum. The same things that would run through anyone's mind I guess—one: why is there an enema museum, and two, why was I going out of my way to go to there?
I drove from Mt. Pleasant down to the property in North Carolina to see with my own eyes that which the property manager could not see, or for the measly fee I pay her, did not bother to see, that being the adjustment of my neighbor's border road which previously meandered onto my land but now runs straight and true according to the newly surveyed line. Job well done. Idling down the gravel road waving bye-bye to the toddler on my front porch the heat beating down on my wheeled metal box helped me decide not to drive the four hours back to Virginia during the heat of the day (without AC), but to splurge for a motel. I drove about twenty-five miles and checked into a Danville, VA. Sleep-Inn at three in the afternoon. The room was frigid. I checked the AC unit but inexplicably it was turned all the way off. I got under the covers and signed into the motel's wifi service on my miniature device by touching the glass screen with thumb and forefinger together and then swiping them outward to enlarge the print so I could see a virtual button that said—accept. I sent out a couple of emails and glanced at a news reader long enough to see that celebrities continue to goof up and grab headlines while black goo gushes still from a mile beneath the surface, spreading farther and wider and causing some to speculate in all apparent seriousness that the earth is about to become a fireball and we, all the many billions of us balanced precariously on its surface are surely to perish under a black cloud that blots out the sun.
So that last bit I think effectively answers why the next morning I set my GPS to lead me to the enema museum in Lynchburg, VA. The end will have to come eventually, whether to each of us individually or to all as one I can't see that it makes much difference. Whether it is a result of our hubris and greed and aggressive disregard for the mother planet or just some stray meteor as big as the sun crashing into us will in the end just be a footnote for future civilizations to regard and, probably not learn from. Goodbye Bosch, goodbye Kafka, goodbye Hendrix, I hope someone's got you in their time capsules. But I'm not going down with gloom. No, I have a couple thousand off beat tourist attractions on my GPS that I have yet to see and dammit, if the closest one to my current location is the enema museum then so be it. Lead me oh not completely infallible GPS device. I will follow.
I think the reason Bernadette doesn't love my GPS device is threefold: one it once took us way out of our way to find a Starbucks that apparently did not exist and two I think she resents that I so willingly do whatever the GPS tells me to do while on occasion only begrudgingly do what she tells me to do and three, the third reason is, I don't really know why Bernadette doesn't love my GPS. For my part I think it is a good device and the reason I might prefer it to the interaction of a human co-pilot is because we all make mistakes, GPS, humans too, but when the human tells you to turn left three feet from the intersection and you miss the turn because come on, three feet? That's not enough time to react, I mean it would be if I could hit a 100 mph fastball but I can't so...anyway, it can sometimes get heated, between us humans, whereas if the electronic device messes up I just say, oh that's interesting that I just drove five miles out of my way to an enema museum and end up in warehouse parking lot, across the street from a paint store and a Red Lobster restaurant.
Now the next logical thing that may come to mind, about how men won't ask for directions...I think for many of us every location we are trying to find but can't, is like an enema museum. It's not that we are worried about appearing unmanly for being lost it is just that we are embarrassed to go, say for example into a Red Lobster restaurant and ask, um, excuse me ma'am or sir but this morning without any sort of coercion whatsoever I decided to go out of my way to see the local enema museum and my GPS led me to that parking lot over there and as you may be aware, there is no enema museum over there. Did they move it? Or, are you aware at all of any kind of museum within a block of here because maybe the enema part is a misprint?
Just for a second while we're on the subject of navigation devices, or hell, devices of any kind, I would I think be remiss not to bring up one of the greatest device lovers I know, Mr. BC. Does he have an iPad? Sheeeit, he's got three of them. Hell, he uses one of 'em and a 10 dollar app to navigate narrow channels in his boat. He's a geek BC is. I mean that in the modern (almost) laudatory sense of the word, as in a lover of all things technological or gadget-like. Pretty much all men are geeks in some way, and women too, they can obviously be geeks, I just hope we can be clear that I'm not talking about people who bite the heads off chickens. None of the people I know, nor I, have ever bitten the head off a chicken. I saw a guy in NY, back in the very early eighties, bite heads off little white mice, but that was performance art (which may or may not be in someone's time capsule, because remember, we're all going to die soon, the apocalypse is now, and what do future life forms—let's just hope white mice don't take over the planet—need to know about us?), of course I guess all chicken decapitators are performance artists of one kind or another. I want to move on here, because I feel like I'm belaboring a non point, but please let's be clear, for the record, that, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. BC has never bitten the head off a chicken.
