The Cyanide Hole

My landlady loves to feed the birds. Outside my north window are nine feeders, each of them full of one concoction or another, all of them put there to tempt wild birds. In season (and in no particular order) we host Purple Grackles, Boat-Tailed Grackles, European Starlings, Robins, Cardinals, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, Ladder-Backed Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Red Breasted Woodpeckers, English Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows, White-Crowned Sparrows, Indigo Buntings, Bluebirds, Nuthatches, Black-Capped Chickadees, Gold Finches, House Finches, House Wrens, Hummingbirds, Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Baltimore Orioles — and if I’ve left any out it’ll be some of those I haven’t seen for a day or two. Those I’ve listed are here most every day of late.

The Orioles and the Finches are my favorites. The orange blaze of the Orioles, the fiery yellows and reds the Finches flash absolutely thrill me when I see them whizzing across the spring-green lawn. The Finches — dozens of them — come for Niger thistle seed. The Orioles (I’ve counted six cocks this year.) flock in for fruit and sugar: they love sliced fresh oranges and (Of all things!) grape jelly. Landlady buys big, economy-sized jars of the cheapest grape jelly she can find. She puts the jelly in a pie tin and sets it out atop the clothes-line pole, and the Orioles just go nuts for it. They slurp down quarts of the stuff every week. All of them have purple beaks.

I told Landlady the other day she should put instant coffee crystals in the jelly. The Orioles are so buzzed on sugar already that the addition of caffeine to their diet might cause spontaneous Oriole combustion. It would be kinda neat to see one of those bright orange boogers go screeching across the lawn and explode KABOOM! in midair. It’d be a holenuther take on the Roman candle. Maybe we could win the $100,000 prize (or whatever they pay) for the wildest home videos on that TV show Landlady likes to watch.

She says “Not.” So we’re still broke and always will be, I guess.

Landlady has a special syrup feeder just for Hummingbirds. Thing about that is, the syrup draws bees, too. And Hummingbirds are such wee creatures that bee-sting can kill them. The Hummers know it: they’re afraid of bees. Still, baby Hummers must be fed. So it’s always a show to watch Mr. & Mrs. Hummer battle the bees for their sweets. And if Mrs. Hummer, by herself, gets into a brawl with more bees than she can handle, her tiny mate will come rocketing into the scrum and draw the bees away from her. It’s a fine, brave, thrilling thing to watch little Mr. Hummer risk death to save his true love, and it happens here at least once a week during summer.

I’ve been to air shows. I’ve seen top-gun fighter jocks do awesome tricks with planes, and every one of those tricks has a descriptive name: the barrel roll, the loop, the falling leaf, and other such. Now I’m here to tell you that when hot-shot Hummers and bad-ass bees get into an aerial dogfight, they do all those fighter-jock tricks and then some. They do jaw-dropping, clock-stopping things for which there are no descriptive names, partly because those things defy description and partly because some of them happen too fast for the eye to follow.

Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and Starlings all go for suet. The manufacturers sell suet filled with bugs & worms, or seeds, or bits of fruit. Landlady puts out two or three blocks of the stuff at least twice a week. The rest of the birds seem happy with black-oil sunflower seed, and Landlady feeds about 50 lbs. of the sunflower seed every month.

I don’t know what other people feed birds, but our birds don’t seem to like that “wild-bird mix” of seeds that many stores sell. If Landlady buys that stuff, our birds pick the sunflower seeds out of the mix and leave the rest. The millet (and whatever else is in there) sits in the feeders for months (if we allow it) while our birds go looking (I suppose) for sunflower seed in other people’s yards. They don’t have to look far; most everyone in our town feeds them.

Orioles are spectacular, as I’ve already mentioned. Robins and Jays and Starlings and Blackbirds and Grackles are pretty but, on the whole, our bigger birds seem less showy than our small ones. And if the violence of the Hummers and the Finches is occasionally comic, violence between the bigger birds often takes on a darker hue.

For example: I once saw a mated pair of Mourning Doves peck a third dove to death on the ground beneath the feeders. If the third bird was sick or injured or something, I do not know. I just know that the mated pair worried her viciously for about 45 minutes before one of them sent in a telling lick that either killed her outright or knocked her unconscious. She went down limp and never moved for the rest of the day. Dove cocks came by several times and violated the inert body. The poor thing was still there next morning, when I went out and picked it up and threw it in the trash.

Two cocks — one a Blue Jay and the other a Robin — once got into a short scrap I’d gleefully pay $20 to see again. The way it was, Mr. & Mrs. Blue Jay both got up on the wrong side of the nest. They were all over the feeders, bullying and harrying the smaller birds. In a matter of minutes they drove all the others away from the food.

Mr. Jay then perched on top of the clothesline pole like King Kong on the Empire State Building. He puffed himself up and screamed his primacy — but not for long.

Cock Robin was perched, watching, unseen, in the tippy-top of a 30-foot tree on the other side of the yard. He dropped off his perch like a stone and came howling down, gaining speed in a power dive. He hauled out of his dive within inches of the ground and, skimming across the grass, pulled up sharply and used all of his momentum to slam that big, solid, red breast of his right into Mr. Blue Jay’s soft, nougaty center. Splat!

I’d estimate that Cock Robin was doing all of 40 mph when he threw that body check. The big Jay never even saw it coming. The impact slammed Mr. Jay off the clothesline pole and three or four feet backward, where the Jay fell to earth on his neck and shoulders, pissy end up.

Mr. Robin stood quietly on the pole and watched while the Jay used about 30 seconds to regain his feet and put himself back into a shaky semblance of working order. Then the Jay and his spouse flew away, and we didn’t see them any more last year. They are back, now, but they are much better behaved.

We humans, when we encounter a stupid person, often label him or her “bird-brained.” I now believe the term is inaccurate because birds, I’ve found, are not stupid creatures. All of those who feed here know who feeds them and where to find her. When the feeders are empty, some go to the window ledge in front of Landlady’s desk and peck at the glass. I’ve seen a cock Oriole stand in the empty jelly tin, out on the clothesline pole, and pantomime slurping grape jelly. His head (with beak open) dipped down into the pan. His head then came up (beak closed), and he worked his jaws vigorously while he kept one beady eye focused on Landlady’s window. Sparrows fly up to the glass, bumping and fluttering against the pane until they draw some attention. Woodpeckers perch on the suet feeders and stare hopefully at the house. When Landlady goes out to the feeders, the birds perch on the eaves and watch what she does. When I go out to the feeders, the birds fly away until I go elsewhere.

Every year the eggs hatch. Every year the mated pairs bring the fledglings to the feeders and show them where and how to get their groceries. I sometimes get a kick imagining conversations that might take place if birds could talk like humans:

Ma Starling (perched on a tray of sunflower seed): “This here’s the grocery store and the diner, kids. This is where you go when yer hongry. The humans will always feed you.”

Johnny Starling: “Are you sure about that, Ma? Why would humans want to feed us all the time?”

