Tres Relatitos

A WOMAN IN THE MEN’S ROOM

  It was in The Southland a few years ago. 

  I was driving along on I-81 in Virginia when I needed to visit a tinklelarium…if you don’t know that word it means a bathroom…I needed a bathroom break.

  I pulled into a Stuckey’s.

  You know what a Stuckey’s is…it’s a travel store.  There seems to be fewer and fewer Stuckey’s these days.  They were a big thing back in the day, full of snacks and tchotchkes:  Rubber alligators and spiders, tourist travel mugs, t-shirts, stuff like that.

  Anyway I parked my ride and moseyed inside and headed straight for the bathrooms.

  I had been looking up and down at the stuff on the shelves so I really wasn’t looking up when I opened the door to the men’s room.

  The first thing I saw was a skirt.

  “Whoa!” I thought to myself and immediately backed out.

  I checked to make sure I was in the right place.  Yup, sign said “Men’s Room.”

  What the hell was a woman doing in the men’s room?

  I had half a notion to open the Women’s Room door to see if it was packed with waiting women but I thought better of it.

  What was a woman doing in the Men’s Room?

  I thought I’d make a joke about it when she came out but I thought better of that too.  What if she was a grumpy woman?

  The conversation might go something like…

  Me:       “Women’s Room overcrowded, eh?”

  Grumpy:  “Does it really matter?  Think I’m gonna be shocked in the Men’s Room?  I heard a saying one time:  If it’s something I ain’t seen before I’ll shoot it.”

  My imaginary conversation was interrupted by the opening of the Men’s Room door.

  Out strode a man…

  …in a Scottish-type kilt.

  A kilt, not a dress.

  I waited for him to pass and I walked right in to the Men’s Room.

A used condom by the side of the road.  Rudeness!  

Someone passing their load on to the rest of us.

Oh well.  It brought back a memory....

RUBBER ON THE ROAD

  I saw it a couple of years ago.

  I was out for a morning walk with the “dawgs” in West Pensacola, Florida.

  There it was, laying by the side of the road.

  A used condom.

  Or as we used to call them back home in the mountains, “a rubber.”

  It was the first time in a long time I’d seen one of these things by the side of the road.

  My first thought was how daggone rude for someone to just pass their load, a used condom, on to the rest of us.

  Then a condom memory came back to me.

  When I was just a wee lad of 8 years old growing up in Roanoke, Virginia me and my buddy Catfish would find these things, still in their sealed packages, out behind our elementary school. 

  When you’re 8 years old there are things you don’t understand.

  For one, why would we find these things behind our elementary school.

  Well, I would realize years later it was a good place to go “parking.”  “Parking” is when you and your girlfriend go to a place where no one might bother you and “canoodle.”  But I was 8 years old and had no idea about “canoodling.”

  The other thing I NEVER understood is why they were still unopened.

  I remembered the first time I ripped open one of the little packs.

  I had no idea what it was. 

  I asked my source of knowledge of everyday kid stuff, my buddy Catfish, what it was.

  When Catfish told me I WAS SHOCKED!

  As I looked at the rubber with an 8 year old brain I had a great idea:  "THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT WATER BALLOON!" 

  So I filled it up with water.

  It got bigger and bigger and bigger…bigger than any water balloon I’d ever handled…big as a WATERMELON.

  I whipped it 'round and 'round my head like I was Little David who'd picked up a smooth flat slick river rock for my slingshot and was about to SLAYETH Goliath....and FLUNG! 

  KOOSH!

  Oh HO!  I had discovered a secret weapon to use in me and my buddy Catfish’s frequent “battles” with the neighborhood girls.

  That was a simpler time.

  When a good time was sitting on my grandmother’s back porch having a fried bologna sandwich and washing it down with a Grapette.

  And throwing water filled condoms at girls as they ran away screaming.

OH COME ON, JUST ONE PARTING SHOT

  I got an email from the state employment agency that handles the Pensacola, Florida area.

  They were having a job fair.

  My blood pressure went up a couple of ticks.

  “Pensacola, sheesh,” I muttered under my breath.

   I opened the email and looked for where I could unsubscribe to their mailing list.  I clicked on the link.

  I clicked “unsubscribe.”

  “Why are you unsubscribing” asked the email.

  It gave me some options.

  I chose “other,” because, you know friends, when they give you that “other” choice they usually give you a box to elaborate on why you want to unsubscribe.  Being control freaks they seem to HAVE TO KNOW why you want to unsubscribe.

  And elaborate I did.

  With what space they give you.

  They gave me space for 150 characters.

“I have returned to New Mexico.  I will always remember Pensacola for low wages, age discrimination and quantifying job candidates versus qualifying job candidates.”

  The Lady of the House and I moved to Pensacola back in 2015. 