What do you do when you fail? Do you shake your head, bemoan your bad luck and set sail for home waters, tell the Queen, sorry, I couldn't find any gold or other good stuff. No man. You move down the list of off beat tourist attractions and keep moving. You move way off your northern course and head west (which, in general, in Virginia, if you are east of the mountain range, is a good way to see pretty country). You head for Glasgow, the Town that Time Forgot. Plus, as an offbeat tourist attraction, it would be nearly impossible for an entire town not to exist in some fashion. There is no way I could miss it.
Jumping ahead, yeah Glasgow exists, and yeah, it kind of small and old and forgotten looking (there is a Moose Lodge) but I'm sorry, I had to keep on driving because growing up in Texas and having driven over a fair amount of it, well towns like Glasgow would take up your whole device hard drive if you listed every one. It is however near that other nice attraction, which I have once been too, and honestly cannot right now think of its name (I am distracted because my cat is unfairly attacking my left arm), but it is a nice piece of natural beauty and for some reason I was thinking would be a good place to be when the world exploded. I mean I remember thinking that in the past, before I knew the world was about to explode any second now. I could head there right after I hit another nearby attraction—King Kong Crushing Airplane.
Now this was fun because the GPS was taking me down these tiny roads to finally hook up to what is a two lane highway running, not really contiguously, all through Virginia, Lee Highway. I took the right and was about to continue on six miles to see Kong when I saw up ahead an elephant standing on its hind feet. The elephant was artificial. An advertisement for the small zoo, which I'm not kidding, had a sign out front that said—Have your Picture taken with Baby Tiger. I cannot adequately describe how much I wanted to have my picture taken with a baby tiger but whereas going off half cocked to an enema museum is the kind of thing a man can do alone, going into a roadside zoo to have your picture taken with a baby tiger, isn't. As consolation I took a picture of the elephant and kept on moving.
About a mile up the road I saw this decrepit looking junk yard behind a high wall with a gated entrance, only the junk was not cars or household scrap but artificial animals, not unlike the elephant I had seen by the zoo. I pulled into the gates and parked on the grass next to a giraffe with it's head lying separately next it, and a very realistic looking alligator, and between the two a dinosaur lying on its back. Tall grass was growing up around all of it. I asked a Mexican man who appeared to be working around the yard if I could snap some pictures and he nodded. And would you lookey there. It was King Kong, faded, in need of some fresh paint at least, and he was crushing (well, not really crushing) an airplane. Oh sure, after I left I kept going the several miles just to verify that there would not be a King Kong Crushing Airplane at the GPS coordinate and of course, there wasn't.
To verify the Kongless coordinate I had passed the Interstate and just like that all magical sensation had evaporated. The trip was over but I was still a hundred miles from home. I zoomed down the Interstate remembering the recent past with fondness. I could go back I guess, with Bernadette who is due for a visit, maybe they would even let us pet the baby tiger and we could go to the other place, where I've imagined for many years now as one of the places to spend an apocalypse. No, now I remember, it wasn't a place to go during the apocalypse, it was a place where I felt certain there existed an actual vortex to another world, that was it. So, maybe we could do that next week. I was checking my email a minute ago and in the process saw a headline that said the subsurface methane bubble world explosion theory that suggested we were all within minutes of foreseeable extinction has been debunked. I hope that doesn't lessen the urgency I was feeling to see all the rest of my GPS's offbeat tourist attractions.
A couple of things ran through my mind on the way to the enema museum. The same things that would run through anyone's mind I guess—one: why is there an enema museum, and two, why was I going out of my way to go to there?