Pa Starling: “Well, Johnny, it’s a funny thing and I can’t figger it out myse’f. Near’s I can tell, humans jus’ like to be abused. Every day we fly over here and crap all over everything. We steal most of their groceries and throw the rest on the ground. We call ‘em filthy names when they let the buffet run empty. We rattle their windows and kill the grass hereabouts and drive their cats plumb loco. What goes on b’tween birds and humans really don’t make no sense, but I try not to worry about it. The food here is the best I ever had, an’ it’s easy to git, so I just keep comin’ back. You will, too, if yer smart.”

Suzy Starling: “Gee, Pa! What will happen if the humans ever get wise and quit feeding us?”

Pa: “Why, we’ll have to go back to eatin’ like we allus et b’fore!”

Johnny: “How did we always eat before, Pa?”

Pa: “Uh — to tell the truth, son, it’s been so long since I et like we allus et b’fore that I fergot how we allus et b’fore. Great Grampa use’ ta tell about flyin’ out to a pasture and perchin’ on the back of a cow until the cow got inspired.

Johnny: “What’s ‘inspired,’ Pa?”

Pa: “That’s what happens to cows that git bored with life. They git frustrated ‘cuz they can’t think of anythin’ interestin’ to do. That’s when they git inspired.

“Anyways, Great Grampa allus said that after the cow got inspired, you could hop down off the cow an’ git a nice, hot lunch by pickin’ bits o’ grain out o’ the cow’s inspiration.”

Suzy: “Inspiration? What’s ‘inspiration’?”

Pa: “It’s what Great Grampa allus said.”

Ma: “Trust us, kids! Our way is better.”

There seems little doubt that Ma Starling is right: When humans feed birds, birds eat more and better than they can possibly get in the wild. What happens to birds that have never made their way in the wild, what becomes of birds — birds that, through two or three generations, depended entirely upon humans for their eats — when events they cannot fathom suddenly deprive them of commercial bird food is a thing I do not know.

I hope I never have to make a comparable adjustment.

Chris Floyd has a new post up on Empire Burlesque. He calls it Insurgent Son: Jesse James and the Crucible of American Character, and he writes to praise the latest life of Jesse James by biographer T.J. Stiles. Reading Chris often gives me food for thought, and so it was in this case.

I was in St. Joseph, MO, ten years back. I had a few hours to kill and no earthly idea what to do. So I went to visit the last home of Jesse James, where the infamous “dirty little coward” “shot ‘Mr. Howard’ and laid poor Jesse in his grave.”

The story told at the tiny museum is that Jesse was shot through the head from behind. The .44 cal. ball, fired from a Smith & Wesson “Schofield” revolver, passed through Jesse’s head and into the wall of the parlor.

The bullet hole is still there, and it’s plainly visible. If the bullet is still in the wall I do not know but cannot believe, for there is one thing about that bullet hole: it is not a grim or gruesome reminder of a 125-year-old murder (as you might expect it would be) but is instead ridiculous. That’s because many thousands of curious people have visited the house since Jesse James (Mr. Howard) was killed there, and visitors with pocket knives cut slivers from the edges of the bullet hole to keep as souvenirs. Management of the home finally put up a barrier to keep folks away from the hole, but not before the half-inch bullet hole was reamed out to the size of a basketball.

Looking at the huge hole in Mr. Howard’s wall, I was reminded of those dipshits who swiped the headstone of William Bonney (Billy the Kid) from his grave in New Mexico and carted it off to Los Angeles where, no doubt, they had many a good laugh while entertaining their friends with the story of the prank they had pulled.

If you’re put together like me, you’ve gotta wonder who was/is more desperate: the legendary desperados who robbed those trains and killed all those people or the pathetic putzes so desperate for something to brag on that they stoop to steal the tiniest dying echo of a better man’s thunder.

Ain’t that America? Ain’t it a shame?

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Journalist James Howard Kunstler has an excellent post up on Atlantic Free Press right now. I liked it so much that I wrote a rather long comment. And now I think about it, I like my comment so much that I’ve posted it below. I call it

Yuppies and Dopes

S ometimes I think “yuppie” came out of the so-called drug war. Neanderthal drug laws ran the price of dope up so far that a poor freak had to get a career in order to pay for a righteous high. I remember when, down along the Mexican border, we used to get four-finger bags of Panama Red for $10. Then the DEA came along and all of a sudden the price of pot went to $50 for a weighed ounce (one finger) of not-very-good shit. Smokers used to be happy with a bag of brown Mexican reefer, a bottle of Strawberry Hill and a sack of potato chips. All of a sudden we were overrun by people who affected thaistick, oenology, and cheesemongery. And by DEA agents.

I really don’t know how it all happened even though I watched it happen, and I watched the people I partied with change until I didn’t want to party with them any more. I started smoking pot because I saw that people at pot parties were smart and hip and heavily into alternatives. I quit smoking pot when I found myself immersed in the same commercial culture I had rejected before I came to the party. But for a while, there, I smoked a 69-cent corncob pipe in the midst of a crowd who smoked hundred-dollar bongs.

Since that epiphany, I’ve watched in horrified fascination while the sequels play out around me. The cooptive power of mainstream commercial culture to me seems utterly stupefying. I cannot speak for Jim Kunstler; it’s not my place to defend him; and he’s more than capable of defending himself. But I believe I understand some of his thinking because I believe he is like me in some ways.

I hate the things, the ways of doing and being, the policies, the systems, the ideologies that rape the planet and kill people. I’m frustrated by my inability to change things and by my seeming inability to absolutely avoid participation in all aspects of the system, to stop or to get off of what I know is a hellbound train. I keep waiting for the rest of the passengers to wake up to the situation; I’m sure that by working together we could be effective, but I can’t draw their attention to the fact that we’re headed for a train wreck if we don’t do something collectively.

So I write and occasionally publish criticism. I write to Congress. I sign petitions and sometimes, outside of a shopping mall, I ask the public to sign petitions as they walk in to buy their iphones and their digital cameras. Sometimes they do sign — but I get the feeling they forget about signing before their signatures are dry, and I KNOW that the signers don’t think of themselves as I think of them and of myself, as participants in, as abettors of planetary disaster. In times when I’m most frustrated, I feel like some sort of post-modern Cassandra, a gifted storm-crow to whom nobody listens. At my lowest, a certain meanness gets hold of my mind and I blame others for being unable to do for themselves what I cannot do for my own self.

Twenty-five hundred years ago a Greek said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Today we might say self-knowledge is hard work that few are willing (or equipped) to undertake.

I live in a room full of books in a shack along the Wapsipinicon River. I heat the place with a small wood stove. I drive a rusty old, 4-cylinder Chevy pickup when I drive at all — which isn’t often. If my head is in the right place, I’m content with the fact that when I leave the planet, the footprints I leave behind will be mighty small indeed. If my head is in the wrong place, I want a wad of money and a shiny new Porsche and a lot more books, and I know that whatever happens to the rest of you won’t be MY fault, and damn you all to hell for wrecking the joint despite my best advice and all my good intentions.

