COLD AND TIRED
"i like the wonderful, wonderful woes that can be heard from the dates that figs like to sit with and have to listen to day after holy god awful day. I wanted to be an underwater sea aquarium zoologist without making myself go to zoology school in New Hampshire of all places. It can be dangerous in such a healthy metropolis like that. As far as eastern cities go Vermont seems to scream out that it wants merely to become a city. Statehood doesn't sound so good anymore." - the wonderful sounds of bluegrass vol. one, track two.
I ran into a couple of tramps, hobos, drifters or what they themselves liked to be called: Trunkers. They didn't appear to have any actual trunks with them, nor did they exhibit any of the defining characteristics of elephant ancestry, but they sure were nice. They had a tee-pee and it's poles set into the ground and were making a fire inside. I was a little frightened and suggested my candles instead. They obliged and lit the lights for us to see. Those little things lit the place like nobodys business. Mood lighting it could be called. We drank wine and sang theme songs from old cartoons and new cartoons. Scooby Doo was the trickiest. The three of us couldn't remember all the words and we kept repeating the chorus, the "Where are you? Scooby Dooby doo, where are you?...Da da da Da da, where are you?" It was great fun.
I wrote home and told my Grandad about my travels and he sent me a care package a week later via general delivery which was a hoot in itself. I told him the town I planned to be in and it was where I planned to be in a week or so but things changed as they happen to do. So, all in all, I ended up hitching in an all together different direction. The freakiest part about it was that when I got to the town, the wrong town, I add, I was accosted by a pair of uniformed mail men in, oddly enough, circa-1970 navy blue mail-men jumpers and hats with pointy points on them. I was quite terrified to tell you the truth. They plopped me into the back of one of their jeeps; there were two of them you see. I went with the stalky angry one with pink eyes. He would yell back in my direction about the weather and the road conditions. I just sat there. Still and frog eyed.
I started to rifle through the letter baskets he had there in the back with me. I found packages from New Zealand and New Foundland and Newark. I saw names like Wasenberg, Goldquist, Marchenstien, Quenise, and Contena. There were brown boxes with stickers on them that said the stuff inside was dangerous or fragile and glassy. I took my fist to one of them just to make sure. It crinkled and made broken glass noises so I left that one alone.
A letter I opened was from a small girl, or so I deduced from the penmanship, that had just seen a dog from down the street from her house, they lived in Jersey see? And what she saw was this dog, a mean dog, she explained. It growled at her and her sister whenever they walked by it and the boy who lived there would run over and unhook the dog from it's pole in the yard and this one dog, see? he would make a run for the girls. The little girl told this to her baba Francine in Seama. Someplace in New Mexico. I didn't know there was a NEW Mexico. Well I was young. I had a NAFTA grant, who you gonna blame?
It was sure getting hot there in the back of the mail jeep. I asked the pink-eyed driver where in fact he and his co-mailworker, who I could see behind us the entire way coincidentally, were planning to take me. He laughed and swung a bag over his thick mail man shoulder at me and my frightened persona in the back of his mail jeep. I ripped into the paper bag in hopes of finding clues, ransom notes I would have to sign or something along the lines in which a kidnapping by a mail jeep would warrant. I saw the box my grandad sent me sitting in there. Sad and crumpled. I opened it and read his letter, dated three weeks and a half earlier and post dated no less than a week prior to my receiving it in the subsequently highly unfamiliar fashion. He said he was dying of breast cancer and that I should return home or God should strike me dead or my NAFTA grant dry up and hobble my venturing or any cross-pollination of the pair. I asked the sullen driver the location of the nearest bus depot and all he could tell me off hand was the zip code.
I thanked the man and his determined fellow mail compatriot and made my way west. Far west. By way of car and train and sleeper cabin, I walked the last two hundred and twenty two miles to Alamogordo before falling face forward into dusty ant built mounds from which all life comes. I made my way from Santa Fe to the smaller and lesser known villa of Albuquerque, by way of Algodones. I stopped to see Trish and Polly at the advocate when it was in it's seedling phase, then kept going. On and on. Walking and thumbing my way under thunder coulds that make your heart stop with anticipation and dread.