I drove from Mt. Pleasant down to the property in North Carolina to see with my own eyes that which the property manager could not see, or for the measly fee I pay her, did not bother to see, that being the adjustment of my neighbor's border road which previously meandered onto my land but now runs straight and true according to the newly surveyed line. Job well done. Idling down the gravel road waving bye-bye to the toddler on my front porch the heat beating down on my wheeled metal box helped me decide not to drive the four hours back to Virginia during the heat of the day (without AC), but to splurge for a motel. I drove about twenty-five miles and checked into a Danville, VA. Sleep-Inn at three in the afternoon. The room was frigid. I checked the AC unit but inexplicably it was turned all the way off. I got under the covers and signed into the motel's wifi service on my miniature device by touching the glass screen with thumb and forefinger together and then swiping them outward to enlarge the print so I could see a virtual button that said—accept. I sent out a couple of emails and glanced at a news reader long enough to see that celebrities continue to goof up and grab headlines while black goo gushes still from a mile beneath the surface, spreading farther and wider and causing some to speculate in all apparent seriousness that the earth is about to become a fireball and we, all the many billions of us balanced precariously on its surface are surely to perish under a black cloud that blots out the sun.
So that last bit I think effectively answers why the next morning I set my GPS to lead me to the enema museum in Lynchburg, VA. The end will have to come eventually, whether to each of us individually or to all as one I can't see that it makes much difference. Whether it is a result of our hubris and greed and aggressive disregard for the mother planet or just some stray meteor as big as the sun crashing into us will in the end just be a footnote for future civilizations to regard and, probably not learn from. Goodbye Bosch, goodbye Kafka, goodbye Hendrix, I hope someone's got you in their time capsules. But I'm not going down with gloom. No, I have a couple thousand off beat tourist attractions on my GPS that I have yet to see and dammit, if the closest one to my current location is the enema museum then so be it. Lead me oh not completely infallible GPS device. I will follow.
I think the reason Bernadette doesn't love my GPS device is threefold: one it once took us way out of our way to find a Starbucks that apparently did not exist and two I think she resents that I so willingly do whatever the GPS tells me to do while on occasion only begrudgingly do what she tells me to do and three, the third reason is, I don't really know why Bernadette doesn't love my GPS. For my part I think it is a good device and the reason I might prefer it to the interaction of a human co-pilot is because we all make mistakes, GPS, humans too, but when the human tells you to turn left three feet from the intersection and you miss the turn because come on, three feet? That's not enough time to react, I mean it would be if I could hit a 100 mph fastball but I can't so...anyway, it can sometimes get heated, between us humans, whereas if the electronic device messes up I just say, oh that's interesting that I just drove five miles out of my way to an enema museum and end up in warehouse parking lot, across the street from a paint store and a Red Lobster restaurant.
Now the next logical thing that may come to mind, about how men won't ask for directions...I think for many of us every location we are trying to find but can't, is like an enema museum. It's not that we are worried about appearing unmanly for being lost it is just that we are embarrassed to go, say for example into a Red Lobster restaurant and ask, um, excuse me ma'am or sir but this morning without any sort of coercion whatsoever I decided to go out of my way to see the local enema museum and my GPS led me to that parking lot over there and as you may be aware, there is no enema museum over there. Did they move it? Or, are you aware at all of any kind of museum within a block of here because maybe the enema part is a misprint?
Just for a second while we're on the subject of navigation devices, or hell, devices of any kind, I would I think be remiss not to bring up one of the greatest device lovers I know, Mr. BC. Does he have an iPad? Sheeeit, he's got three of them. Hell, he uses one of 'em and a 10 dollar app to navigate narrow channels in his boat. He's a geek BC is. I mean that in the modern (almost) laudatory sense of the word, as in a lover of all things technological or gadget-like. Pretty much all men are geeks in some way, and women too, they can obviously be geeks, I just hope we can be clear that I'm not talking about people who bite the heads off chickens. None of the people I know, nor I, have ever bitten the head off a chicken. I saw a guy in NY, back in the very early eighties, bite heads off little white mice, but that was performance art (which may or may not be in someone's time capsule, because remember, we're all going to die soon, the apocalypse is now, and what do future life forms—let's just hope white mice don't take over the planet—need to know about us?), of course I guess all chicken decapitators are performance artists of one kind or another. I want to move on here, because I feel like I'm belaboring a non point, but please let's be clear, for the record, that, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. BC has never bitten the head off a chicken.
What do you do when you fail? Do you shake your head, bemoan your bad luck and set sail for home waters, tell the Queen, sorry, I couldn't find any gold or other good stuff. No man. You move down the list of off beat tourist attractions and keep moving. You move way off your northern course and head west (which, in general, in Virginia, if you are east of the mountain range, is a good way to see pretty country). You head for Glasgow, the Town that Time Forgot. Plus, as an offbeat tourist attraction, it would be nearly impossible for an entire town not to exist in some fashion. There is no way I could miss it.