  I was glad to get the hell out of there 2 years later.

  I think I’ll leave it at that.

  Ma and Pa Kettle go to The Big City and found it wanting.

  I’m skipping a lot of details.  If I wrote them down I might sound like some grumpy old fart.

  Oh well.

  As my buddy Duane said, “Let it go.”

  I doubt I’ll hear back from the state employment agency that sent me the email.

  I’m sure someone will chalk it up as just another letter from some sour-grapey old dude.

  If they read it at all.

-30-

Stopping for Roadkill

 You couldn’t miss the dead dog out on the county road. 

  I eased over to the side of the road and got out.  The canine’s fur was blowing in the breeze.  The coloring looked like some kind of mixed breed mutt, then I saw it’s face:  Someone had cut down a coyote.  The eyes were fixed straight ahead…its teeth were bared.  I grabbed it by the tail and pulled it off the road. 

  I have this thing about roadkill.  I feel kind of bad about the dead critter, the indignity of being smooshed by passing cars and trucks over and over again.

  In my day I’ve pulled bunches of dead critters off the road:  Dogs, cats, roadrunners, squirrels, turtles and such.

    I don’t do this for skunks and I probably won’t move a javelina off the road again.

  Javelinas are critters that look like pigs but aren’t pigs…they’re a peccary.  A peccary is a critter that looks like a skinny pig.  They range in the southern parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.  Some years ago I came across a dead one on the highway between Bisbee and Tombstone, Arizona so I pulled over to get it off the road.  I was doing it for my usual reason but these buggers are so big, maybe 80 to 100 pounds, so it was kind of a road hazard too.  I grabbed the carcass by a back leg and started to drag it off the road.

  That’s when all its guts spilled out on the highway.

  I kept pulling the dead javelina to the side of the road anyway.

  I figured some guts on the highway were less of a road hazard than a carcass of bone and muscle.

  Sometimes I can’t do anything about roadkill, sometimes I won’t.

  One time when I was driving truck across the country with my Trinidadian co-driver Frank we encountered a big dead critter.

  We were eastbound on Interstate 40 near Flagstaff, Arizona.  I was driving, Frank was riding shotgun.  Up ahead in the median there was a headless elk carcass….bloated…its legs sticking in the air.

  “Well I wonder what happened there?” I said.

  Frank looked up.

  “Ooo, ooo!” he exclaimed.  “Pull over!  I shall have the haunches off that.”

  “First, Frank, it’s bloated and has been in the sun…”

  “That just means the meat’s aged, pull over!”

  “Frank, I’m not pulling over.”  I chuckled a bit with the image of two truckers pulling over, hopping out of their 18-wheeler and hacking on a bloated elk carcass with Swiss army knives.  “As far as I know it’s against the law to hack on a big game carcass along the interstate.  Besides, where would you put the haunches?”

  “Under my bunk,” said Frank.  “I do not understand why you will not pull over.  That is a waste of perfectly good meat.”

  “Dude,” I said.  “It’s just not done.”

  “In Trinidad that would be considered wasteful.”

  So we continued our trek east.  Frank was quite convinced I was wrong and did not speak to me for a couple of hours.

  It was okay.  I enjoyed the quiet.

  And I was just glad Frank hadn’t been driving when we saw the dead elk.

 Now I’m not saying I clear off roadkill regular-like, I’m not saying I’d fight the vultures off a carcass to get it off the road or block traffic or anything.  I’m just saying every now and then when I see some dead animal on the highway I take a notion to get it off the road.  Then the vultures can do what vultures do.  Nobody’s ever hassled me about it, one time two guys even wanted to help, though for an unexpected reason.

  A few years ago I was heading down a long stretch of Arizona highway between Bisbee and Douglas when an animal carcass caught my eye.  Now I’ve seen a lot of dead animals along the road but not a spotted one.  As I sped by I couldn’t tell what it was.  I was curious.  I made a u-turn, drove back a bit then pulled over near the thing.  It was a dead bobcat, not a mark on it.

  This cat was a magnificent thing, probably three or four times the size of a big house cat.  The eyes were fixed and there were those teeth, big cat teeth.  The paws were huge, each one easily as big as the palm of my hand.  It was probably just easing across the road, got smacked and died.

  I grabbed the cat by a paw and was dragging it off into the desert when I heard tires squeal on the highway.  I looked up and saw a pickup truck make a u-turn and pull up behind my car.

  Just when I was thinking I must’ve broken some kind of wildlife law or something, expecting a game warden hop out, the doors flew open and two cowboys came running at me fast, holding their hats on their heads.

  “Hey buddy, whatcha got there?” said the guy in the lead.

  “It’s a bobcat,” I said.  I wondered what these guys were up to.