The Sixties are definitely over and, no matter how much I hope for it, the American people will never wake up to the idea that we were on the right path back then. I’ve grown my hair back to remind them of the fact but still, they don’t get the message. So to the clueless millions I say: “If you find yourself unhappy with the situation you’re in when the train finally jumps the track, just suck it up, assholes.” And thanks, Jim Kunstler, for another fine essay.

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Anybody who wonders why former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (now famous as a liar, cheat, coward, mass murderer and shameless, bumsucking sycophant) always got away with his crimes need wonder no longer. Blair’s crimes have caught up with him, at last.

Brits traditionally punish otherwise untouchable, upper-crust criminals by locking them in chains of irony, and so they have done in Blair’s case. British author John Morrison parodies the story of Blair’s career in the style of that icky, gooey, “muscular Christian” gibberish that passed for children’s literature in the Victorian era. Morrison’s book is titled Anthony Blair, Captain of School: a Story of School Life by an Old Boy (Black Pig Books: Kent, UK; 2005; $41.00).

Lovers of the Flashman novels, which are inspired and informed by Tom Brown’s School Days, already know how funny such stuff can be. A wonderful discovery awaits the rest of you.

The column at right appears in the book review section of This England (Fall, 2007), a quarterly magazine devoted to lavish, four-color pictorial essays about the English countryside. Of Morrison’s book, the editors had this to say:

In the preface to his delicious political satire, John Morrison pays tribute to “the master of creative fiction at whose feet I learned so much. I mean, of course, Tony Blair.” It sets the tone for a caustic parody of a Prime Minister whose true legacy, for all his final grandstanding, is now widely seen to be not any real achievements domestically and abroad but the monumental deceit, spin, manipulation and plain lying that has become the hallmark of his years in power.

Morrison parallels the progress of Mr. Blair through his Downing Street years with that of a young chap making his way through Edwardian public school, writing in the style of the day’s popular boys’ magazines. Among the characters we meet along the way are Cherie Blair, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, John Prescott, Gordon Brown and George Bush, all of whom play their part in a career that, from the opening episode, “A New Boy With Promise”, to the last, “The Stormy Petrel”, descends from self-deluding optimism to black despair.

At the end Blair sinks drowning in an African river after being chased by natives, his last vision not of Cherie but a carving knife cutting into a joint of meat “and behind it, a pair of staring eyes. It was the grocer’s daughter.” Read this book — every page is a joy.
(259 pp, hardback)

Staunchly conservative, acerbically understated, militantly eccentric and proud of itself for being so, This England stands ecstatically for Horatio Nelson and the British cultural heritage while it blows against creeping Eurocentrism and the steady erosion of British sovereignty. This England is stiff upper lip, tea, crumpets, marmalade, kippers, all of that writ large and God save the Queen. The photos, like British irony, are exquisite.

This blog entry is strictly for your information. I wish I could tell you that I’ve read Anthony Blair myself. I cannot. What I can say is that I’m going to read it soon. If This England likes it, I’m sure I will too.

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The Bush mob makes no secret of its wish to destroy the government of Iran. Toward that end, the Bush White House has set in train a media campaign to build public support for an attack by U.S. forces on the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Sept. 13, the latest boom from Bush’s war drum sounded in an AP article that was featured without analysis in The Wall Street Journal and in other “news” organs that collectively comprise the pro-Bush media orchestra. Among other things, the article reports that:

“The U.S. said a fatal attack two days ago against a major U.S. military base in Iraq was carried out using a type of weapon provided to Shiites by Iran.

“Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said military experts had so far determined that the 240 mm rocket’s markings and manufacture were ‘consistent with’ Iranian produced munitions. He insisted the U.S. had a ‘good sense’ of the rocket’s source. He said Shiite extremist leaders under U.S. detention had acknowledged that Iranian Quds Force operatives were providing 240 mm rockets to Shiite militias.

“’Can I hold up a piece of fragment today that has a specific marking on it that traces this back to Iranian making?’” he said. ‘At this moment I can’t do that, but explosive experts — as I said — are still analyzing all the different fragments that they have gathered.’ He added that the rocket was a type of weapon that Shiite extremists ‘have received from Iranian sources in the past and used against coalition forces.’

“Gen. David Petraeus said Wednesday that the U.S. military had ‘very, very clear’ evidence of Iranian involvement in such attacks. ‘It certainly has contributed to a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.’”

In a bow to objectivity, the article also notes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejects U.S. charges that Iran is meddling in Iraq.

Now I don’t believe Ahmadinejad and neither should you, because Ahmadinejad is clearly lying. One knows Ahmadinejad is lying if one merely stops to think what the truth would be if the strategic shoe were on the other foot. Suppose China invaded Mexico, for example, and China charged that U.S. commandos were interfering with Chinese operations in Mexico and that the U.S. was arming Mexican insurgents and killing Chinese soldiers. Would anyone then believe the president of the United States if he denied the accusation?

The answer is obvious. Our Uncle Sam would do the same as Iran if our Uncle Sam found himself in a similar situation. America’s economic and strategic interests and its ethnic makeup would dictate such an action, just as Iran’s economic and strategic interests and religious/ethnic makeup dictate Iran’s involvement in Iraq. Seen in that light, Iran’s meddling in Iraq is justified, and U.S. complaints of Iranian involvement in Iraq are both hypocritical and ridiculous. Our Uncle Sam in this case looks like the schoolyard bully who went crying to the teacher and tattled because one of his victims had a friend who dared to hit him back.

On the other side, Generals Bergner and Petraeus charge that Iran supplies munitions to Iraqi insurgents, and that Iranian weapons help the insurgents kill and maim more American troops every day. I believe the generals, absolutely. I’m certain they are telling the truth. Unfortunately for America and Americans, the AP story is written in such a way that it twists even true statements into lies.

The trick is turned by omitting context: If you read and interpret the story literally, you see that American troops are being killed with weapons supplied by a foreign government. The inference is that Iran has no right to interfere with U.S. interests in Iraq. The article aims to make you angry, so angry you do not see that the same charge could be leveled against the United States: Iraqi citizens are being killed with weapons supplied by the U.S. government, which is a foreign government that has no right to interfere with Iraqi interests in Iraq.

Generals Bergner and Petraeus and the AP wire would have Americans believe that many American casualties in Iraq are hapless victims of Iranian meddling. But the real situation is that the Iraqis don’t want Uncle Sam in Iraq and have said so publicly. The Iraqi government — which Uncle Sam set up and claims to support — tells Uncle Sam that the Iranis are friends of Iraq who are in Iraq by invitation. Clearly, then, it is our Uncle Sam and our American troops who are meddling in Iraq and most emphatically not the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Stories of Iranian meddling in Iraq that don’t frame the issue in that broader perspective are lies of omission. They are lies told toward a threefold purpose: 1) justify to the world an American attack on Iran; 2) make Americans angry enough to support such an attack; 3) stiffen the spines of the few who still support Bush but are now reluctant to follow the leader who bungled Iraq to another bungle in Iran.