I thought back to the other letter I read in the back of that mail carriers buggy. An official envelope from the higher-ups in Washington to some nobody in rural Em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye or some other dead state town without running water. It was a draft card. A draft agent from DC was calling out some kid, some kid my age or some variation of that difference. The thought scared me for a second, standing there in the valley just outside the lesser known yet slightly larger villa of Albuquerque. Rio Puerco was the gas station disguised as a town's name. I remember it clearly now, Rio Puerco. NOT Puerto Rico as had first crossed my mind and I'm sure many, many other's minds when first trying to reconcile the name. The phone booth I stood inside was muddied and smelled of heated beer.
The storm clouds above only intensified the paranoia that I had adopted while riding with a slender spanish speaking Bellagana from Louisiana. She had the breath of heated beer too now that I remember everything of that day clearer. She was the one who made me think about that letter and that draft notice and the war. The War, I thought. Not me. I have to get home. I have to save my Grandpa Javier of the Windmills. She told of her adventures when all I could do was grit my teeth and quietly wipe tears from my red cheeks, because she had the air on you see. She said that her youngest son was being investigated by the CIA or the DIA or the Secret Service or some underground militant branch of the government that investigates deviant foot apparel merchants from the deep south, "cuz they think we're trash ya know?". She spoke with such dread about what she knew they were doing with her Billy, then she'd say it all in Spanish just in case I understood her better that way.
I nodded and shook my head in succession and began to think that the DIA or militants of the same type could very well be tracking me too. How did the mailmen find me? Did they attach some sort of beeping tracer light to my orange sweater? The one I adore and wear nine times more than any sweater I own? Could they be listening to her saying all this about them and then implicate me in her son's dealings with the mexican shoe buffer dealers just outside of Tucson? Would they jail me before I could get to my Grandpa Javier of the Windmills? I didn't know anybody from Tucson! I didn't even like buying shoes! I had enough. I clutched her kneecap and squeezed. "THEY CAN HEAR US!" I screamed. I asked her to drop me off as soon as she got the chance. She did, after refueling and reluctantly waving me a safe trip. I was after all so close to home, I could walk.
I walked upstate once. This was way back, seventy two maybe, I was young. I had a NAFTA grant under my belt and I was free and clear of the green card scandal that preceeded the award. I had nothing but a bag of belongings that amounted to socks and tea lights from IKEA in a pouch of one hundred, though by then all I had were ninety six or so on account of the pit stop I made at the Westdale camping ground located in the farthest eastern quarter of the state.
I ran into a couple of tramps, hobos, drifters or what they themselves liked to be called: Trunkers. They didn't appear to have any actual trunks with them, nor did they exhibit any of the defining characteristics of elephant ancestry, but they sure were nice. They had a tee-pee and it's poles set into the ground and were making a fire inside. I was a little frightened and suggested my candles instead. They obliged and lit the lights for us to see. Those little things lit the place like nobodys business. Mood lighting it could be called. We drank wine and sang theme songs from old cartoons and new cartoons. Scooby Doo was the trickiest. The three of us couldn't remember all the words and we kept repeating the chorus, the "Where are you? Scooby Dooby doo, where are you?...Da da da Da da, where are you?" It was great fun.
I wrote home and told my Grandad about my travels and he sent me a care package a week later via general delivery which was a hoot in itself. I told him the town I planned to be in and it was where I planned to be in a week or so but things changed as they happen to do. So, all in all, I ended up hitching in an all together different direction. The freakiest part about it was that when I got to the town, the wrong town, I add, I was accosted by a pair of uniformed mail men in, oddly enough, circa-1970 navy blue mail-men jumpers and hats with pointy points on them. I was quite terrified to tell you the truth. They plopped me into the back of one of their jeeps; there were two of them you see. I went with the stalky angry one with pink eyes. He would yell back in my direction about the weather and the road conditions. I just sat there. Still and frog eyed.
I started to rifle through the letter baskets he had there in the back with me. I found packages from New Zealand and New Foundland and Newark. I saw names like Wasenberg, Goldquist, Marchenstien, Quenise, and Contena. There were brown boxes with stickers on them that said the stuff inside was dangerous or fragile and glassy. I took my fist to one of them just to make sure. It crinkled and made broken glass noises so I left that one alone.
