Dirt-i-cane Season is Here....

   A "chamber o' commerce day" in eastern New Mexico (*wink*):  Actual factual picture of a windy February day in 2013.  Sustained winds of 40 mph, gusts approaching 50 mph.  Wind blowing dust into west Texas.

  I do believe the "Dirt-i-cane" season has arrived here in The Golden West.

  Last night there were wild winds blowing over our fair city.  The "breeze" carrying away dust and grit and stuff.
  One Amarillo weather guy said the gusts were up to 60 mph.
  I stepped outside to secure some of our yard stuff and almost got blown over.
  Either the winds are getting more powerful or I'm getting to be an old fart unable to keep my balance in our "refreshing" spring "breezes."

  If you live on the High Plains of eastern New Mexico and west Texas you live in a “Special Wind Zone.”       That’s what the National Weather Service calls it.
  I learned that one time while looking up the boundaries for America's "Tornado Alley."  The map had these little marked zones all over the country.  One of them sat right over our area.  The map said they were "Special Wind Zones."

  Come spring, come fall, the winds pick up and blow.

  I have no education in meteorology but to my estimation the winds of this part of the west provide the power for storm systems that bedevil the Midwest and east.

  Phoenix has its heat, there are hurricanes for the Gulf Coast and the West Coast has earthquakes.  In eastern New Mexico and west Texas there’s the wind.

  I admire those winds.  They show the power of nature.  I dig how the winds buffet the house, it made me think that inside was a good place to be.

  I first became acquainted with the winds of the region in Roswell.  It was May 1990.  I had just arrived in the Chaves County seat from Albuquerque.  There had been nothing in Albuquerque that would prepare me for the winds of spring in eastern New Mexico.

  I had lived in Roswell for about two weeks.  Early one morning as I stepped from my apartment I noticed there was a slight breeze from the northwest.  I’m a big fan of fresh air so I thought I’d open all the windows of my pad so I’d have a nice fresh place when I got off work.
  I knew absolutely nothing about spring winds in eastern New Mexico.

  After being on the job for a few hours I stepped outside into a roaring dust-filled wind.  I knew this was not a good thing for my apartment with its windows wide open.

When I got home everything was covered in dust.

  A year later I got to experience more wind and more dust.  I could find the gaps in my windows from the tiny little piles of dust on the window sill. 

  One afternoon while gardening I noticed it started to get darker and darker, but it was nowhere near sunset.  To the west was an ominous cloud.  It was a full fledged dust storm.  By the time the thing reached town an eerie kind of twilight was all around and I could only see about 100 feet away.

  I had heard about these winds.  For instance, I ran across an old book of amusing sayings and stories from the 50 states.  In the section about Texas it suggested if you wanted to head east from west Texas in the spring just point your car that way and open all the doors.

  I decided to try this.

  I had a little Subaru.  One spring day our winds were blowing a steady 40 miles per hour.  I pointed my car toward Texas, opened the doors and put it in neutral.  The car began to inch forward.  Five then ten miles per hour.  My top speed was 15 miles per hour.  It was kind of fun.  I was glad no policeman came by, he might have given me a free ride in a police car.

 Then I moved to Clovis…just a few miles from the Texas state line.

 Riding a bicycle around Clovis I would check on the winds daily in the fall and spring.  Made me think I was related to sail-boaters in some way.  I have to tell you, when you’re riding a bicycle around town there’s nothing finer than a good eastern New Mexico wind pushing you along. 

  One time, the wind was so strong against my back I was able to put my feet on the handlebars and coast for over two miles.  I was glad no policeman came by, I’m sure I was probably doing something wrong.  I got a scolding from the Lady of the House who told me it’s unsafe to ride with my feet on the handlebars.  Unsafe maybe, but it sure was fun.

  I was fascinated by the winds of eastern New Mexico.  I like how power companies put up those big windmills around the towns of Texico, Elida, House and Fort Sumner.  I thought maybe when I ran out of stuff to say on the radio and write about I’d get a job with one of those windmill companies.

  The Lady of the House nixed that idea.  She doesn’t want me climbing those 300 foot towers.

  “Leave that to the young guys,” she said.  “It’s not safe for someone your age.”

  She’s right, of course.

  I am getting to be an old fart.
  I might get blown off the top of one of those things.

-30-

Funny Money

  There was this dollar coin in the cash drawer of a store the other day.
  "If you don't want that in your drawer I'll take it in my change," I said to the cashier.
  It ended up in my pocket.
  Every time I see one of these a couple of things come to mind...one is how they need to get out and get into circulation...another is how they, like a lot of stuff in our country right now, became a political battleground a few years back...and how I've run into people who have jobs, pay taxes, vote and are cock-sure on what it takes to make the world run their way but aren't familiar with their own country's money.
  Case in point: A few years ago I was rolling west on Interstate 10 in Louisiana when I stopped in a fast food joint in Lake Charles to get some munchies. I handed the young woman behind the counter three $2 bills.
  The young woman looked at me, looked at the money, looked at me then said, “One moment please.” She turned and called some guy’s name and this dude with a different colored outfit complete with tie comes to the counter.
  “I think he just handed me some fake money,” she tried whispering to the man. I say “tried whispering” because I could hear her. She showed him the $2 bills.
  The man started laughing.
  “No, Darlene,” he said. “I reckon you’ve never seen a $2 bill. They’re okay.”
  Then about 6 years ago I happened on another person here in town who also wasn’t familiar with some of our country’s money.
  It happened when The Lady of the House and I were doing our regular Saturday yard sale-ing. I handed a woman two freshly minted gold dollars to pay for an item.
  "What is this, foreign money?" she asked
  I didn’t know what to think.
  She looked to be an intelligent person, looked like she might be a working professional like a teacher, office manager, something like that...to me she had the air of a business professional.
  "Those are gold dollars, they’ve been around for 10 or 12 years, that's Sacagawea...."
"Saca...what?" she interrupts, "So these are foreign, I'm not taking them."
  "Those are U.S. legal tender ma'am," I said.
  "I’m not taking them, I don't believe you."
  There's a saying from back east in Hillbillyland: "Don't get into a pissin' contest with a pole-cat."
  I decided that was good advice right then.
  I took them back and presented her with a $20 bill to pay for my stuff.
  "Don't you have anything smaller?"
  I just smiled.
  Later, The Lady of the House told me not to take the rejection of my dollars personally.
  “Some people,” she said, “Are just…you know…”

-30-

The Mysterious Woman

  Everyone at my father’s funeral was familiar to me.