Jumping ahead, yeah Glasgow exists, and yeah, it kind of small and old and forgotten looking (there is a Moose Lodge) but I'm sorry, I had to keep on driving because growing up in Texas and having driven over a fair amount of it, well towns like Glasgow would take up your whole device hard drive if you listed every one. It is however near that other nice attraction, which I have once been too, and honestly cannot right now think of its name (I am distracted because my cat is unfairly attacking my left arm), but it is a nice piece of natural beauty and for some reason I was thinking would be a good place to be when the world exploded. I mean I remember thinking that in the past, before I knew the world was about to explode any second now. I could head there right after I hit another nearby attraction—King Kong Crushing Airplane.
Now this was fun because the GPS was taking me down these tiny roads to finally hook up to what is a two lane highway running, not really contiguously, all through Virginia, Lee Highway. I took the right and was about to continue on six miles to see Kong when I saw up ahead an elephant standing on its hind feet. The elephant was artificial. An advertisement for the small zoo, which I'm not kidding, had a sign out front that said—Have your Picture taken with Baby Tiger. I cannot adequately describe how much I wanted to have my picture taken with a baby tiger but whereas going off half cocked to an enema museum is the kind of thing a man can do alone, going into a roadside zoo to have your picture taken with a baby tiger, isn't. As consolation I took a picture of the elephant and kept on moving.
About a mile up the road I saw this decrepit looking junk yard behind a high wall with a gated entrance, only the junk was not cars or household scrap but artificial animals, not unlike the elephant I had seen by the zoo. I pulled into the gates and parked on the grass next to a giraffe with it's head lying separately next it, and a very realistic looking alligator, and between the two a dinosaur lying on its back. Tall grass was growing up around all of it. I asked a Mexican man who appeared to be working around the yard if I could snap some pictures and he nodded. And would you lookey there. It was King Kong, faded, in need of some fresh paint at least, and he was crushing (well, not really crushing) an airplane. Oh sure, after I left I kept going the several miles just to verify that there would not be a King Kong Crushing Airplane at the GPS coordinate and of course, there wasn't.
To verify the Kongless coordinate I had passed the Interstate and just like that all magical sensation had evaporated. The trip was over but I was still a hundred miles from home. I zoomed down the Interstate remembering the recent past with fondness. I could go back I guess, with Bernadette who is due for a visit, maybe they would even let us pet the baby tiger and we could go to the other place, where I've imagined for many years now as one of the places to spend an apocalypse. No, now I remember, it wasn't a place to go during the apocalypse, it was a place where I felt certain there existed an actual vortex to another world, that was it. So, maybe we could do that next week. I was checking my email a minute ago and in the process saw a headline that said the subsurface methane bubble world explosion theory that suggested we were all within minutes of foreseeable extinction has been debunked. I hope that doesn't lessen the urgency I was feeling to see all the rest of my GPS's offbeat tourist attractions.
Dinosaur, Truck, Foamhenge Sign
Fried Chicken For Bossman
Oh it's hot believe it. Hotter than frog gizzards on a George Foreman Grill. Taking a water break boss. Parking vehicle in the shade boss. Checking pool viscosity here soon boss. Hey boss, took those gates down out front this morning. For shit boss, going to the burn pile. A part of history that is history boss. We lookin ahead now, down that road of gateless entries. Nothing between us and mayhem but that rusty-shotgun wielding crusty ole bean pole of a caretaker. Katy bar the door. My name's not Katy.
Yardman was bragging about his fried chicken yesterday and I said prove it, then cut him up a chicken and he did. Wish he would of bragged about potato salad and some big fat home grown tomatoes too. I would salt those tomatoes down like they were slugs suffering inexplicable cruelty and I would eat them and the juice and the seeds and that slimy snot-like septum stuff would be all over my chin and down my neck and on my shirt front. There is nothing precisely so sad as a man dreaming about fat warm salty tomatoes on a hot summer day while he eats unaccompanied cold chicken with extra salt. And the sadness can be unrelenting as he suffers thereafter the smell of vegetable oil such that it seems to clog his nostrils and block out future possibilities of goodness. The man begins to lose all hope for a world not pervaded by the stale smell of vegetable oil. What kind of world will that be. Not a good one he answers.