Don’t listen to stories that beat the drum for another, bigger, more costly war. Demand context. If you’re not getting context from your usual news sources, look around for other sources that report in depth. You’re being systematically lied to in ways you won’t realize if you don’t read widely and think about what you read.

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A lot of people argue about Bush’s legacy. How will history perceive him? I’ve had a word or two to say about that myself on occasion, but I will add now that Bush’s legacy is clearer than ever before. However many millions he has killed or will kill, however much he and his have stolen and spoiled, however badly he may have loused up the world, he has accomplished at least one positive thing: George W. Bush will be remembered as the guy who ripped the wraps off of the American Dream and exposed it to the world for precisely what it is and always has been.

Over on Empire Burlesque, Chris Floyd writes today that achieving meaningful, positive change from within the American fascist system is impossible, and he is right about that. But Chris is wrong, I believe, if he thinks that Bush is the one who made change impossible. Change — meaningful, positive change — has been impossible in America at least since the death of JFK and probably, I think, since the onset of World War Two.

The assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, the police riots in Chicago in 1968, the murders at Kent State, all of those events were political spasms, the death throes of American democracy. Some of the people who divorced themselves from radicalism after Chicago, those who vowed to “work for change within the system,” today are those Democrats who bought American fascism as a concept and now (not to put words in Chris’s mouth) have sold their country to corporate murderers.

It was Funkadelic who, in 1972, named their latest album “America Eats its Young.” The title was keenly perceptive, as time has shown. American fascism has indeed consumed the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and many, many other leaders whose potential once seemed so great.

There is no stopping it now, as Chris has written. It will run its course however long that takes, becoming worse and ever worse until eventually, as it did in Germany, Italy and Japan, it destroys itself by bringing the weight of the world down upon its own greedy, murderous head.

All we can hope for is to survive the deluge and that George W. Bush, by finally laying bare the American Dream and burying our constitutional republic, will sow the seeds of his own destruction and — all unawares — pave the way for peace on earth.

The eloquence of Chris Floyd has a celestial ring — but it’s probably better if I let Chris speak for himself. So you should go to Empire Burlesque and read his article, Post-Mortem America: Bush’s Year of Triumph and the Hard Way Ahead.

WARNING! If you’re one of those who sits around waiting for Madam Pelosi and her whoreHouse to rescue America from George W. Bush and his band of fascist loonies, you’ll find that what Chris has written is interesting, but you probably will not enjoy it.

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A person who read my review of Al Gore in another venue writes to me –

– Who would be able to save our republic?

– Jimmy,

– I have not read “Assault on Reason”. Not that I have not or do not plan to ever read another political book. Your critique did seem clear-headed and objective. If I ever do read that book my opinion will, I am sure be colored by your review.

– On the subject of saving our republic, what do you think of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul?

I replied as follows:

We need someone who understands what we’re up against.

The simple fact about the crises America presently faces is that we’re at the ass-end of several paradigms. We’ve hit the wall that defines the limits of what our old models of capitalism, republicanism and democracy can do for us. In fact, and to the extent that we’ve run into problems for which the old models offer no solutions, some of the ideas that once made us great now actually hurt us. Anybody who says we can fix the current system is either a fool or another ruthless, power-mad snake-oil salesman — perhaps both.

Ron Paul, as I’m told, is a libertarian. That means he has a few good ideas and plenty of bad ones. Kucinich is what passes for a liberal these days — which is saying that he’s like Ron Paul in at least one way: he’s a guy with a few good ideas and plenty of bad ones. Either man would be better than the one we’ve presently got, because George W. Bush doesn’t have — NEVER had — even one good idea.

Magna Carta happened when the British people got sick of tyranny. The American Revolution happened when Americans got sick of tyranny. The French Revolution(s) happened when the French got sick of tyranny. The Russian and Chinese revolution(s) happened when the Russians and the Chinese got sick of tyranny. The Iron Curtain came down, revolts happened in Poland and Romania and elsewhere when people got sick of tyranny.

People in those foreign lands have made plenty of mistakes since they threw out their tyrants. But every time they make a mistake they pick themselves up and try again. True freedom and democracy are always works in progress. We’re in trouble here in America because somewhere along the line we got the idea that our system was perfect. But the fact is that it ain’t perfect. No system can be perfect for the simple reason that progress happens and things change. What worked yesterday won’t always work tomorrow. America won’t get better until Americans get sick of the system that doesn’t work any more and take to the streets demanding change.

Things will get worse before they get better. In our present situation, that’s the one thing we can all depend on. So just hang loose. Don’t listen to crazy bastards who wave Bibles and pray to dead Jews. Don’t believe jerks who say we need to raise or lower somebody’s taxes or hire more cops or build more daycare centers or give free abortions to space aliens.

Just hang loose, like I said. Stock up on groceries and tools. Learn to bake bread, and make friends with your neighbors. Work together. Do what you have to do when the time comes — and when the time comes, you’ll know what you have to do.

Peace, love, hope!

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Jimmy’s Foreword

Lately I’ve been hankering to write something good about the drug war. Then it came to me that I’ve already written something good about the drug war.

The piece that follows ran as an op-ed in The Cedar Rapids Gazette away back in 1999. It provoked the wrath of my neighbors, who complained to me that I was hurting their property values — this at the same time they were complaining about the shootings.

Mr. Steven J. Rapp, then the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, was enraged by the item. He dropped by a meeting of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association just long enough to call me a liar and a defeatist. Then he stomped out indignantly, with his snotty nose high in the air. So I’m sure the item was effective.

The piece also ran online in The Progressive Populist in March 1999. I’ve looked at it and decided it’s probably still current. If as you read the item you don’t think of Wellington Heights or Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but just plug in the name of a bad neighborhood in your area, it’ll probably work for you.

 

Tough but Tired: End the War on Drugs

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa: 1999 — Wellington Heights is one of the oldest and most beautiful neighborhoods in this once-peaceful city. Today, Wellington Heights is a combat zone.

On a warm Sunday evening last fall, I was enjoying a glass of iced tea on the front steps of my home when a firefight erupted on the corner of 4th Ave. and 15th St., just 50 yards from where I sat. The single, vicious pop of a small-bore pistol was followed instantly by the awful thunder of rapid fire from a much heavier weapon: POW-POW-POW-POW-POW-POW, six shots.

One round from the big gun ripped through trees above my head. Leaves and twigs rattled down. I rolled onto my belly and low-crawled into my living room, where I grabbed the phone and punched 911. My neighbors must have had the same idea, because the line was busy. By the time I got 911 to ring a helicopter buzzed overhead, lights flashed, sirens whooped maniacally and the area seethed with cops on foot.