  “Woo-wee,” yelled the second one, “Lookit that thing.  Can we have a look?”

  “Sure,” I said.  I realized this wasn’t about hassling or laws or anything, these guys were really interested in this dead bobcat.  “Is it a big one?”

  “You bet,” said one.

  “Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” said the other.  “Can we have it?”

  I paused for a moment.

  This was a first for me, someone wanted an animal carcass I was pulling off the road.

  Were they going to eat it?

  “Well sure,” I said.  “I mean…it isn’t mine, I was just getting it off the road.”

  One guy looked up at me and squinted, “You’re just getting’ it off the road?  You ain’t from around here, are you.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Skin it.  We can get big coin for this pelt.”  And with that they each grabbed a paw, ran back to the pickup truck, tossed the dead bobcat in back, hopped in and took off.

  At least they weren’t going to eat it, I thought as I watched them fade off in the distance.

I Miss Mom...

Me and Mom and what I call my "Forrest Gump Moment":  

"What do I do with my life, Momma?"

"I don't know, Forrest. 

You're going to have to figure that out for yourself."

South Florida circa 2001...

The night before my mom died I had fallen asleep in my recliner.  I was awakened by the ring, a long ring, of an old-fashioned telephone.

I don’t have an old-fashioned telephone hooked up.

The ringing was in my head.

“What time is it?” I asked The Lady of the House.

“10:30,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “I want to remember that time.

The next morning I woke up to find my phone had “blown up,” as they say, with calls and voicemails.

I turn my phone off when I sleep.  Family had called in overnight.  Mom died around 1230 Eastern Time…1030 in my time zone.

In my way of thinking, that old-fashioned phone ring was Mom letting me know she was leaving.

I mean, I know my mom, the greatest mom ever, couldn’t stay around forever.

She had a good journey, 95 years worth.

She was a teacher, she taught business stuff:  Typing, shorthand and things like that.

Mom may have found her toughest student in me.  When I took a typing class in high school she wondered why I couldn’t teach myself, I reckon because she…a typing teacher…was my mom.   Why didn’t typing just come naturally to me?  She couldn’t understand why I didn’t “get” Algebra and she threw her hands up in frustration trying to teach me how to dribble a basketball.

My mom was always there for me.  One of my earliest memories is Mom sitting in the sun reading a book while I rode my tricycle round and round the base of the McKinley Monument in Buffalo, New York.  There was  the sun, the gleaming stone, the water fountains, the tall monument pointing to the sky, me riding round and round and there was Mom reading with her sunglasses on.

Where I once rode my tricycle.  

McKinley Monument, downtown Buffalo, New York.

Mom took me fishing, dropped me off for Boy Scout stuff and so much more. 

I mean I’m my mother’s son.  I’m not a “momma’s boy” but it was Mom who raised me, my dad was too busy with his career.  I don’t lament about it, my mom did what a lot of mid-20^th Century Moms did…they were in charge of raising the kids while “Big Daddy” went out and “brought home the bacon.”

Mom was all about the pushing forward in life.  She wasn’t one to linger in the past.  Nothing showed that more to me than the time I was listening to the 70’s rock band Pink Floyd when she came into my room and said, “I like that.”

Years ago I would tell her about my latest personal trainwreck.  She would laugh, say it was all part of life then repeat a line from an old song, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

One of my favorite memories is of Mom waking me up on school mornings.  In our house my room was upstairs.  She’d stand at the bottom of the stairs and say in a loud voice, an old Longfellow quote:  “Let us be up and doing with a heart for any fate!”

Thinking of Mom I remember all the good things she did through my life. And I think about the things I did in my life. I think about the stupid things, the disrespectful things….all the things I told Mom that I was sorry for.

“Hey Mom, I’m sorry for all the stupid things I did when I was a teenager and stuff,” I told her once when I was visiting her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said and smiled. “It’s all part of growing up, part of life.”

Mom caught me swiping some change from her purse when I was 10 or 12. Yeah call it what it was, stealing. I did it and mom caught me. She didn’t say much. It was the look on her face, the disappointment. I never did it again.

There was a time I had to pay a fine and I was going to come up short by the deadline. Mom stepped up and gave me what I needed. I sat in her dining room holding the check and basically being angry at myself for being so stupid and getting a ticket. “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” she said. “It’s all part of life. Now don’t do it again.”

One time I had about given up on everything and I told that to Mom.

That’s when I made Mom cry.

Not a wailing, dramatic crying fit…no, she just got these big ol’ tears in her eyes, looked really sad and didn’t talk for a bit.

“You NEVER give up hope,” she said finally, looking at me right in the eyes.

I was so ashamed I made my momma cry I did an about-face on my attitude.

I was out for my usual morning bicycle ride a few years ago and it dawned on me to tell Mom about a thought I had.