  Except for one person…

  One woman…

  …who wouldn’t take off her shades inside the funeral home.

  I had no idea who she was.  I don’t think my mom cared about her being there, Mom had other things on her mind.  It didn’t seem like The Mysterious Woman knew anyone at the funeral.

  I didn’t know how I felt about this stranger in our midst.

  About 35 years ago my dad died.

  Dad “caught ‘The Cansuh’” as I euphemistically like to refer to getting cancer.  It started in that February back then when he started falling.  The doctors probed, prodded and looked with x-ray eyes and found an octopus-like tumor at the base of his brain.

  They zapped the tumor with radiation, tried to poison it with chemotherapy, all to no avail.  The thing grew and sent it’s “tentacles” deep into the reaches of Dad’s biomechanical control center.

  By the end of summer Dad was gone.

  For those of us who had watched him deteriorate his death was a relief…his suffering was done.

  It seemed as if he had been unplugged from life and spent several months winding down to the end.

  Things crossed my mind:  Where did the cancer come from?  Was it something he was exposed to in World War 2?  He had been near those atom bombs they dropped on Japan…had a renegade atom set off a renegade cell?  Who knows.  Maybe he simply just got ‘The Cansuh.’  Mighty trees are felled by blights and disease, what if cancer is the blight that attacks humans?

  Anyway

  It was time for the funeral.

  Mom was there, of course.  My brother and his wife were there…and me.  My sister was MIA from the event.  Cousin Doug was there.  A bunch of people I recognized were there too.

  And The Mystery Woman was there.

  She was a mystery because she kept her distance from the family and didn’t associate with us or anyone else.

  She caught my eye because she was wearing sunglasses inside the funeral chapel and wasn’t taking them off.

  She was much older than me, probably in her 60’s like my dad…she was just a touch dowdy but still attractive.

  “I’d bet that’s Zelda*,” said Cousin Doug.

  “Who’s Zelda?” asked my brother.

  “I reckon your daddy dated her in high school,” said Cousin Doug.  “Grandma talked about her some over the years.  I thought when Grandma talked like that it was being disrespectful to Aunt Johnnie, but I never said anything.”

  Cousin Doug was the only person I knew of that called my momma “Johnnie.”  It was a name my Grandma gave her.

  It wasn’t until I was grown that my mom told me the story of how she came to be called “Johnnie” and my grandma came to be known to her and my Aunt Becky, Cousin Doug’s momma, as “Madame.”

  It was the classic conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law sprinkled with the cultural clash between South and North.

  When my dad came home to Virginia from his World War 2 Army service with a bride from Ohio my grandma was not amused.

  Grandma called Mom “Johnnie.”  Johnnie was the name of a maid who used to tidy up around Grandma’s big house.

  Grandma had a big house and took in boarders, the young women who attended the business college nearby.  At any given time there were 4 or 5 young women renting rooms from Grandma.

  Mom figured if Grandma was going to call her Johnnie she’d just call her mother-in-law “Madame” as Grandma’s house seemed to be like a whorehouse with those young women living there.

  So with Grandma gone since the 1970’s Cousin Doug was about the last person to refer to Mom as Aunt Johnnie.  None of us in our family thought much of it and it was something Cousin Doug grew up hearing.

  Anyway, back at Dad’s funeral…

  “What’d she say about this Zelda?” I asked.

  “She never said much and never said it a lot, just, ‘Your uncle should’ve married that Zelda girl.’”

  “I remember now,” I said to my brother and Doug.  “Just a bit of conversation between Grandma and Dad one time.  Just the two of them talking in the dining room one day while Mom was out and Grandma said, ‘You should’ve married Zelda.’  And I wondered who Zelda was and why Grandma would say that.”

  “What did Dad say?” asked my brother.

  “He said, ‘Now mother, I’ll don’t like it when you disrespect Louise,’” I said.  That was Mom’s name…Louise.  “Grandma and Dad didn’t talk for a few minutes after that.”

  I always wondered why some people don’t keep such thoughts to themselves…insulting other people, casting shade on other people, insulting people behind their back, to their face even.

  The service was about to begin and Mom was making her way back to sit with us after visiting with folks.

  My brother turned to me, “Don’t say anything to Mom about that woman.”

  “Do I look like I have ‘stupid’ tattooed on my forehead?”

  “Well…”

  Mom sat.

  The organ music began.

  After a couple of minutes the preacherman got up and started talking about Dad, saying good things about him and his life, saying those magic words, those holy words preachermen say at funerals.

  And soon the service was over.

  People were leaving, talking to Mom and my brother.

  I didn’t know anyone they were talking to so I didn’t see much sense in hanging around.

  I looked around for The Mystery Woman…she was gone.  I eased on out the door ahead of the crowd and looked around.

  There she was, walking away, down the sidewalk, by herself.

  Was it Zelda? 

  Or was it someone who worked with Dad.