The police found nothing and arrested no one. That’s not to say the cops were lazy or disinterested. There was nothing the police could do because the bad guys left before the good guys arrived, and those of us who volunteered what we knew didn’t see the shooters. Officers took the name, address and phone number of everyone who offered information. They patrolled the neighborhood until things got quiet. A couple of hours later, with cops prowling outside, I felt safe enough to go to bed.

That was neither the first nor the last of the shootings that occurred in this area since I moved here at the end of August. Cedar Rapids police say they’ve reacted to 25 reports of shots fired in Wellington Heights in 1998. At least one of those other shootings was as close to me as the one I just told of. When they happen, they are terrifying. Small wonder gunfire is a hot topic at Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association (WHNA) meetings. Folks want to know how police plan to stop the violence.

Cops respond to such questions (police and fire officials maintain a high profile at WHNA meetings) by urging us to patience and increased cooperation with their effort. They assure us that they’re doing all they can. Most of us believe them–I certainly do. They are persuasive because their actions support what they say. When we call them they are with us in moments, and they lock up a lot of thugs and crooks. Cedar Rapids’ “blues” are thus proud of themselves and proudly call attention to their work.

At a WHNA meeting on the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 8, police handed us a flyer bearing the seal of the U.S. Department of Justice. The flyer told us that Ellery Williams, male, formerly of 1721 3rd Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, is convicted of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine. Williams could receive anything from a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and 8 years of supervised release to a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $4 million fine. Two additional flyers told us that Raydell Lacey and Deea Maxwell, both female, formerly of Wellington Heights, are convicted of selling drugs. Both women received “10 years and 1 month in prison” plus, in Lacey’s case, 8 years of supervised release. Maxwell’s prison term will be followed by 5 years of supervised release. All three flyers boasted that “There is no parole in the federal system.” A “Neighborhood Victim Impact Statement” attached to the Williams flyer asks:

1. PHYSICAL IMPACT: Due to drug dealing in your neighborhood, have you, or your neighbors, or anyone in your family been assaulted or hurt? Has anyone been robbed, mugged, or shot?

2. EMOTIONAL IMPACT: Due to drug dealing, how has your neighborhood changed? Has your safety been affected? How is the neighborhood different?

3. FINANCIAL IMPACT: Has drug dealing in your neighborhood caused any financial loss? Has anything been stolen from your house, apartment, or business? Has an act of vandalism taken place, such as graffiti?

Police at the meeting urged us to write responses to those questions and send them to the U.S. Attorney. Further, we were urged to attend Williams’ sentencing hearing and make our feelings known. We were told that our doing so would help the judge and the prosecutor understand the impact of drugs on our neighborhood and inspire them to hand Williams a stiffer sentence.

My gut response was: “What rot! ‘There is no parole in the federal system.’ Instead they have ’supervised release.’ Well, I don’t give a damn if the U.S. Attorney’s office wants to play games with semantics! As long as those dope-dealing asses are off the streets for 10 years minimum, that’s good enough for me!” My neighbors, I’m sure, felt the same way. We’ve grown tough on crime in Wellington Heights. You would, too, if you lived here.

Now I’ve had a chance to think it over, my feelings are different. For plain as all of that is, what’s plainer still is that being tough on crime won’t solve the problem. Consider:

It has been 18 years since Nancy Reagan decided Americans should “Just say no!” to drug use. A “drug czar” was appointed to lead the fight, and the first thing he did was demand money and tools for law enforcement. State and federal legislators answered the call. They appropriated funds, passed new laws and stiffened old ones, built new prisons and jails, hired more cops, prosecutors and judges, sanctioned covert and overt wars in Central America, beefed up the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, the BATF, the DEA, the FBI, Iowa’s DCI and an alphabet soup of other state and federal agencies. Cops have been granted extraordinary powers. The U.S. Supreme Court has done its part by deciding to uphold rules of evidence unheard of since the days of czarist Russia. Search-and-seizure and impound laws written to help win the war on drugs, endorsed by the Supreme Court, have left our Bill of Rights in tatters and mock democratic, libertarian values in defense of which the drug war was allegedly declared in the first place.

All of that and still, it is not enough. Drug crime rages out of control. Those who want proof need look no farther than the fact that Iowa Governor-elect Tom Vilsack recently made noises about using National Guard troops to bust the methamphetamine labs that now pop up, like poisonous mushrooms, all over our state. If police and the courts are winning the war on drugs, how come Vilsack needs the National Guard to deal with meth labs? If police and the courts are winning the war on drugs, where did the meth labs come from? We didn’t have meth labs in Iowa 5 years ago.

It is time for Uncle Sam to admit that he cannot win his war on drugs. It will do no good to pass more laws and spend more money. It will do no good to slap longer prison sentences on the likes of Raydell Lacey, Deea Maxwell and Ellery Williams. It will do no good to arrest those who flock to the lucrative drug trade because they hope to get rich serving clients left in need by dealers newly jailed. It will do no good to hire 100,000 more police. And it will certainly do no good to fill out questionnaires for judges and prosecutors so estranged from reality that they must be told in writing what it means to live in a neighborhood where homicidal ghouls drive around and shoot guns into people’s homes.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on Mar. 10, 1998, issued a press release titled Caseload Filings Reach Historic Highs in Federal Courts. The document points to a real solution to the war on drugs: “In 1997,” the release states, “the number of both criminal cases and defendants rose to their highest levels since 1933, the year [in which] prohibition was repealed.”

There it is. America put murderous bootleggers out of business in the ’30s by ending the prohibition of alcohol. Today, America can put murderous dope dealers out of business by ending the prohibition of drugs, and it’s time the country did exactly that. We’ve grown tired of being shot at in Wellington Heights. You would, too, if you lived here.

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The genius of America’s marketing professionals often amazes me. Yesterday, for example, I walked past a display counter at a gardening boutique and noticed a heap of chicken poo for sale.

Now of course one expects to see manure offered for sale to gardeners. Organic fertilizer is popular, after all. What amazed me about that particular heap of chicken poo is that it didn’t look or smell like manure. The stuff had been sanitized, deodorized, sterilized, pulverized and then pelletized into particles about the size and color of (I can’t resist.) bird shot. Pour it out on the counter, it looks like wheat germ or some sort of heat ‘n’ eat cereal.

The – ahem – product is neatly sealed in colorful, one kilogram (2.2 lb.) bags. The bags sport some spiffy cartoon illustrations, and they sell for $6.99 each. Chickity Doo Doo (as the stuff is called) is made by a company called R & J Partnership LLC, at N5505 Crossman Road, in Lake Mills, WI 53551.

A blurb on the bags touts a Web site: http://www.chickitydoodoo.com. I went home, powered up my computer, and paid them a visit. There I learned that Chickity Doo Doo comes in packages varying in size from one kilo to one ton. I also saw a guaranteed analysis of the product which reveals that Chickity Doo Doo is (among other things) 9 percent calcium.

