A cultural lesson

The family and I were on our way to Acoma Pueblo for a little cultural trip. Acoma Pueblo is built on a mesa top, and has no electricity or running water. It is considered the longest inhabited village in North America.

A few minutes from the mesa, my wife and I start prepping the kids for what we think might be a possibly embarrasing situation. The kids can be rowdy. We tell them that the Indians have different way of living, and that it would not be polite to point or ask rude questions.

So we get there and we take the tour bus to the top of the mesa. The tour guide shows us all around, including their church, graveyard, and such. Around some of the dwellings are the Acoma people selling their pottery. Others are there going about their daily business.

Near the end of our tour, an older Acoma lady strikes up a conversation with my five-year-old, while I am half listening to the guide. She asks him, "how old are you?"

He tells her.

She then asks, "Have you seen any Indians?" He looks around and say no. She says, "Me neither." She laughs and both go on their way.

At the time I didn't think anything about the exchange. Later it hit me that in the van on the way to Acoma, we had put into his mind something much further afield than was in his own reasoning. He saw the Acoma as just people, the same as himself. The woman who talked to him was clearly wise enough to realize this as well.

He didn't see them as I did: a group oppressed by others for much of their history. Indeed, this lesson was for me; a true reminder to treat people as individuals, regardless of their history, race, or culture.

High School Reunions

High school reunions for some must be about reconnecting and reliving old memories. For others, a chance to revisit the home town. But underlying it all, there is a very real reminder of how old, fat, and hair-deprived we are getting. We start to show our mortality in many ways, and those we mourn who have passed on due to car wrecks and accidents, give way to cancers, heart problems, and finally to old age. Each passing reunion has a different feel to it. The 10 year reunion had a lot of youth still left in it, complete with attitudes and sequined dresses. The 20th was about the kids many of us had, and seemed to be a more heartfelt gathering of sould who had seen some good and bad things in their lives. By the time the 30th comes my own children will be in high school, so I imagine the perspective will be different still.

Support Our Troops

Ok, I've seen these magnet things on vehicles now for the last year or so. They range from "Support Out Troops" to "MIA/POW" to flags and breast cancer, etc., etc. Some people have two or three of them, and begin to look like magnetic shark parasites.

I noticed that something seems pretty hypocritical about some of them. These yellow ones designed to help support our troops in Iraq, appear all too often on SUVs. How are they supporting the troops fighting to bring oil to our country, while the troops are risking their lives so that they can drive a gas-guzzling SUV? Wouldn't they support the troops more by driving a fuel-efficient automobile?

Diesel and Dust

June 28, 1997, 11:00 am

No clouds form in the West Texas Summer sun. I sit huddled next to a large empty cattle water trough, clinging to the last bits of shade the hot metal has to offer. It is 30 dusty miles to the nearest blacktop, and another 40 to the nearest tire shop in Marathon, Texas. It is another 40 miles to a restaurant in Alpine.

The mission I am on is to stop large camoflauged US Army Corps of Engineers bladers and graders from destroying the prehistoric archeaological sites that have rested in this terrain for thousands of years. The engineers flagging tape placed alongside the road wasn't enough to keep the D-9s off of the sites, so we have to watch them while they work.

This particular site contains some broken chipped stone and some fire-cracked rock features. The features may yield some important information about who lived here and when, contained in the charcoal left in their firepits so long ago. But the site has been pilfered of any projectile points by the rancher. He has buckets of them at his ranch house. Additionally, the site has been ruined by the installation of the cattle tank, and the associated cattle that have scattered the rock elements. Still, there might be something useful for us just below the surface. Not that we'll ever know. After this road is improved, and the dozers are gone, the government has no further obligation to protect the site.

Plumes of dust climb to thousands of feet in the air, as the big machines improve the rancher's two-track road. The rancher wants better access to his ranch. The Border Patrol want better access along the roads to catch illegals bringing drugs through this barren wasteland.

No one wants us there, especially the rancher. Some Major told them that they needed to have an "environmental survey" conducted prior to the construction effort. Ranchers hate that term, because if you break the two terms down, it amounts to the rancher being unable to do what he wants to on the land. Visions of spotted owls pop into their heads. This particular rancher carried an AK-47 in the back window of his truck and played with rattlesnakes for fun. They don't particularly like the term "survey" either, because they don't rightly now where exactly their property line ends and the next rancher's begins. A good neighbor is one who isn't so sure either.

We are here with a biological crew, who are making sure the large metal beasts don't destroy an endangered cactus species. In total there are seven of us to monitor 150 pieces for green rolling and treading steel over 70 miles of broken limestone roads. Needless to say, I am without the rented Jeep Cherokee for a few hours.

For some reason, the rental car agency provides the Jeeps with street tires. The rental agreement states that we aren't allowed to take the vehicles off road. Technically we haven't, though the roads they are improving get much worse before they get better. Tire changing is a daily ritual.

