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...late Sunday. Cotton-mouthed. Wired. Dreading having to make the effort to sleep, before morning and work comes. Dog day afternoon. Today was formalities. Driving miles to find the right pack of cigarettes. Doing the things that keep this place from being a flophouse. Grinding up the remains of 8 pounds of habaneros with my bare hands for when the time comes to crank up some more hot sauce for the massive (even now my hands throb with a nuclear glow). Stopped by one of the pepper patches, ostensibly to tend and plant... rewarded with a gin-and-tonic and boost of nitro. Many Dos Equis later... Buenos noches. Yesterday... was the day of blue highways. A little stop by the Mennonite store for a bite, then off to blue mountains. Road trip. Taking every road that has two lanes or less. Snaking Virginia roads that wind blindly through the wall of green, undulating and rising, ending abruptly or opening to a Jumbotron of verticality. Passing... the Robinson River Primitive Baptist Church (Snake-yer-booty?), the time warp that is "Antique Tables Made Daily" (a fool and his money...), and ending at the final rise to the skyline at... Cooter's Garage. I'm not kidding. I profess to have no knowledge of the Dukes Of Hazard. When it was popular, my mind and soul were elsewhere (as with most TV at the time). I'd slept in Hazard, Ky, one night, bicycling my way back to the east coast from Portland, Oregon... no General Lee, or kindly-yet-crusty mountain folk (I just wanted OUT). IMHO, no red-blooded man could say they were'nt checking out some Daisy Duke action, regardless. Cut-off hotpants will never be the same. "Cameltoe," a household word. Yet this is the scope of what I know of this thing. Yeah, I've seen a bunch of lunchboxes in second-hand stores. But I haven't wasted much time at this temple at which some worship. This is not the irony of the trip. As if you think life cannot be more strange, I wandered through the open-air car show and shop, and grabbed a piece of literature as I entered the shade (how could I not experience the ambience that is Cooter's?). Sure enough, ol' Cooter is running as Democrat for office against the unopposed Republican-DC-parasitic incumbent. A simple lark through the countryside becomes political dilemma. What's a voting man to do? As far as my politics are concerned, a candidate for office may as well be Blackbeard the Pirate, as long as he honestly stands up for the people who choose to have him as a representative, gives a damn about the ground that we are allowed to live on, and works to bring justice to those that have been shat upon. Just lose the Stars-And-Bars. Mostly, I see the wisdom in the Powers-that-be, that seem to have a pretty wry sense of humor. What fools these mortals be. But, if Roscoe P. Coltrane shows up, my ass is gone. Aloha. |
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