“Hey Mom,” I said when I got her on the phone. “Thanks for bringing me here to this life, thanks for being my mom.”

She laughed. “I’m glad I did,” she said.

Mom’s “done gone on to Glory”…I miss her.  But she did come visit me in a vivid dream a few months after she died.  I was walking with her to a bus station in some big city.

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Montreal,” she said.

“How come?”

“I’ve never been,” she said.  “But I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?”

We stopped walking, she turned and looked me right in the eyes, there in that dream world.

“Stop taking life so seriously,” she said.  “And tell that to your oldest too.”

Then she was on the bus, smiling and waving goodbye.

Off to Montreal, I reckon.

Or as my youngest told me, “Off to the land of sunsets and rainbows.”

That’s what Mom told her.

Maybe “The Land of Sunsets and Rainbows” and Montreal are on a package tour.

The Empty Quarter

  I had to go to Roswell the other day for a fancy eye appointment.  Part of the “adventure” was getting a hypodermic needle to the eyeball.  Yeah…that’s another story.

  When I go to doctor’s offices for  I like to shoot the breeze with the staff…where you from, stuff like that.

  A portion of the folks were from Roswell but there were people there who came to Chaves County to work at the eye clinic for just a couple of days a week from Albuquerque or Santa Fe. 

  What I found interesting was that out of nowhere they’d mention “I HATE that drive from Vaughn to Roswell.”

  “Why?” I asked, “All that wide-open rangeland, the Golden West.”

  “Exactly,” said one young woman, “There’s nothing out there.  And my cell phone doesn’t work out there.”

  Then there was the tech from Roswell who said her work took her to Albuquerque from time to time.

  “I HATE that drive from Roswell to Vaughn,” she said.

  “Because…?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing out there.”

  Well, there’s truth to this:  There’s a whole lot of nothing between Roswell and Cline’s Corner out on the Eastern Plains of New Mexico.

  Or is there?

  If you live in Roswell and you need to get to Albuquerque or Santa Fe you have to traverse this great wide open to get to I-40 at Cline’s Corner….about 140 miles…2 hours…of the highway, grassland, pronghorn antelope or mule deer.

  Check it out.

  Look at a map.

  There’s nothing out there.

  It’s a big, wide-open quarter of the whole state of New Mexico.

  Well, actually there ARE ranches there:  Cattle ranches, sheep ranches.  It’s wide open rangeland, shortgrass prairie, mesquite, cholla, juniper.

  I learned this when I lived in Roswell almost 30 years ago.

  The vast emptiness is really driven home if you go to the higher reaches of the Capitan Mountain Range west of Roswell and look north…it’s really impressive at twilight.  As the night starts to spread from the east to west you look out over a vast sea of dark land that spreads from horizon to horizon and to the north until it flows into the sky.  There’s a dot of light there, probably a ranch house.  Another spec of light that seems to be moving, probably a car or 18-wheeler headed south to Roswell on US 285.  These bits of light are miles away from the mountain slopes.

  There ARE towns out there.

  Well, not all of them are towns, they’re points on the map.

  Heading north out of Roswell you’ll encounter Mesa after about 20-25 minutes.

Actual factual photo of Mesa, New Mexico 

courtesy of Rhonda Hill-Reed, The Remarkable Roswell Radio Receptionist...

  All that was at Mesa was a gas station and a pay phone.  I know there was a pay phone there because that’s where my ex-girlfriend stopped to call me on her way back to Albuquerque in September 1990 BCP (before cell phones).

  After we broke up.

  I had watched her drive away from my groovy bachelor pad.

  There's an old tradition that you're not supposed to watch someone drive away until they're out of sight because that means you'll never see them again.  Tradition says you wave goodbye then walk back into the house.

  I watched her drive away until I couldn't see her car anymore.  

  I never wanted to see her drama queen ass again.

  Yet less than a half-hour later there she was on the phone.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Are you at Mesa?” I ask.

  She gasped, “How did you know?”

  “You’ve been gone about a half-hour so I reckoned you’re calling from the pay phone at Mesa,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours but I’m having a beer and cleaning my apartment,” I said.

  There was a pained wailing sound on the other end of the line.

  “YOU’RE CLEANING YOUR APARTMENT???” she yelled over the phone with dramatic sobbing.  “WE BREAK UP AND YOU CLEAN YOUR APARTMENT?????”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours but pray-tell what am I supposed to be doing?”

  “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE SAD,” she screamed.  “I’M COMING BACK.”

  “Oh JEEZ!” I said, “Don’t….”

  *CLICK*

  I held the phone back from my face and looked at it.

 “Damn,” I said.  I finished my beer and reached for another.

  It would be another 3 months before she and I would be done…for the most part…but that’s another story.