The sun climbs even higher now, forcing me into the sun a little further. My wide-brim hat is all that is keeping me from the vultures now. I follow the plume of dust higher and higher into the sky, watching as the grader moves closer to my position by the water tank.

Peter Piper Pizza = Hell on Earth

In my town there is a pizza place that makes its living off of offering children's birthday parties, with pizza, video and skill games, soda, cake and ice cream. This is a small child's idea of heaven on earth. Sugar, multicolored walls, fast moving video games, those wacky tubes to crawl through, all make for a fine time for kids.

If one child decided to have a party there, it would be just fine, but multiply this activity by a factor of ten, and you have real mayhem. Kids running everywhere, lights flashing, and the sheer volume of the place gives one a headache within minutes. Add to this noise music through the PA system, interrupted every few minutes by an overly happy employee, "wishing ANGELA to have a happy 5th birthday!!!" Clearly she is happy, with the cup of video tokens she's been given to put into the skeeball machine. All her friends showed up with presents. There is the pizza, cake, and soda, inducing the endorphin rush they love so much.

The grim-faced parents endure this insanity, every few minutes checking their watches to see when the two hours of torture will be over. The parent who had their kid talk them into holding the party there (BECAUSE JIMMY HAD HIS PARTY THERE!!!) try to make the best of it by orchestrating the movement of the tokens, pizza, drinks, cake, ice cream, presents, goodie bags, etc. Because of the volume, it is difficult for parents to talk to one another, and it comes down to:

"Hi, I am Dave's Dad."

"I am Timmy's Mom."

Check the watch. Shuffle around a bit. Maybe play a video game. Watch the kids run around after one another. Shove a carboard slice of bad pizza into the gullet, and wash it down with some flat soda from a pitcher. Check the watch. The only redemption is that after two hours, the place is left behind. But in its stead is a ringing headache, with ears to match, and a child who is hopped up on carbohydrates, wondering when they can have their party at Peter Piper Pizza.

Not in a million years.

The Man on the Left

In many places I have seen a descriptive term used for people that drive in the left lane. That term is the LEFT LANE BANDIT! These people may drive faster or slower than other drivers, but they never leave the left lane of traffic. I have no idea what kind of person this is, but I picture them as one who likes a smoother ride, or perhaps he missed class on the day they were teaching "Slower Traffic to the Right."

There are two ways to deal with this creature of habit. One is to pass the bastard on the right while the slower traffic looms ever closer. Another way is to climb right onto the bumper of the man on the left and flash your lights, as if you were in a real hurry and wanted him to move over so that you could get your pregnant wife to the hospital.

Today on the highway I saw something unusual. Two left lane men in tandem, one a faster driver, one a slower one. I took the first option to avoid the whole situation, passing the bastard on the right, keeping a watchful eye out for the everpresent semi truck. Then I saw this white sports car pull up behind the slower LLB in a green pickup truck (with camper shell filled to the brim with crap) and stay on his bumper like he was being towed. The man in front refuse to yeild the lane. The man behind refused to pass on the right. I'm sure each knew the other was there, and it became a test of wills to see who would move first.

I imagine a conversation going something like this:

Man in Front: "Sheesh, why won't this crazy guy get off my bumper!?"

Man in Back: "Sheesh, why won't this crazy guy move over? Can't he see I'm right on his bumper?!"

Finally, after about ten miles of this, the truck gave in and moved over. In the sports car, I looked over to see who was driving. It was a large bald man, smoking a cigar. Finally, I had a face to put on this man on the left.

More thoughts on Hunter and Gene Scott

Hunter was a dark lover, a dark warrior, a dark magician, and a dark king. He had all four of the major male archetypes down pat. Someone like that has gotta attract a fan base, especially when he had the writing talent he did. Such a deviant and viciously experimental soul who had the ability to churn out text will definitely be missed in this lifetime and the next.

I had yesterday heard that Dr. Gene Scott had passed on. Gene was just as strange, with his ministry in LA as Hunter was in the mountains of Colorado. We will miss Scott too and both pairs of his glasses, and his running horses.

Out of the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson's remains

I learned of Thompson's death this morning, thinking about what good could come from one of the last vestiges of the old counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. A new counterculture must begin, and soon. The finger points inwards, as I search for a new source of strange and dangerous writing. My wife doesn't understand Hunter as I do. She saw him as a man who was dangerous and mean to others, knowing full well what he was doing. Perhaps he was. But there was something vibrant in the self-destructive way he lived his life and wrote his lines. I too have taken my share of bizarre chemicals and seen a lot of televsions meet their makers.

In his death, I am inspired to write. And write what I am seeing and feeling, not just the pretty shiny stuff. I envision my writing ability as hiding in a large ornate wooden box in a dark room, with a heavy lock keeping the lid down. That lock has been broken by the events of today.