That last point sold me. I decided to try Chickity Doo Doo because last year I lost my tomato crop to blossom-end rot, a disease often caused by a calcium deficiency in soil. And so today I say “Hooray!” for R & J Partnership, LLC. I don’t know anyone who works there, but it seems to me that only genius of a rare order could invent and successfully market upscale chicken poo.

Looking at the news this morning, I see that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Senate hacks are trying to revive their late, unlamented effort at immigration reform. Toward that end, reports have it, the hacks ask for help from the late, unlamented administration of President George W. Bush, D-Uh.

That makes no sense to me. I mean the hacks tried to pass their immigration bill two weeks ago. The backlash from voters then nearly drove the Senate out of Washington. Any senator who hopes to get reelected, if he or she is sane, ought to see the attempted resurrection of the dead immigration horse as a thoroughly rotten idea. So why try again?

For his effort to push the immigration bill, George Bush forfeited a fair-sized chunk of what little support he formerly retained. Right-wing pundits and talk-radio hate merchants got all over the president like ugly on an ape. Columnist and conservative icon Peggy Noonan went so far as to brand Bush a fool and a wastrel, and she ended by calling for other conservatives to dump what’s left of the Bush presidency in the nearest ditch. So why would cow-Boy George stick his head into that hornets’ nest again?

Some writers claim the Senate bill grants amnesty to roughly 12 million illegal aliens who already live and work in the U.S. It is said that Democrats push the legislation because immigrants nearly all vote Democrat in national elections and those 12 million new votes promise Democrats a veto-proof majority in both houses of the next Congress.

If that’s true, it could explain why Democrats want the legislation. But it makes absolutely no sense as an explanation of why Bush and his Republicans would help Democrats do such a thing. Nor does it explain why Democrats would ask George Bush for help, because any piece of legislation that Bush endorses these days is bound to be wildly unpopular.

Of late it is trendy among pundits to say of Bush that “the emperor has no clothes.” In fact, the situation in which George Bush now finds himself is much more dire than the clothing cliché implies. For it isn’t just that Bush stands naked before the American people; it is rather that Bush is naked and has no legs to stand on. Bush has lied to the American people and been wrong so often about so much that America no longer trusts him at all. If Bush was a cop, Americans would give him a rubber gun with rubber bullets and a childproof safety, and then cuff his hands to the nearest lamp-post. By and large, Americans think the best thing – the only thing – this Congress can do with this president is impeach the felonious twerp. Ask Bush to support legislation, you ask him to bestow the kiss of death upon it.

So why would Democrats ask Bush for help? My guess is that they didn’t ask. My guess is there was a quid pro quo: Democrats pledged untrammeled funding for the war in Iraq; Bush pledged GOP support for the Democrats’ immigration package. If Bush can’t or won’t now deliver his end of the deal, Democrats may at long last decide to impeach him.

You can call that blackmail. You can call it whatever you like. Curse me for a damned cynic. I don’t care. But if you’ve got a better explanation for what’s going on, I’d really like to hear it. None of the people who are close to the thing now talk the least bit of sense.

The end of it all is that I’ve got some good advice for anyone who really wants to pass this so-called immigration reform bill: Put the thing in a box, wrap it up tightly, and FedEx the package to R & J Partnership LLC, N5505 Crossman Road, Lake Mills, WI 53551.

Folks out there will know how to process your legislation. They’ll turn it into something that has a little more market appeal than the stuff you’re presently trying to sell. And they’ll do the deed, I’m sure, for a lot less money than you’d have to pay those hifalutin K-Street lobbyists.

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This is one I wrote in college. The first draft was a class paper of fewer than 1100 words. It was expanded for a magazine class in graduate school and finally took shape as you see it here in the year 2000.

The Y2K version was solicited by one of my English professors for inclusion in a book titled Turning Up the Leaves, which the English Department of Coe College (Alma Mater) published as one aspect of their sesquicentennial celebration. So it is that you can thank (or blame) professors Terry Heller, Ann Struthers and David Goodwin for the fact that Cold Chickens’ Soup is inflicted upon you here.

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Cold Chickens’ Soup

To lighten the load on my nerves, I composed a novel while I drove. It was rollin’ along something like this:

“The sonorous drone of a ‘three-eighteen D-troit’ bulled its way through the padding on the doghouse and filled the cab with a buzzing like that of bees. Big, sweaty, stinky bees with names like Tiny, Junior, and Bubba. Oily, dirty, mechanical bees that wear hard-hats in bed. Bees that, when they go to work in the morning, carry black lunch boxes full of rancid cold cuts to wash down at noon in a beer joint.”

“Not bad,” I thought. “That oughta be worth a quarter of a million in advance.” I cashed the check and got ready to deliver the second paragraph. Then Rebecca let out a yell that ruined the whole scene:

“LOOK OUT, JIM!”

Her voice burnt through my mind like a memo from Dirty Harry. She blew Tiny and Junior and Bubba right out of the truck, and she scared the publisher so bad he stopped payment on my check. Man, she was positively shriekin’.

But I was cool, see?

I turned my head, grinned at her across the doghouse and hailed back, conversational, over the buzzing engine: “What’s a matter, Babe?”

It didn’t work. She was still panicked, convinced we’d never see sunup.

“THAT TAILLIGHT! DID YOU SEE THAT TAILLIGHT UP THERE? DON’T YOU KNOW WE’RE ON ICE?”

“Sure; I seen it. Don’t worry. And don’t be yellin’ like that,” I said. “I can handle it.”

Really, though, I wasn’t so sure. It was late on a February Friday, 1978. We were westbound on Interstate 80 in the middle of an awful blizzard, headed for Modesto under 40,000 pounds of seed corn an’ a Monday morning deadline.

We’d had dry road all the way to Des Moines, but west of there things went to hell in a hurry. Visibility dropped to a hundred yards or less as clouds of hard-driven sleet played tricks on our eyes in the headlights. Fists of north wind slammed into the side of the trailer like hammer blows from some hateful Norse god. Each gust threatened to knock us across the road and down, into the median strip. The pucker factor was off-scale.

There’d been a light ahead of us, all right — a poor little dim, red one — damn near invisible in the frozen stew that blasted the windshields. Except for the occasional eastbound truck, it was the only light we’d seen for at least 20 minutes. It showed itself for just an instant, through a hole in the storm, and then vanished. I figured the thing was about a hundred yards ahead of us, but whose rangefinder works in a blizzard?

“The very thing we need is for me to run this rig up somebody’s ass on a night like this,” I thought. “If the crash don’t kill us, we’ll freeze to death. All the cops’ll have to do when they find us is auction off the meat.”

I thought about changin’ lanes and then quickly forgot it. The left was just greasy glass. The right lane, at least, had some shallow ruts frozen into it and there was a smidgen of grit on the berm.