  Go another 40 or 50 miles north of Mesa and you used to come up on a small building that once housed a little bar and standing outside the building was a pay phone stand…the pay phone disappeared probably 28 years ago, the stand is gone now too.

  This is Ramon.

Ramon, New Mexico

  Ramon is a dot on the map out in the middle of nowhere.

  When I was a DJ on the Country radio in Roswell I used to have great fun with Ramon, talking about “The Ramon Hilton” and on snow days flights being delayed or cancelled out of “Ramon International Airport” but there was probably plenty of room for stranded travelers at “The Ramon Marriott.”

  That’s when I discovered there were actually-factually people in the area of Ramon, you just couldn’t see where they lived because they were over the hill from the highway.  They were folks who ran sheep ranches.

  The folks in the Ramon area listened to our station out of Roswell because we were blasting across the whole southeast quadrant of New Mexico with 50,000 watts of Country music radio. 

  The Ramon sheep people were such good sports about fun being poked at their little corner of New Mexico that they even invited me up to be Grand Marshal of their “Ramon Daze” parade.  It’s something that they never did before and probably haven’t done since. 

  I couldn’t make it to their parade.

  They mailed me pictures.

  The parade was made up of a fellow on horseback, a couple of kids pulling little red wagons and some border collies on ropes for leashes.  It was a grand affair.  Sorry I missed it.

  It seems like no matter how fast you drive it takes an hour-and-a-half to get from Roswell to Vaughn…98 miles.  Vaughn’s the only real sizable, functioning town between Roswell and Cline’s Corner.

  Vaughn has a few motels, a truck stop, a diner, a convenience store.  It sits at over 6,000 feet above sea level in the middle of the last swatch of un-overgrazed shortgrass prairie in New Mexico.

  It seems like if you speed, it takes an hour-and-a-half to get from Roswell to Vaughn, if you go 55 it takes an hour-and-a-half and if you’re riding a bus it takes an hour-and-a-half.

  Back in the day that’s how I used to take trips to Albuquerque, I figured my old Dodge might break down out in the middle of really nowhere.

  This was back when the TNM&O bus line was still around…TNM&O stood for “Texas, New Mexico & Oklahoma,” a division of Greyhound.

  There’s a certain luxury to hopping on a bus and letting someone else drive.

  So it was that I paid my money…was it 9 bucks…19 bucks…and took my seat.

  We passed Mesa.  Take a right there and you head off to Fort Sumner…I had listeners out that way, cattle ranchers, a few weeks earlier they’d come back from an African safari.  I reckoned there was money to be made in cattle ranching.

  Some miles later there was the turnoff to Corona, 48 miles to the west.  Me and my buddy Wayne had driven over there with the station music setup and disc jockeyed dances over there.

  We passed by Ramon, the old bar still empty, the pay phone still missing from its stand.

  And then an hour-and-a-half later we rolled into Vaughn.

  “We’ll be stopping here for 20 minutes folks,” said the bus driver over the intercom.

  The driver pulled off the highway right up to the restaurant on the west side of the town.

Where the TNM&O bus used to stop in Vaughn, New Mexico......

  All of us passengers, 12 or so of us, filed off the bus.

  I ordered a bag of fries and a Coke.

  Is it any wonder I have The Sugar (diabetes) now.

  Anyway, I took my bag o’ fries and drink and strolled outside and stood by the bus.  The driver was standing a few feet away enjoying a smoke.

  I like traveling by bus.  It’s from when I was a kid, my parents would put me on a Greyhound bus and ship me off to visit my aunt and uncle in North Carolina, or when we moved to Baltimore they’d put me on a Greyhound to Roanoke, Virginia to stay with my grandparents.  I think I was 11 when they first put me on a bus all by myself.

  I had been pondering riding the bus from Roswell back east to Florida to visit my momma.  The fare was cheaper than flying but the trip would take like, a day-and-a-half.

  I thought about stuff like sleeping and eating and needing to go to the bathroom.

  “So,” I said to the bus driver, “You get many cross country travelers?”

  “Nah,” said the driver taking a drag off his smoke.  “You know buddy, I work for this company, I drive for this company, but I wouldn’t ride one of these damn things across the country if you paid me.  Too damn uncomfortable.”

  I smiled and nodded and put another fistful of fries in my mouth.

  It would be 12 years in the future that I would ride a Greyhound across a big chunk of America.  I learned that you drink water or tea, leave the sodas alone, don’t eat salty snacks, try to eat fruit, take your own pillow and watch your luggage.

  The time had come to get back on the bus and finish the trip on in to Albuquerque.

  Yep, whether you’re driving it or looking at it on the map, it looks like there’s a whole lot of nothing between Roswell and I-40, but there really is life out there.

-30-

Ode to an Old Honky-Tonk

  

   It was a pretty good yard sale.