  But if it was someone who worked with Dad surely she would’ve paused to say hello to Mom.

  Was she one of those weirdos who likes to go to strangers’ funerals?  There are such people.

  If it was Zelda why did she still care?

  Who was I to ask?

  I was curious about the story.

  But Dad never would have told me anyway, he wasn’t a storyteller…not in my eyes anyway.  He never told me shit about anything.

  Dad didn’t share.

  I could just see me asking him about Zelda.

  He and I would be sitting in the living room some Sunday afternoon, he’d be watching some golf game on TV like he always did and I’d say…

  “Say Dad, who was Zelda?”

  He’d probably turn, his face getting red and yell, “NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS, BOY!”

  The only time he seemed to ever confide anything in me was the time me and my buddy Catfish were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got into a “spot of bother” with the police.

  That was when my dad told me about the “spot of bother” he got into with the police as a teenager when he and some of his buddies ran the tollbooth on a toll road and got caught.

  What happened to Dad and Zelda?

  Why did my grandmother still talk about her after all the years?

  Grandma had this thing about wanting her two boys near her.  Cousin Doug’s dad didn’t give a shit what his mom wanted but my dad wanted to be that quintessential “good Southern son” who bought a home for his momma and daddy and lived nearby.  It’s how we ended up leaving Hawai’I and moving back to his hometown in The Southland.

  So if he’d married Zelda from the get-go he never would have left the old hometown.

  And I probably wouldn’t have been born.

  If this was Zelda who had come to the funeral how long had it been since she and Dad dated?  Fifty years?

  But what’s 50 years to the heart?

  I watched The Mystery Woman walk on in the distance until I couldn’t see her anymore.

  And i never mentioned any of this to Mom.

-30-

*Names changed…

UFOs I Have Known...Or Been Told About Anyway

Picture of "The Phoenix Lights" of March 1997.  It's estimated that about 50,000 people saw this huge craft from Casa Grande to The Valley of the Sun.  When two jets scrambled at it from Luke AFB the thing took off to the west like a bat out of hell.

Mention Roswell to someone from out of the region and they almost always make a space alien or “unidentified flying object” (UFO) joke.

To most of us around these parts when we think of Roswell is that town down the road a bit…used to play ‘em in football, stuff like that.

I remember when I moved to Roswell it was basically just known for cattle, oil company offices and pecans.

I tell folks about the time I left Roswell in 1992 was the time the UFO-ologists started trickling in to town all for that UFO crash off to the northwest of town back in 1947.

I tell folks I’ve seen two UFOs in my day. Most everything else I know about UFOs is from stories other folks told me.

My UFO encounter happened back in the spring of 1979 when I was living in the mountains of Appalachia. It was night and I had the family dog out for a pre-bedtime walk.

A light skimming along the ridge of mountaintop caught my eye. It was moving from north to south. A strong, steady light skimming right along the top of the mountain and not making a sound. I watched as it came to the southern peak of the range and continued on off to the south. I’d seen many planes come over that mountain, most of them B52s and jet fighters on training runs from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, but this light was different. And those jets made noise, this didn’t make a sound.

It would be years before I’d see another UFO. It was within days of arriving in Roswell. Like I said, back then about 30 years ago, Roswell was known for cattle, oil and pecans. I had no idea about the 1947 spaceship crash. The UFO I saw was bright and shiny in the western sky just after sunset. The next day I was told it was a weather balloon, they launch them from Ft. Sumner from time to time. I was so disappointed.

Now my friend Kent, Bard of the Pecos, saw something one evening that summer, again just after sunset: four bubble-like things moving one after the other slowly south to north in front of the growing darkness from the east. When the last one disappeared a small red light appeared to chase after them going about four times as fast as the bubble-things. Now I know Kent liked to have an after-work whiskey, but that wasn’t affecting what he saw; his wife and kids saw it too.

But then, you know, I was watching “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” not too long ago and that movie had UFOs just like that…hmmmmm….

Then there was the Roswell woman I knew who may have been abducted by aliens on her way back to Chaves County from Albuquerque one night.

At least that’s what she said.

She had picked up a hitchhiker just south of Cline’s Corner.

It was a normal ride south on US 285…

…until…

Between Cline’s Corner and Vaughn she noticed lights dancing erratically in the east. Moments later one of the lights came zooming in at her. About a quarter-mile off the highway the thing stopped…a hovering triangular craft.

Her car went dead.

The hitchhiker started freaking out and hollering out Bible verses.

She got out to get a closer look at the craft. She started to walk toward it, all the while the hitchhiker sat in the car hollering and praying.

There was a bright flash of light and the next thing she knew she was standing by her car again.

“AHHH, AHHH, YOU CONSORTED WITH DEVILS, DON’T GET NEAR ME!” screamed the hitchhiker.

“Would you please shut the hell up,” she said as she got back in the car. “What the hell are you talking about.”

“YOU WENT UP IN A BEAM OF LIGHT INTO THE DEVIL’S SPACESHIP!!!! YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR A GOOD HALF-HOUR.”

“Oh bullshit,” she said as she turned the key and her car started right up.

She headed down the highway, all the while the hitchhiker yelling out Bible verses and prayers.

As she rolled into Vaughn and slowed down the hitchhiker opened the door, rolled out and hit the pavement. She watched as he got up and ran off into the night.

She pulled into the Allsup’s store there in Vaughn.

“I need to call the cops,” she told the clerk. “I just saw a UFO.”

The clerk and people in the store were laughing at her when a black car pulled up and a man in a black suit got out, walked in and told the clerk that he too had seen a UFO.

She thought it was weird, this man in a suit so she left without talking to anyone else.

Well, that’s what she told me anyway.