“Anything the tires can grab is better than nothing,” I thought. “Better stay to the right. Better gamble you can get by on the berm if you run up on a wreck in the road.”

It hadn’t been but a minute before Rebecca killed my bees that some fool on the CB radio — eastbound, I guess — in a quavering voice blubbered that it was “darker’n the inside of a cow an’ snowin’ side-a-ways, all the way back-ta Omyhaw.” West of Omaha, the road was supposedly dry.

I’d heard the same story in Des Moines. The storm was less than an hour old when we got there, and I figured we could make Omaha before the road became impassable. It was a bad bet, but I’d made it and lost and now I couldn’t blame Rebecca for being scared. Mentally, I kicked myself for bringin’ her along.

Rebecca was 22 years old, blonde and fair and fresh off an Iowa County farm. She was strong. She scaled 120 pounds of rock-solid, swingin’ beef on a 66-inch wheelbase. That beef was loaded tight, too. She was round where I like ‘em round and flat where I like ‘em flat. Her eyes were blue and intelligent, full of an innocence that made ‘em big as baby-moon hub caps – but there was a dare in their depths. I liked her better than Freightliners, even.

At that moment, though, I had half a mind to dump her in the ditch. She normally talked in a murmur, never said much unless she meant it and didn’t get excited about a lot, but at the moment she was a real distraction. I hadn’t yet given up on Omaha, but gettin’ us there right-side up wanted my undivided attention. I might not be able to do what needed to be done if I had to deal with her pitchin’ a fit.

The way I had it sized up, you see, there were a few things workin’ in our favor. There wasn’t any traffic to speak of. We were loaded fairly heavy, about 72,000 gross. We had a low center of gravity ‘cuz the load was on the floor and distributed just right. With her fifth wheel slid all the way back, draggin’ a loaded, 40-foot reefer at highway speed, the old Transtar I was pushin’ handled sweet as any sports car. An’ Mister, I could handle it.

A trucker movin’ a load on icy roads wants to avoid wheel-spin and skid: So I had the power divider locked in, spreadin’ engine torque over eight wheels instead of four, and I used throttle as little as possible. Instead of workin’ to hold a steady speed, I played roller coaster with the terrain and the tonnage. I grabbed gears on the downgrades, usin’ just enough throttle to keep the load from pushing us. I eased off the throttle and dropped gears on the pulls, lettin’ gravity slow us down.

That works pretty slick in roll ‘n’ tumble country like Iowa. Even there, though, with visibility approaching zero, the speed you have to make to run ahead of a load on some of the longer downgrades is enough to shrivel your willy. Between the ups and the downs, I suppose we averaged 40 or 45 miles an hour — not too bad, considerin’ conditions. Then that stupid taillight showed up.

I was thinkin’ about just what a bummer that could turn out to be when I spotted the thing again. It was real weak and it kept flickerin’ on and off, like it was wired to a bad ground. It seemed about 50 yards ahead of us and was moving — oh, I guess about 30 miles an hour. We closed on it at a fast walk.

As we closed, I could see that the light was hangin’ on the back of a ten-wheeled dump truck. The way the dump bucked and skittered told me it was empty. When I saw it fishtail, I knew we had to pass the thing because we didn’t dare stay behind it. I wanted to hang back until a long downgrade would help my rush, but it turned out I couldn’t do that. The icy road left me no selection.

We were on a short downgrade — too short to make my pass — so I tried to pace the ten-wheeler. It was a mistake. As soon as I let off the throttle, our seed corn started pushin’ us. Quickly there came a stomach-turning lurch as the drive axles lost traction and skidded left. Engine speed dropped to idle and, except for Rebecca’s terrified shrieks, it got real quiet in the cab.

I steered left (away from the jackknife), fed my foot gently into the throttle, prayed, and got lucky. Somehow I managed to catch the skid, pull the rig straight in the road and ease us leftward onto the treacherous surface of the passing lane. Seen from above, the rig’s contortions must have mimicked the moves of a sidewinder.

We sure seemed to crawl like a snake, coming up alongside that bounce-and-be-damned dump truck. One of us was apt to lose control at any second and if that happened, I knew, a sideswipe collision was nearly certain. I wasn’t bitter at the prospect, though: Rebecca was still yellin’ and the tone of her voice assured me that if I got scared to death, I wouldn’t die alone.

We came even with the dump truck at the same time we topped a small rise and right there, at that instant, the world just disappeared — erased by a jagged, zany horror of blowin’ snow. The windshields, well, they looked like a pair of bright new bed sheets — the kind you see them tight-ass housewives admire in detergent commercials on TV. I remember Rebecca screamin’ over and over and over: “JIM! STOP! JIM!”

I knew that usin’ the brakes would be suicide and, knowing it, began to think that maybe I should get religion instead. Because in my mind’s eye, you know, the windshields weren’t blank at all. In my mind’s eye, there wasn’t any storm out there, though to my mind’s eye the road seemed kind of odd. It was no wider than the truck. Long and straight, narrow, shiny black, it looked for all the world like a wet, obsidian ribbon. There were narrow walkways made of what appeared to be granite along both sides, and they were lined with people — all of this in a smoky, lurid, orange twilight.

Behind the people, on either side of the road, there was just this inky void, like pictures you’ve seen of space but with no stars or lights of any kind. Ahead of us (maybe two or three miles) was the skyline of a city, the peaks of the buildings in silhouette against a sooty red glow comin’ from somewhere “BEYOND.”

I scoffed to myself: “Hummph! This looks like one o’ them Egbert Allen Pope stories I read when I ‘uz a kid.” Then I looked closer at the people, and I’m tellin’ you: That was a jolt.

On the left side of the road, they were all women. (Oh, nothin’ alongside Rebecca, no sir! But most of ‘em were at least cute.) They were all dressed like bar maids and waitresses. Some of ‘em were laughing. Some just smiled crooked, mournful, shakin’ their heads slowly as they watched us go past. Wavin’ bye-bye at me, they were! All of ‘em! With little pink aprons and bar towels! Every now and then some of them, crying, held up ugly, bearded babies that somehow looked familiar. I swear I don’t know why.

On the right there was a whole herd of cops — fat, sloppy, vicious, stupid-lookin’ cops — the kind they got in Ohio. Some of them just smirked, though most of ‘em were doubled over, pointing their fingers and laughing so hard they had to hold each other up. They weren’t makin’ no good job of it, neither. Scattered among the cops, a few dudes in suits were teary-eyed, squallin’ like leaky sirens — bankers and insurance agents, near as I could figure. Here and there I caught a look at some that reminded me of weasels. “Dispatchers,” I told myself. I knew them by their ferret-faced, sneaky looks and ‘cuz they were laughing, too. Hard bastards, they are.

Embarrassed and angry, I felt my face turn red as we rolled by that mob. I was hopin’ Rebecca had her eyes closed.