  The Lady of the House found all sorts of old crap priced cheap and there were a bunch of old CDs for me to go through at 50 cents apiece.

  I finished up going through the music and looked up to see where The Lady of the House had wandered off to.

  I saw her in a back room of the house looking over a bunch of kitchenware.  I headed her way.

  That room didn’t have much light.  I stood there for a bit.  As my eyes got used to the dimness I saw that there were all kinds of coffee mugs on shelves all around the room.  One shelf had a handmade sign that read “CUPS 25¢/6 FOR $1.”

  I was looking for something unique, something different.

  There were matched cups, odd cups, cups from restaurants and fast food joints.  There amongst all the different kinds of cups was a plastic cup shaped like a tall daiquiri glass.  There was writing on it that brought back a bunch of memories….

BOOT SCOOTERS

COME SCOOT YOUR BOOTS ON OUR DANCE FLOOR

#1 FUN SPOT

ROSWELL, NM

  I have been to Boot Scooters once upon a time, long ago. 

  I always remembered the place for a couple of reasons.  One was, if I have the story right, my buddy Wayne K…legendary Pecos Valley radio personality…came up with the idea for the name for the club.

  The other reason I remember it was because I made an ass of myself there about 28 years ago.

  But one thing at a time.

  As I remember there were a few places to “get yer drink on” in Roswell back when I lived there at beginning of the 1990’s, working at a country radio station.  There was a bar on North Main where the hometown country folks went, another one in the big motel near New Mexico Military Institute where all kinds of folks went and another one down near The K-Mart that catered to folks in town who fancied themselves as someone else besides themselves.  Oh yeah, there was that one at the steakhouse and another at another motel not far from there.

  I don’t know the whole story but part of my buddy Wayne’s job at the radio station was to call on accounts around town for radio advertising.  It was during his rounds he caught wind of the folks who were firing up a new bar in town.

  It was 1990 and the western swing band Asleep At The Wheel had come out with a new album with a song “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” which no doubt brought in a chunk of grocery money for Texas songwriter Ronnie Dunn.  He and a fellow songwriter named Brooks would get together not long after that as the duo Brooks & Dunn.  Their version of the song a couple of years later would be a big country hit.

  Anyway, the way I heard it, taking a cue from the song Wayne suggested “Boot Scooters” as the name for the new club.  The owners mulled it over and went with it.

  I probably wouln’t’ve made it over to Boot Scooters if Wayne hadn’ta insisted I come on to the south side of Roswell and try out the new club.

  I had been going to the bar at the motel and having beers.  Hell, it was just a short walk or bicycle ride from my groovy bachelor pad on the north side of town. 

  The more I hung around the motel bar the more I got to learning more about Roswell.  Over time I was finding folks recognized me from being “that guy on the country radio in the morning.”  Folks were buying me beers and I was waking up at 5 the next morning still feeling the effects of the free cold ones.

  Then there was that one night that some drunk lady with a German accent came right up to me at the bar while I was enjoying my beer…

  “I know who you are,” she said getting right in my face.  “You don’t know who I am.”

  “No ma’am, I don’t know who you are,” I said.  “I just know you have a store downtown.”

  “Well,” she said.  “You better not talk about me on the radio.  If you do my husband will squash you like a bug.”

  I don’t know what I did to irritate the sensibilities of this woman but somehow I had.

  I seemed to have that ability with the fairer sex at bars.

  After all, there was that time that I was challenged to my first and only bar fight…by a woman.  I was at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida…just minding my own business…picking out some tunes on the jukebox when “BAM” an empty bottle exploded next to me.

  “YOU BETTER PLAY SOME GOOD SHIT,” came a woman’s voice.

  I turned around to see a woman whose leg was in a cast, her crutches next to her as she sat at a table.

  “I’M TIRED OF LISTENING TO BAD SHIT,” she yelled.

  I saw the bartender pick up the phone.  A few minutes later she got a free ride in a police car.  I reckon the bartender was ticked off that he’d have to clean up her mess.

  I took the angry German woman as a sign that it was time to take Wayne up on his invitation to come get my drink on at Boot Scooters.

  I think I can even remember the month and day I first went to Boot Scooters…Saturday, June 27, 1990.  Now let me type that date into the internet and see if I got it right……..nope….June 27, 1990 was a Wednesday…so it was Saturday, June 23, 1990.

  My girlfriend at the time was off on some business conference somewhere so I didn’t have anything to do BUT get my drink on.

  So my buddy Wayne came on by my groovy bachelor pad and picked me up…we were off to Boot Scooters.

  We walked in the bar and it was everything I expected a place like Boot Scooters to be:  A DJ booth, DJ playing good country music with a beat, a big wooden dance floor with folks line dancing and lots of waitresses serving lots of refreshing adult libations.