I often wondered about this story, she told it so convincingly. But she told other stories too that made me scratch my chin, like she was the person who invented the nationwide advertising slogan, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

I’ve often wanted to have a good UFO encounter, like the famous “Phoenix Lights Incident” of March 1997. I was so disappointed to be just 100 miles away when that happened.

It seems so strange to be on this giant organic spaceship zipping through the cosmos and to believe that there’s not another single civilization in the universe…there’s only us.

Frank the Trinidadian, my co-driver from my trucking days, dismissed talk of UFOs and extraterrestrials with the wave of his hand.

“There are no such things as space aliens or worlds with people like us,” Frank said with his Caribbean accent. “The Lord gave us the moon and the stars so we wouldn’t be so lonely at night. We are the only civilization out here.”

Well whatever, Frank.

But I’d still like to talk to these folks who zip around in our skies.

Imagine the places they’ve been!

-30-

An Angry Teenager and a Rifle

  It’s been a few years now since the television news was filled with reports out of Roswell, over 100 miles southwest of here.
  There was a shooting at a middle school there.
  A 12 year old brought a shotgun to school then shot and badly wounded some classmates: A 12 year old boy and a 13 year old girl.
  When I heard about this my mind went back many years ago to when I was in junior high school...and I remember Kevin*.
  Kevin is dead now. He died in the early 1980's, a bullet right between the eyes. I never knew if he was shot by someone or if he shot himself. His parents who lived across the street from our family never told anyone the full details of his death. They just buried him at their old hometown cemetery near the Chesapeake Bay and brought his dog home to live with them.
  I remember Kevin because I saw firsthand how bullying can change someone.
  Kevin showed up in our neighborhood when I was in 7th grade
  Back then, in my boy's mind I came to realize I was glad Kevin showed up. Where once I had been the target of bullying and practical jokes, the focus switched to Kevin.
  Kevin was brainy, liked to enunciate his words so it sounded like he had a weird accent…he liked to use little-used words in his talk and asked a lot of questions why 7th graders did the things they did. For a while he was my friend...until he took a general dislike to practically everyone.
  I can't remember all the things Kevin endured but he took the brunt of the stuff when I moved away from the old home town. My dad took a job up north a few months after Kevin came to the neighborhood.. When we came back over a year later Kevin was not the smiling, inquisitive kid I used to know. He had become dark, brooding and didn’t say much.
  One night there was a knock on my door. It was two detectives from the city police department. They wanted to know if I knew anything about Kevin's house being egged.
  I did not.
  The detectives mentioned a couple of names: Dax and Lou….had I heard them talking about egging or planning to egg Kevin's house?
Dax and Lou were friends, but they liked to play practical jokes, usually with a mean twist.  Like I mentioned, I had been their target...these days it was Kevin.
  "Because you see, boy," said one detective, "In our state the hurling of an object at a person, vehicle or house is a felony under the 'missile' law."
  The detectives left.
  I doubt the egging would’ve gotten any attention if it hadn’t been for Kevin’s dad working for the city government.
  Some time later Kevin came over to my house.
  "I want to show you something," said Kevin in his clipped speech.
  We walked back across the street to his place and walked behind the house.
  There in the backyard were two deep, rectangular holes.
  "Those look like graves," I said.
  "They are," said Kevin, "Those are graves for Dax and Lou. Come to my room."
  We went into his house. His parents and sister were out.
  We went into his room.
  He pulled a rifle from under his bed.
  "I'm going to kill Dax and Lou with this," he said.
  I just stared at the rifle, then I looked Kevin in the eyes.
  "You don't need to kill them," I said.
  There were moments of silence as Kevin and I looked each other in the eyes.
  "You'll get in a lot of trouble," I said.
  He put the rifle back under his bed.
  "You can go now," said Kevin.
  Kevin never did shoot Dax or Lou. He covered up the "graves" in his backyard.
  As an old guy I wonder why his parents let him dig those holes in the backyard in the first place.
  As an old guy I wonder why I didn't tell someone. Probably because I didn't want Kevin to shoot me.
  The last time I spoke to Kevin was that day in May 1972 when George Wallace was shot. Kevin was a big fan of George Wallace.
  I was sitting on my grandmother’s back porch when I saw Kevin walking down the street smoking a cigarette.
  "Hey Kevin," I called out to him. "Did you hear George Wallace got shot?'
  He stopped and looked at me.
  "That's sad," said Kevin.
  "I think he's just wounded," I said.
  He turned and walked away.
  For the rest of our school years Kevin hung around with a different bunch of kids. If we encountered each other we acted as if we were strangers, like we had never been friends. We graduated, I went to college, he joined the military.
  And then years later came the news that he was dead.
  I don't know what to make of it all.
  But when I hear news about a shooting at a junior high or middle school I remember Kevin.
  And I wonder....

-30-

*Names changed…

Tales From the Edge of the Earth: Found Notes

Picture of the actual factual note I found on the sidewalk in West Pensacola...

  The Lady of the House and I lived by the beach for two years. Actually we were a few miles from the beach but saying “we lived by the beach for two years” adds a sense of fun and frivolity to the experience of living in Pensacola, Florida.

  I used to walk our dogs every morning. I’d leave our West Pensacola home and stroll down the big boulevard that ran out of town off to Mobile. It was called Cervantes Street.

  One morning as me and the dogs took our stroll a folded piece of paper caught my eye.

  I reached down, picked it up and opened it…

“Hi Boo! Wot u been? 2 me nuthin. Just chillin –n- thinking bout u so bored. Miss u yo bad azz is green. Did u tell Cheldra sumthin bout Keyshawn –n- dnt let Nekeyla read our notes cuz all she do is tell everybody wat we be talkin bout 4 it take u so long 2 write me bac c if u can cum 2 mi hous dis weekend well mi gum hav no mo flavor so bye talk later kisses BYE BOO”

  I couldn’t bring myself to transcribe the rest…too many thoughts about the fate of the USA in the hands of folks who couldn’t spell or construct a sentence..