While I did my burn, I gawked at the road ahead. Through my fear, I began to get the idea that this wasn’t just any old highway. It was, in fact, a long, narrow bridge, and the reekin’ city up ahead looked an awful lot like New York.

I knew it for sure when I saw a toll booth. The crossbar was down, of course. It and the shack were all afire, smoking, flames billowin’ high as the stacks on the D-troit. Tiny and Junior and Bubba were there, buzzin’ around like predatory helicopters.

Perched atop that infernal booth was a horrible woman. She had sickly-yellow snakes for hair. Naked, hatchet-faced and flinty-eyed, with dugs like empty sacks and huge, purple boils all over her body, the only thing she lacked of lookin’ a syphilitic witch was to be flyin’ around on a broom. Her crazy eyes were fixed dead on me. She stomped and raged, shook her fists, reached in the window and tore at my face and my clothes as we rolled by. And all the while she raved in soprano through what looked like a bullhorn and sounded like some big-rigger’s C.B. echo box: “JIM-IM-IM! STOP-OP-OP! JIM-IM-IM!”

“Piss on her and all o’ these yukkity-yuk, uniformed geeks,” I told myself. “I ain’t a-stoppin’. If I got to die, I’m damned if I’ll pay a toll!”

I never even tried to slow down. I set my jaw, held the wheel tight and drove by feel, lettin’ the rig drift an’ carry. We were doin’ all of 50 when we crashed through the gates and onward, into the storm again.

That’s right: Just like somebody threw a switch, I could see again. We’d got through the white-out and were still rollin’ straight down the middle of the passing lane.

“Thank you Jesus,” I thought. “Thank you, Lord, for savin’ us from that terrible place.” Then, murderous, I jerked my head around and unloaded on Rebecca. I shoved her three feet sideways and snarled: “Git yer silly ass down off the doghouse! Quit pullin’ my hair! Stop screamin’ at me! Where in the bloody hell is that goddam fuckin’ dump truck?”

She had to roll her window down and chisel ice off the curbside mirror before I could see the other truck. It was a long way behind us, so I nursed our old Transtar over to the right.

The storm and the road were worse than ever, though, and it was then I decided I’d had enough. I hailed across the doghouse: “To hell with this! Modesto can wait!”

Rebecca wasn’t shrill anymore, but her voice shook when she hailed back: “Boy, you got that shit right.”

A few miles down the road, I found an exit that featured a fillin’ station and a diner that was open. I still recall how 40 yards seemed like 40 miles across that parkin’ lot. Outside the truck — Man! The north wind was a rabid polar bear that bit, clawed, tore at our clothes, diggin’ for the warm flesh inside. We got a savage mauling there, strugglin’ across to the diner. I held Rebecca close because our legs seemed weak, and we nearly lost our footing with every step.

Inside the café, it was bright and warm. The smell of chicken soup steamed thick in the air. Chilled as we were, it was purely seductive. Huddled together, supporting each other, we hustled over to a table and sat.

The waitress scooped up a double handful of coffee and cups and stuff, and headed our way. She looked like a good sport and we didn’t want coffee, so I thought I’d save her a trip. I flashed her a grin so she’d know there wasn’t any bite in my bark and then hollered: “Give us two big bowls o’ that chicken soup an’ two o’ the biggest mugs o’ cocoa in the world you can find, an’ DON’T give us no grief!”

She laughed and sang back across the 30 feet between us: “A little bird tol’ me you folks’ve had about enough o’ that weather.”

“Lady,” I hailed,” you know you’re lyin’. If there’s a bird out there tonight, his goddam beak’s froze shut. He couldn’t o’ told you a thing.”

She brought the soup. It was rich with meat and fat and homemade noodles, and it was delicious. Bad as we needed it, we got greedy and slurped our way through most of two bowls apiece. I was getting to the bottom of the second one and thinkin’ about pie, but it turned out there wouldn’t be time for a while.

All of a sudden, you see, this other dude came in the door. He was stompin’ his booted feet and cussin’ a streak. He didn’t even look around. We were alone in the place — he must’ve wanted somebody to talk at — so he tooled over to where we were parked, backed into a chair on the other side of our table, blew his brakes and started yatterin’ like a physicked woodpecker.

I thought, “What the hell is this?”

He babbled about the storm, so scared his words tumbled out in a stream, tripped over each other, got all tangled up like the noodles in our soup. Wall-eyed and pasty-faced, he was sweatin’ rivers despite the cold.

Studyin’ him, I remembered my Marine Corps first-aid classes. One of the things we learned was how to treat for shock: “Face is pale, raise the tail,” they made us chant.

Pondering that, I got to thinkin’ real sour that maybe what this skinny rube needed was to be tipped over and stood on his other end for a few hours. But then he said somethin’ that caught my attention and got me on his side.

“What’s that?” I asked. “You mean you’re the poor slob drivin’ that damned empty dump truck?”

That brought him up short. He grinned, then, and some of the fear leaked out of him.

“Yeah, Buddy! I been tryin’ to make it home. An’ it was you two in the eighteen?”

I nodded, and grinned back.

“Jeez!” he drawled: “Weren’t you folks pretty scairt?”

Now I ain’t here to tell you I’d lie to a feller in a situation like that. But I do have stock answers that I use for certain questions I get from strangers. I didn’t use any that night, though, ‘cuz Rebecca slid one in ahead of me.

Cool as you please, she lifted her chin a little, showed the guy about half a cheek and scoffed: “Naah! You git used to stuff like that after you been on the road for a while.”

She kicked me on the ankle while she laid that out flat and level. I could barely keep a straight face. “Woman,” I thought, “you just earned two nights in a good motel and the best eats in ‘Frisco!”

The dump driver lost his cool again. He shot her a look that would’ve dropped an ox and lashed out in a sneering snit: “Shit, girlie! Who the hell’re you tryin’ to kid? You both look worse’n I do!”

That was all for me. I spilled what little was left of our soup when I fell apart, laughin’ so hard the waitress looked like she thought I was nuts. A second later, Rebecca and the other guy knocked the table over when they collapsed along with me.

Cracked, insane, helpless, we rolled around and hee-hawed and giggled and gasped for breath. For long minutes we were caught in a storm of hysteria that bulled its way out through the door of the café, stood toe-to-toe with the storm outside and whipped that monster into jelly. By the time we got control of ourselves, the storm still howled and blustered but we didn’t care any longer. The terror that had gripped us flew away like Tiny, Junior, and Bubba. Like magic, it was gone.

When it was over I had an odd feeling. It was warm; but it was a hollow feeling, too. I was conscious of being there, safe, with two people who all of a sudden were so important that I ached with a need to tell them both about it. Rebecca and I generally had our longest talks in the bunk. Our hands were already teasing each other under the table.

Lookin’ at the dude, though, I felt a little blue thinkin’ he’d never know what he meant to me at that moment. The best I could do was to look at him gratefully, smile, and ask the only question I could think of that made any sense: “Say, Bud! How’s about a bowl o’ soup?”

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