  There were Mexican beers to be drunk and I drank ‘em…I don’t know how many.  After a while a couple of things happened:  Every time our waitress walked by I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!”  I don’t know exactly why I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!” every time our waitress walked by, I just did.  The other thing was I started dancing with varied and sundry women in the club who were in a varied and sundry state of attractiveness…and dancing barefoot too….barefoot on Boot Scooters wooden dance floor.

  I regaled Wayne with stories, jokes were told, assessments on the attractiveness of the available women were expounded.  

  And then before you could say “Jack Robinson” me and my bare feet were off to the dance floor to dance with Raynelle who worked at the farm supply store.

  Then I was back in my chair at our table, drinking more beer and here came our waitress again.

  “WOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!” I yelled.

  Oops!

  Waitress stopped and turned.

  It was only then that I noticed she had a nametag:  Sue Ellen

  “Okay asshole,” she yelled, dropping her tray and pointing at me, “that’s your last woo-hoo tonight.”

  “I…” I started to speak but Wayne put his hand on my shoulder.

  “We’re just leaving,” said Wayne.

  “We are?” I turned and looked at Wayne and he was giving me a raised eyebrow face that said it was time to go.”

  I put my boots back on, grabbed my hat and Wayne and I headed outside.

  “Bro,” said Wayne as we walked out into the parking lot, “She was about to have your ass thrown out.  You don’t want to be on their shit list, that ain’t good for your reputation around town.”

  “Well,” I said looking at Wayne,  “You know what my ol’ buddy Wayne would say, ‘OH WELL.’”

  As the years went on I would say that a lot, “You know what my old buddy Wayne would say.”  When I moved away from Roswell people thought Wayne was an imaginary friend.

  Anyway, I woke up later that morning with an odd condition…the whole world was sideways.  I couldn’t figure out how that worked.  I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t holding my head sideways so I don’t know what that was, I didn’t know how I achieved that, forgot how many beers I drank…but it was weird.

  I decided to go back to bed until I didn’t see things sideways.

  The phone rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  I didn’t answer it.

E P I L O G U E

  Yeah, that was a long time ago.

  I was a different person then.

  The Lady of the House tells me it was a good thing we didn’t meet in 1990…

  “For one thing I wouldn’t’ve lived in Roswell,” she said, “For another you were a COUNTRY DJ and for another I believe you were a bit obnoxious.”

  I posted a picture of the Boot Scooters cup on The Facebook. 

  Later I got a message from Rhonda in west Texas.  We used to work together at the Roswell radio station.  She wrote that Boot Scooters was closed, closed since a summer storm blew the roof off a few years ago.

  Rhonda sent me a picture she took of the place as she drove by.

The Hippie Chick

  I don’t know what happened to The Hippie Chick.  I looked her up on The Great and Powerful Internet and found nothing.  Of course I was looking her up by the name that came to her in a dream, not her "real" name.  I reckon she doesn’t use that dream name any more.  The Internet Great and Powerful came up with nada.  And I never knew the name her mama called her.

  The first time I saw The Hippie Chick she had pulled in behind me at the gas station in Bisbee, Arizona.

  I was fueling up when she pulled up in her old VW bus.  She got out and looked around.

  Hippie Chick was festooned in a long skirt, a flowsy blouse, a homespun shawl and beret and no shoes.

  “You’re an Ecotopian aren’t you?” I said.

  “Ecotopian?” she asked.

  “Ecotopia,” I said, “One of the ‘Nine Nations of North America.’  Basically from San Francisco to Vancouver, Pacific on the west, Coastal Range on the east.  The name is from a book I read once.”

  “Oh,” she said smiling, “Yeah, I’m from Portland.”

  “Bicycles!” I said.  Portland is a very “bicycley” city.  Or so I’ve heard.

“You’ll find you’ll want shoes around here in The Southwest.  We have a thing called…”

  “Goatheads,” she piped up.  “Yeah, I know.  I’m just in a barefoot mood today.”

  As time went on I’d see The Hippie Chick around Bisbee.  Then one day she was at Muriel’s dance studio.  Muriel was who I hung around with in the 1990’s.

  “Her name is Jenny Crow,” said Muriel as we watched The Hippie Chick get back into her VW bus.  “The name came to her in a dream.  It was a dream of a talking crow who told her to leave Portland, go to Bisbee and find the love of her life, he’d be skateboarding.  And to honor the crow she took its name as her own.”

  Muriel turned and went back to doing some paperwork at her desk.

  I didn’t say a word.  I just watched The Hippie Chick drive away.

  Well Jenny Crow found her man, the town’s only skateboarder….who had no visible means of support…but that was the way of a lot of Bisbeeites.