  I like found notes.

  To me, they’re a true view of the human condition.

  I mean it’s not like reading a diary or anything. I don’t know who wrote it and if they chucked the note to begin with what can it hurt?

  I used to save these writings…notes found while riding my bicycle, a folded piece of paper on the street catches the eye…notes found inside books at thrift stores…just notes I found. I was going to write something extensive about them, but didn’t.

  I remember the ones I tossed.

  There was the one I found in the street in Phoenix complete with a drawing of a scowling sun wearing shades and a spike-collared pit bull on a chain. Someone had written “The cop and the gangbanger,” a bit of writing devoid of punctuation that detailed a gangbanger making friends with a policeman and how the gangbanger didn’t know how to feel when the policeman shot and killed the gangbanger’s friend.

  There was the grocery list written by the person who…okay…maybe they were in school the day they taught the lesson on apostrophes but may have been daydreaming when they got to the part on proper usage. On the list were things like: “Tomatoe’s, tortilla’s, hamburger bun’s,” etcetera.

  One gem I found while perusing the pages of an old book at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Roswell. A guy had written a note to his significant other explaining his need to pleasure himself because “I’m not getting enough loving from you.” I got the picture from the writing that his significant other had walked in on him whilst he was having a “hand party.”

  I’ll always pick up a note off the ground just to see what people are up to.

  That is, unless, it’s covered with some weird schmutz.

 -30-

Tales of the Southwest: Can't Dance for Sh*t

  

  I did some checking before I started this story.

  I checked to see if an Albuquerque nightclub I went to 30 years ago was still around.

  Nope.

  Midnight Rodeo was torn down recently. 

  I don’t believe I’m wrong in saying Midnight Rodeo was a chain of country-themed nightclubs around The Golden West.  If not there were a bunch of nightclubs across The Great American Southwest with the same name in Tulsa, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, San Antonio, Houston, Austin and Albuquerque.

  I was new to the Duke City…I had a groovy pad…a studio apartment in an old motel on the city’s notorious Central Avenue.  It wasn’t half bad for $200 a month…it was right across the street from a Smith’s Supermarket and a movie theater cineplex.

  I had a job running heavy equipment at a construction project.

  Now it was time to find a girlfriend.

  So where else does a guy find a girlfriend than at nightclub and the club that seemed like just the place was Midnight Rodeo where Country music was the big thing.

  There was another popular club in town called Caravan East, about 30 blocks down the street from me on Central…but the guys on the construction job said it was basically a club for old farts.

  Yep, Midnight Rodeo was where I needed to go.

  So one October night I threw on my jeans, button-down collar shirt, grabbed a wad of cash, my Moose River camping hat modified with feather and decorative pins (like the one that was a tiny bottle of booze with the words “Liquor is Quicker” on it), my crepe soled chukka boots and headed for “da club,” country style.

My "Moose River" hat looked like this, except it was adorned with hat pins like these...

And I went out dancin' in a pair of these....

  I got to Midnight Rodeo and found the place packed.  I ordered up a beer from the bar and headed for the dance floor.  I thought I’d just hang out and watch for a bit.

  The most danceable country tunes of the day were blaring to a huge, crammed dance floor. 

  The thing that hit me was these people knew how to dance.  This was dancing like I’d never seen before…it beat the hell out of dancing at a hillbilly honky-tonk or bar dance back east in the mountains.

  I didn’t know what they called this dancing but it sure wasn’t like what I called “The Hillbilly Shuffle.”  The Hillbilly Shuffle was basically a guy and a girl leaning into each other and moving around the dance floor.  Nope, there was fancy footwork going on on this dance floor in Albuquerque.

  I finished my beer and made my move to do some dancing.

  “You wanna dance?” I asked a woman who looked about as old as me.

  “Sure,” said the blonde, and off we merged into the mass of humanity that was dancing round and round.

  Soon we were on the other side of the dance floor and my partner was setting me free.

  “You cain’t dance for shit,” she said smiling, and she was gone.

  “But…but,” I was talking to no one. 

  She was doing that fancy footwork dance and I was doing a mismatched Hillbilly Shuffle.

  I scanned the room again for another prospect.

  “I’ve been told I can’t dance for shit,” I said to my new prospect, a brunette.  “I was hoping you might give me some pointers.”

  The brunette looked me up and down.

  “I ain’t got time,” she said and with that she walked off.

  I found another prospect we walked out on the dance floor…she did her fancy footwork and me my Hillbilly Shuffle and she shuffled me right over to the other side of the room and let me go.

  “YOU CAN’T DANCE FOR SHIT,” came a voice, an older one that came with a cackling laugh.

  I looked around.

  There was an old woman with a beer and a cigarette.

  She was motioning me over to her table with her cigarette hand.

  “GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE, BOY,” she yelled.

  The old woman’s voice made me flash back to living with my grandmother 25 years earlier, her calling me in for supper.

  I made my way over to the woman’s table.  She leaned over, pulled out the chair next to her and patted the seat cushion with her hand holding the cigarette.  A little bit of ash fell off the tip on the seat vinyl.

    “SIT DOWN,” she yelled over the music.

  I dutifully sat down next to her.

  “I’ve been watching you, boy,” she said while chuckling.  She was probably a good 30 years older than me.  “Jesus Christ, where the hell are you from?”

  “Back east, back in the mountains,” I said with a measure of pride.

  “Damn,” she said, “I shoulda guessed.  I wasn’t far off.  I was going to say eastern Kentucky.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “That was about 100 miles west of me.”