I did too eat those kid's potato chips yesterday, like I said I would, guiltlessly. Towards the end of their stay, while their father was cooking chicken, and their mother appeared to be suffering heat stroke, I picked up the second half of the bag and said come gather round children, it's Chip Party USA time. And we feasted on the chips leftover from my earlier ravaging of the bag. The children lined up single file, sort of, and when it was their turn dug their little hands into the bag and stuffed their faces, broken potato beige pieces adhering to their brown sweaty cheeks. They say I throw the best chip parties this side of Old Rag.
The youngest is walking now but not talking. The next one up, the one I used to call hard head, has an imaginary friend and a speech impediment, which is a misnomer, speech impediment is because he talks a blue streak, enthusiastically, doesn't seem impeded one bit, and truly the fact that I don't understand much of what he says makes him no less interesting a conversationalist. That he says hey Jim, hey Jim, to get my attention doesn't hurt either. Even now I'm wondering about his imaginary friend Robbie. I wonder what Robbie is doing right now. The birthday boy was sitting next to me, on the wicker couch on the back porch overlooking the pool, and reached over to get his chips whenever my hand was not in the bag. The oldest boy, the Yardman's stepson, son of a local boxer recovering nicely from last year's stabbing, was shy in his asking, could I have some chips? Hell, they were his chips really, but I didn't remind him of that, I just said, chips for everybody, all day long, I throw the best chip parties in the county. I could tell the Yardman's wife was ready to leave and in her perfect world would not be waiting on her husband to finish cooking me, his bossman, fried chicken.
Oh it's hot believe it. Hotter than frog gizzards on a George Foreman Grill. Taking a water break boss. Parking vehicle in the shade boss. Checking pool viscosity here soon boss. Hey boss, took those gates down out front this morning. For shit boss, going to the burn pile. A part of history that is history boss. We lookin ahead now, down that road of gateless entries. Nothing between us and mayhem but that rusty-shotgun wielding crusty ole bean pole of a caretaker. Katy bar the door. My name's not Katy.
Yardman was bragging about his fried chicken yesterday and I said prove it, then cut him up a chicken and he did. Wish he would of bragged about potato salad and some big fat home grown tomatoes too. I would salt those tomatoes down like they were slugs suffering inexplicable cruelty and I would eat them and the juice and the seeds and that slimy snot-like septum stuff would be all over my chin and down my neck and on my shirt front. There is nothing precisely so sad as a man dreaming about fat warm salty tomatoes on a hot summer day while he eats unaccompanied cold chicken with extra salt. And the sadness can be unrelenting as he suffers thereafter the smell of vegetable oil such that it seems to clog his nostrils and block out future possibilities of goodness. The man begins to lose all hope for a world not pervaded by the stale smell of vegetable oil. What kind of world will that be. Not a good one he answers.
I did too eat those kid's potato chips yesterday, like I said I would, guiltlessly. Towards the end of their stay, while their father was cooking chicken, and their mother appeared to be suffering heat stroke, I picked up the second half of the bag and said come gather round children, it's Chip Party USA time. And we feasted on the chips leftover from my earlier ravaging of the bag. The children lined up single file, sort of, and when it was their turn dug their little hands into the bag and stuffed their faces, broken potato beige pieces adhering to their brown sweaty cheeks. They say I throw the best chip parties this side of Old Rag.
The youngest is walking now but not talking. The next one up, the one I used to call hard head, has an imaginary friend and a speech impediment, which is a misnomer, speech impediment is because he talks a blue streak, enthusiastically, doesn't seem impeded one bit, and truly the fact that I don't understand much of what he says makes him no less interesting a conversationalist. That he says hey Jim, hey Jim, to get my attention doesn't hurt either. Even now I'm wondering about his imaginary friend Robbie. I wonder what Robbie is doing right now. The birthday boy was sitting next to me, on the wicker couch on the back porch overlooking the pool, and reached over to get his chips whenever my hand was not in the bag. The oldest boy, the Yardman's stepson, son of a local boxer recovering nicely from last year's stabbing, was shy in his asking, could I have some chips? Hell, they were his chips really, but I didn't remind him of that, I just said, chips for everybody, all day long, I throw the best chip parties in the county. I could tell the Yardman's wife was ready to leave and in her perfect world would not be waiting on her husband to finish cooking me, his bossman, fried chicken.
Small Statue In NY