  “Jenny Crow invited us to her wedding,” Muriel said one day when I came home from work.  “It’s supposed to be when that comet is closest to the Earth and Mars is in some house or some shit like that.  Her parents are coming along with some of their other friends.”

  So we went to Jenny & Skateboarder’s wedding (I never knew his name). It was held outdoors at night under the comet and Mars and other celestial bodies.  It was a true "Kumbaya" time, what with the forming of a circle, holding hands and chanting and stuff.

  Next thing I knew The Hippie Chick was hauling a baby around everywhere she went, many a time breastfeeding while she was in motion.

  I’m all for organic and natural stuff so I’m all for breastfeeding; most of my kids got their start that way.  Being exposed to this natural nutrition source for babies I’ve come to know there is etiquette about it:  moms are generally discreet, covering the kid and the breast with a blouse, jacket or blanket.  Some women’s tops even have little buttoned flaps for easy access.  I’ve seen moms breastfeeding at malls, parks, even a couple of churches in my time. 

  But as with all things, there are people who believe they have rights to do as they please.

  Jenny Crow was one of these people.

  One afternoon Muriel handed me a list and sent me on my way to the local supermarket.  I had been in the back of the house and didn’t know Jenny Crow had come to visit.  I walked into the living room and there she was, sitting on the sofa with her top totally off breastfeeding her kid.  She made no move to cover herself.  I quickly looked down at my list.

  “Milk, eggs,” I said, confirming with the wife.  “We need some bleach and Comet too.”

  “Mr. G!” exclaimed Jenny Crow.  Back then a lot of folks called me Mr. G.  “Mr. G!  You’re not buying bleach and Comet, they’re killing the environment.”

  Oh now she wants to have a conversation with her boobs showing, I thought to myself, me and the busty, bare-chested young woman in my living room.  By this time, The Hippie Chick had stopped breastfeeding and was sitting there with the contented kid in her lap, her bust fully exposed.

  I started to laugh.  I could not have a serious conversation under these circumstances.

  “It’s not funny, Mr. G.” said Jane.  “We Americans are killing the planet.  You should go to the co-op and get some Bon Ami, it doesn’t hurt the environment.  They also have a really good detergent that’s just as good as bleach.”

  And she still sat there.  The kid was smacking its lips and looking around at the room.

  “Well, okay,” I said, stifling further laughter.  I pondered admonishing her for not being more discreet but then I thought better of it.  I knew this would open up a whole new can of worms.  My moderate beliefs and ethics were hopelessly outnumbered in Bisbee, even in my home.  Muriel often spoke of the injustice of how men are allowed to walk around bare-chested while women aren’t.

  “I’m off to get some bleach and Comet,” I said as I walked out the door.  It was my way of telling Jenny Crow she hadn’t changed my mind.

  It’s generally understood there is a decorum to breastfeeding.  You no more flagrantly expose breasts in public than you would stop at the curbside in downtown “Anytown” to urinate or cut loose with a loud barrage of flatulence in a restaurant.  All are natural processes, but there is such a thing as manners.

  Some months later I was part of a group that took Jenny Crow and Skateboarder some groceries.  Jenny didn’t work and Skateboarder said he kept getting attacked by brown recluse spiders and had to quit work....and went back to skateboarding.  He showed me the bites one time.  They sure looked like cigarette burns to me.

  Jenny and Skateboarder had taken up residence in an old school bus.  Most of the seats had been taken out.

  We sat in the bus on a hot summer night, its itty-bitty air conditioner struggling to keep the inside cool.

  Hippie Chick was telling everyone about the amenities of her digs, including the self-composting toilet on board.

  “It’s not working as well as we’d like but we’re going to use the compost from it in our garden next spring,” said Jenny.

  I made a mental note to myself:  Accept no vegetables from the hippie couple next summer.

  “Oh,” said a friend putting groceries in the fridge, “It looks like you have a nice hamburger package here.”

  “Oh no,” said Jenny, laughing, “That’s Namaste’s placenta.”

  Namaste’ was the hippie couple’s newborn.  The placenta is…well, you don’t need me to explain that.

  “We’re going to cook it and have a family meal on her first birthday,” said Hippie Chick.  “We’ll be inviting all of our friends.”

  I made another mental note to myself:  Accept no dinner invitations from the hippie couple next year.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.  “Why not dig a hole, put that in it and plant a tree over it.  I’ve heard people do that too.”

  “Eating it creates a strong family bond,” said Jenny Crow.  “And a bond with our circle of friends.”

  I may yet write a book about my time in Bisbee.

  Folks may call it a work of fiction.

  It seems when I tell Bisbee stories to my eastern New Mexico friends they think I either make the stuff up, that I lived in a hippie commune or spent time in an open-air asylum.

   Let me tell you something…I CAN’T make this stuff up.