  “You come in here with that damn hillbilly hat and those pussy shoes.”

  “Pussy shoes?”

  “Who the hell wears chukka boots anymore?  Damn.  Boy,” she said pointing at the dance floor with her fingers and her dwindling cigarette, “Look at what everyone’s wearing out there….”

  I looked out on the dance floor.

  “Cowboy boots,” I said.

  “No, not cowboy boots, BOOTS,” she looked me in the eyes.  “You go around calling a hat a ‘cowboy hat’ and your boots ‘cowboy boots’ folks around here gonna KNOW you’re from back east.”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Lose that damn hat next time you come here,” she said, “Save it for when you’re canoeing in Minnesota.  Go out and get you some ropers and a decent hat.”

  “Ropers?” I asked.

  “Boots good for dancin’,” she said.

  “What is that dancin’?” I asked pointing at the dance floor.

  “Two step,” she said, taking a drag on a newly lit cigarette.  “What the hell is that dancin’ you’re doin’?”

  “Hillbilly shuffle, I always called it,” I said.  I looked out on the dance floor and spotted this one woman who was light on her feet and doing a kind of dance/hopping around the floor.  I pointed, “What’s that dancing?”

  “Oh hell, I bet if you asked her it’d probably turn out she’s up here from Las Cruces.  They dance fancy down there.”

  The old woman took a drag off her cigarette.

  “Boy, if you’re gonna get a girl here you damn well better know how to two-step.  C’mon…” she said as she stood and stubbed out her smoke, “I’m gonna give you a dance lesson.”

  We held our hands like dance partners do.

  “NOW WATCH MY FEET,” she yelled over the music, “SEE?  DO THIS…STEP, TOUCH, STEP, TOUCH, WALK WALK AND REPEAT.”

  “STEP TOUCH, STEP TOUCH, WALK WALK,” I said loudly, “STEP TOUCH, STEP TOUCH, WALK WALK…”

  “LOOKIT THAT,” said the old woman, “LIKE A DUCK TO WATER.”

  She and I were making our way around the dance floor with me looking like I knew what I was doing.

  We made our way back to the table.

  “Well,” I said, “I sure appreciate your help.  What’s your name?”

  “I’m Sally,” she said, “I’m a retired hooker.”

  I my eyes opened wide.

  “Ha ha ha,” said Sally.  “You shoulda suspected something, not many women talk straight like me.”

  “Well,” I said, “I just thought you were a teacher or something.”

  “I thought I recognized a hillbilly when I saw one,” Sally said.  “I grew up in western North Carolina in the Smokies.  Came out west and made a lot of money ‘getting acquainted’ over the years with the boys at the air bases…Kirtland, Holloman.  I come here from time to time for the atmosphere.”

  I nodded.

  “Now tomorrow you get out and go get you some boots and don’t get no square-toed boots, dead giveaway you’re an easterner,” said Sally, “And get you a good hat.”

  Sally smiled and patted me on the back.

  I made my way through the crowd and headed for the door.

  I was done with my night on the town.

  Besides, I couldn’t dance for shit.

 

E P I L O G U E

  I didn’t go back to Midnight Rodeo.  It’s not that I didn’t like the place, it’s just that it was populated by people who just weren’t my “tribe.”  So much importance put on dancing just right wasn’t my cup of tea.

  Besides, when I tried dancing the two-step again I had trouble paying attention to my dance partner while I was watching my feet and saying, “step touch, step touch, walk walk…” in my head.

  I did find an enclave of my “tribe” in the mountains beyond the Sandia Mountains.  Back at the end of the ‘80’s the village of Madrid was home to a funky bar that had Bluegrass music on Saturdays.  I would make the drive to Madrid, kick back and listen to the tunes then mosey on back to Albuquerque.

  The construction job ended.  I got picked up for a part-time gig at a pop music radio station but my heart was hoping for a job that never came at the city’s big Country station.

  Then one night I picked up a radio station on the AM band blasting 50,000 watts of Country music joy out of Roswell…

  …and knew where I belonged.

-30-

Ain't no pins or feathers in my hat these days.....

Tales of the Southwest: A Workin' Man in Albuquerque

Albuquerque...looking east across downtown toward the Sandia Mountains

  

  I mentioned in a previous chapter that 2019 marks 30 years since I landed in New Mexico in the state’s largest city Albuquerque.

  While I came to town with a little nest egg of under $1000 it was dwindling fast…I had to put down a big chunk of change on a groovy li’l hippie pad in an old motel on Central Avenue…The Duke City’s notorious “main drag.”

  I went to the temp agencies in town and within a week I had a gig at minimum wage assembling giant-ass shelves at a janitorial supply warehouse.  When that assignment was done it was off to one of the city’s malls of the day to work with a bunch of other temp agency folks moving a J. C. Penney store from one mall to another.

  In the meantime I had my application in at the construction firm that seemed to be working on projects all over the city…“Dos Picachos Construction*.”

  As the days passed still no word from Dos Picachos.  I wanted a job with those guys because of the good money…$12 an hour versus the $4 an hour minimum wage temp jobs.  At the end of every week after I budgeted for rent I barely had enough for gas and groceries.

  There were more temp jobs:  Washing cars for a rental agency at the Albuquerque airport, scrubbing dried snot and spit off the walls of a nursing home and working a collections gig at the Duke City office of a credit card company.

  Finally the call came from Dos Picachos…I was in.  I’d be running what construction folks call a “pan.”  Most folks probably know it as an earthmover…the thing moves along the ground gathering dirt from one place and dumping it in another.

  I had to go do a drug test.  It would be my very first.