A letter I opened was from a small girl, or so I deduced from the penmanship, that had just seen a dog from down the street from her house, they lived in Jersey see? And what she saw was this dog, a mean dog, she explained. It growled at her and her sister whenever they walked by it and the boy who lived there would run over and unhook the dog from it's pole in the yard and this one dog, see? he would make a run for the girls. The little girl told this to her baba Francine in Seama. Someplace in New Mexico. I didn't know there was a NEW Mexico. Well I was young. I had a NAFTA grant, who you gonna blame?
It was sure getting hot there in the back of the mail jeep. I asked the pink-eyed driver where in fact he and his co-mailworker, who I could see behind us the entire way coincidentally, were planning to take me. He laughed and swung a bag over his thick mail man shoulder at me and my frightened persona in the back of his mail jeep. I ripped into the paper bag in hopes of finding clues, ransom notes I would have to sign or something along the lines in which a kidnapping by a mail jeep would warrant. I saw the box my grandad sent me sitting in there. Sad and crumpled. I opened it and read his letter, dated three weeks and a half earlier and post dated no less than a week prior to my receiving it in the subsequently highly unfamiliar fashion. He said he was dying of breast cancer and that I should return home or God should strike me dead or my NAFTA grant dry up and hobble my venturing or any cross-pollination of the pair. I asked the sullen driver the location of the nearest bus depot and all he could tell me off hand was the zip code.
I thanked the man and his determined fellow mail compatriot and made my way west. Far west. By way of car and train and sleeper cabin, I walked the last two hundred and twenty two miles to Alamogordo before falling face forward into dusty ant built mounds from which all life comes. I made my way from Santa Fe to the smaller and lesser known villa of Albuquerque, by way of Algodones. I stopped to see Trish and Polly at the advocate when it was in it's seedling phase, then kept going. On and on. Walking and thumbing my way under thunder coulds that make your heart stop with anticipation and dread.
I thought back to the other letter I read in the back of that mail carriers buggy. An official envelope from the higher-ups in Washington to some nobody in rural Em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye or some other dead state town without running water. It was a draft card. A draft agent from DC was calling out some kid, some kid my age or some variation of that difference. The thought scared me for a second, standing there in the valley just outside the lesser known yet slightly larger villa of Albuquerque. Rio Puerco was the gas station disguised as a town's name. I remember it clearly now, Rio Puerco. NOT Puerto Rico as had first crossed my mind and I'm sure many, many other's minds when first trying to reconcile the name. The phone booth I stood inside was muddied and smelled of heated beer.
The storm clouds above only intensified the paranoia that I had adopted while riding with a slender spanish speaking Bellagana from Louisiana. She had the breath of heated beer too now that I remember everything of that day clearer. She was the one who made me think about that letter and that draft notice and the war. The War, I thought. Not me. I have to get home. I have to save my Grandpa Javier of the Windmills. She told of her adventures when all I could do was grit my teeth and quietly wipe tears from my red cheeks, because she had the air on you see. She said that her youngest son was being investigated by the CIA or the DIA or the Secret Service or some underground militant branch of the government that investigates deviant foot apparel merchants from the deep south, "cuz they think we're trash ya know?". She spoke with such dread about what she knew they were doing with her Billy, then she'd say it all in Spanish just in case I understood her better that way.
I nodded and shook my head in succession and began to think that the DIA or militants of the same type could very well be tracking me too. How did the mailmen find me? Did they attach some sort of beeping tracer light to my orange sweater? The one I adore and wear nine times more than any sweater I own? Could they be listening to her saying all this about them and then implicate me in her son's dealings with the mexican shoe buffer dealers just outside of Tucson? Would they jail me before I could get to my Grandpa Javier of the Windmills? I didn't know anybody from Tucson! I didn't even like buying shoes! I had enough. I clutched her kneecap and squeezed. "THEY CAN HEAR US!" I screamed. I asked her to drop me off as soon as she got the chance. She did, after refueling and reluctantly waving me a safe trip. I was after all so close to home, I could walk.