  Back then there had been stories about this food or that everyday drug making the results positive for marijuana or other illegal substances.  When the construction honchos sent me off to the medical center for the test they gave me a piece of paper with some guidelines.  It told about letting the lab people know if you’ve taken acetaminophen (read that as “Tylenol”) and some other medicines and foods. 

  Into the drug test office I went. 

  I quickly learned that the drug testing people took their drug testing business pretty seriously because when I joked that I’d been studying real hard for the test I was greeted with a cold blank stare.

  Of course if I’d given it some thought I might’ve realized the drug testing people heard that same lame quip bunches of times a day.

  The next day I reported to the work site.  Dos Picachos was doing a job for the railroad south of Albuquerque in Belen.

  I caused a little stir when I got there, what with having taken my first drug test and all I had questions…I’m also the kind of guy known for speaking before I think. 

  Before the shift, there was a meeting to go over what we were going to do on the project.  Then Jim, the foreman, asked if there were any more questions. 

  I raised my hand.

  “Did I pass my drug test?” I asked.

  All the other guys whipped their heads around to give me a stare.

  “Why,” said Ben, a co-worker, “do you take drugs?”  Ben was a young guy who had just moved to the Duke City from Silver City.  In a matter of days he and I would end up carpooling to and from the city to the jobsite during which I learned his beliefs that America was on a downhill slide and “the liberal media” was to blame.  Looking back on some of the things he talked about I suspect he was an early fan of Rush Limbaugh.  He also had an affinity for Metallica and Andrew Dice Clay.  But right then he was eyeing me with suspicion.

  “No,” I said, “it’s just that I’ve heard stories about drug tests getting fouled up.”

  “That’s just something made up by the liberal media,” Ben said.

  “If you tested positive,” Foreman Jim said, “we’d talk to you privately before the shift and send you home.”

  “Drug tests are always right,” proclaimed Ben.  “If they test positive, you use drugs, it’s just that simple.”

  And so the project began.  There were two shifts…the day shift ran from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the night shift worked from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.

  I was on the night shift…we worked under klieg lights and headlights.

  The crew was made up of a pretty good cross-section of the people of The Great American Southwest:  A handful of white guys or “Anglos,” the popular colloquialism for white folk in The Southwest.  There was a black guy who ran the bulldozer, a couple of Hispanic guys, a Native American woman blade operator from the Acoma Pueblo and Vicente, a Native American dude from the Laguna Pueblo.

  It was like the Chamber of Commerce propaganda said…Albuquerque was a place where diverse racial and ethnic groups work in harmony.

  Well…I wouldn’t call it harmony, but we all worked.

  I liked to listen to the Hispanic guys because of their language.  I found it fascinating how these two dudes would be talking in English and when they got excited about something they’d seamlessly switch into talking Spanish.  Spanish seemed a lot easier than the French I took in high school.

  One night the crew was sent home early.  It was Ben’s turn to drive us back to Albuquerque.  This night he got off the interstate on the city’s south side.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“This bookstore,” he said. “They have a peep show.”

  Ben went in.  I waited in the car…for a bit.  I always found adult bookstores a bit weird…I mean it’s not like there’s single women inside waiting for dates.  My curiosity overruled my…whatever…and soon I found myself in an itty-bitty room, strange stains on the wall,  a metal-covered window and a coin slot.  I put a quarter in the slot.

  Gears ground, the metal thingy rolled up to uncover a window that revealed a room with a lone dancer on pink shag carpet.

  Well, that dancer was missing an awful lot of her clothes.

  While hip-hop music throbbed in the room she danced over to my window and was gyrating this way, shimmying another way and twisting that way, thrusting her bare crotch and boobs at me.

  I started to laugh.  The whole thing was just flat-out funny to me.

  The woman stopped dancing.  She started laughing too…that made me laugh more.

  The laughing dancer backed up to sit on the lone chair in the room.  She missed and landed on the floor.  She laughed more.

  And then the metal thingy came down to cover the window.

I went outside and waited for Ben.

Minutes later he popped out the door.

We stood outside.

“YOU made the dancer laugh, didn’t you?” he asked. 

  “Yeah,” I said, chuckling.  “It was ridiculous. I’m in this creepy little room watching this dancer gyrate and shake on a pink shag carpet.  It was funny.  I reckon she thought something was funny too.”

  “You’re weird,” said Ben.

  “What the hell are we doing coming here anyway?” I said.  “You live with someone.”

  “Seeing this stuff makes me want her more,” Ben said.

  “And you call me weird,” I said as we got in the car and headed on in to town.

  I looked out the window.  I pondered the mostly naked chick in the peep show…she looked like she had a brain.  I wondered if she was working the peep show to pick up cash, working her way through college.

  In the days that followed we kept working on the project, dredging river dirt and building a new railroad bed with it.  The dirt was soft and mushy and I got stuck in it a lot.

  I had run heavy equipment in Florida and had no problem with getting out after getting stuck there.  This was not the case in the Rio Grande mud.  I’d get stuck and Foreman Jim would have to pull the dozer off its job and come over and push me out of the muck.

  One night I got stuck again.

  Next thing I knew a dirt clod exploded on the inside of my cab against the windshield.  Chunks of dirt flew all over me.

  I looked around to see where it came from.

  There was Foreman Jim, standing and glaring at me, his hands on his hips.

  I didn’t even think twice.

  I turned off my rig, got out and marched right up to Foreman Jim and stood there, towering over him.

  “What the hell was that about, boss?” I said loudly.

  “I’m God damned tired of you getting stuck,” he said loudly.

  “No need to throw shit at me, boss.”

  “I wanted to get your f*#king attention,” said Jim.  “You’re slowing down the project.”

  At mid-shift break I was eating and I heard the Anglo guy from the mountains talking about me.

  “I bet ol’ Stretch could’ve kicked ol’ Jim’s ass.”

  I turned to Mountain Man.

  “Talkin’ about me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Stretch,” said Mountain Man, he called me “Stretch,” “Yeah, we thought you were going to kick Jim’s ass.  We were expecting a good fight.”

  “Ain’t no sense in that,” I said.  “I just wanted to know why he thought it was so damn important to throw shit at me.  Besides I’d probably get my glasses broke if I fought him.”

  Another night Vicente wanted to fight me…

  Just because he didn’t like me.

  “I don’t like you,” said Vicente during mid-shift break.  He was standing over me as I sat having my “lunch.”  “I’m going to kick your ass.”

  I stood up and towered over him.

  “So,” I said.  “Just because you don’t like me you’re going to kick my ass.  That doesn’t make any sense.

  I sat back down.

  “YOU DISSIN’ ME, ASSHOLE?” yelled Vicente.

  “No, Vicente,” I said.  “I don’t want to fight you.  I’ll probably get my glasses broken anyway.”

  I went back to eating.

  Vicente went away and left me alone.

  Three nights later Vicente walked up to me at mid-shift break.

  “You and I drive the same make car,” said Vicente.  “My tire’s flat…can I borrow your spare?”

  I laughed a bit.

  “Sure, buddy,” I said.  “We’ll get it when the shift’s over.”

  The project ended in January.

  There was no work for a few weeks.

  Ben called me one day, asked what I was doing.

  “Doing temp work, working at the credit card company, 5 bucks an hour,” I said.  “What’re you doing?”

  “Waiting for my unemployment,” he said.

  “I’ve never gotten unemployment,” I said.  “I didn’t know I could get it.”

  “Yeah,” said Ben.  “I won’t work for less than 8 bucks an hour.”

  I was just glad to get a job.

  That was the only work I ever did for Dos Picachos.

  Not long after talking with Ben I found out a bunch of the crew got called back for a project right in Albuquerque.

  I was not called back…didn’t know why...really didn’t care.

  I had gotten a job back in radio.

  Radio bosses don’t throw dirt clods at you.

  Not usually, anyway.

-30-

*All names changed.

Appalachian Tales: Whatever Happened to That Guy?

  I’ve only been truly challenged to a fistfight once in my life.
  I’ve worked at avoiding them mostly because I didn’t want to get my glasses broken.
  It was back when I was in the 8th grade, junior high school. What it was all about is lost in time to me. I do know I had gotten tired of the “jocks” hassling me and I stood up to a member of their clique, Reggie Howell.
  “Meet me after school, I’ll kick your ass,” Reggie said.
  “Where and when,” I said.
  He just stared at me.
  “Okay,” I said, “Four o’clock in the big field behind Berkowitz’s house.”
  Berkowitz was one of the school jocks, but he was more easygoing than the others. Berkowitz was standing there, so was Randy Thomas who liked to bounce basketballs off the top of my head when I wasn’t looking.
  When school was done for the day I rode my bicycle home, had a snack and went out to the big field behind Berkowitz’s house.
  There was Berkowitz, there was Thomas. 
  Reggie was nowhere to be seen.
  “You didn’t bring your pal?” I asked them.
  “This is all up to him,” said Thomas. “If he wants to wuss out, he wusses out on his own.”
  Berkowitz looked around and smiled. “I guess you win by default,” said Berkowitz.
  The two of them turned and walked away.
  “Maybe I won’t bounce balls off your head anymore, McGee,” Thomas said without turning around.
  And you know, he never did again. And Reggie never mouthed off to me again.
  Then one day here in the future I got to wondering whatever became of those guys. So with the help of the Internet, Great and Powerful, I looked them up.
  Berkowitz became a software information technology dude. Thomas runs one of those publication companies that make regional magazines.
  And Reggie Howell is dead.
  Reggie Howell has been dead for over 20 years.
  And he died in a fashion I wouldn’t wish on anyone: He was at the wrong end of a shotgun.
  The details were all there on the internet.
  Reggie at age 38 had become the boyfriend of a woman he worked with. She was married to an older guy approaching 50. That guy, Keith Wilson, had been in Vietnam, had worked for the railroad and become disabled.
  Keith’s wife Lorrie made it public that Keith was abusive and she’d had enough. Lorrie left Keith and took their two little girls with her.
  The old newspaper article posted in the local university’s archives was well written, it told the tale of Keith turning to whiskey after Lorrie left. “It was just to calm him down,” a brother told the reporter. “It’s not like he was a drunk.”
  Lorrie had been out of Keith’s house for about 6 weeks, she had filed for divorce and outlined the terms for child support. She was still letting him see his girls.
  It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in May when Lorrie went to a local bar to pick her girls up from visiting with their father. She took Reggie along with her because Keith made her scared.
  Two men inside the bar told the tale: They heard a “pop” outside. They went to the window and saw a man lying bloody in the parking lot. There was another man who had his over and under shotgun pointed at a woman…and he fired, she fell to the ground. While one of the patrons went to go call the cops the other watched as the man chased his screaming little girls, shooting one, then the other. The man then got in his car and drove away.
  Keith went home and as he sat in his car in his driveway blew his brains out with a pistol.
  Reggie Howell was dead, so was Lorrie.
  Keith and Lorrie’s daughters, ages 7 and 9, spent some time in the hospital but both recovered and went off to live with a wealthy uncle in Richmond.
  After reading all this I leaned back in my chair and pondered how life goes.
  I pondered Reggie’s fate.
  I pondered two children, now fully grown, and pondered the scars they must have.
  I pondered what would make a man decide that killing people, even trying to kill his own children, was an acceptable choice.
  And then I thought that I’m probably glad I don’t know.

-30-

*All names, except mine, have been changed.