The area I live in is commonly refered to as “green country.”  It’s not so green these days or at least it isn’t in my little parcel of it.  It’s brown country, or for you pbs painting show watchers, it’s burnt sienna country.  It’s hot and dry.  Not the usual hot and dry of normal summers mind you, it’s really hot and really dry.  It started early.  I built a snow-man one day and had to weed eat around him the next.  I’m not griping yet.  I understand that droughts are just things that happen every now and again.  I don’t want to seem suprised by it even though I am.  I’m trying to stay positive.  It’s getting tougher though.  My cows are being very negative about the situation.  They are yelling at me almost everyday now.  I tell them it’s not my fault and that I don’t control the weather.  Theyr’e hungry and in no mood for a lecture, so they continue to yell and demand relief.  The calves would probably be yelling at me too, but they spend most of the day sleeping.  They can’t stay awake for any period of time.  It’s understandable.  You drink nothing but warm milk and see how much you sleep.  The milk isn’t just normal straight from the mother warm either.  It’s being boiled inside their utters.  That’s how hot it is around here lately.  Damn Hot!

         I’ve always heard that the Pacific Northwest has the highest suicide rates.  The reason that they give is  the pre-dominantly rainy/cloudy skies they have.   It sounds reasonable at first.  Cloudy/rainy skies sound pretty good to me right now.  In fact, it would seem like paradise.  So  why on earth would people get depressed about rain.  Rain is good.  It cools stuff off.  It allows stuff to grow.  Hell it’s even a pretty good drink.  Come on people of the Pacific Northwest.  Give me a break.  How about you try being slow roasted day after day.  You can watch as the grass turn brown and the trees start to sag and look disheveled.  Yeah, watch as animals that depend on those grasses start to suffer.  How do you like those apples?  Give me a freakin’ break.  Depressed about rain.  The more I think about it the madder I get.  You’ve got it backwards people.  You should get depressed by having too much heat and sun.  Rain gives life.  The sun burns your skin.  If you don’t believe me, then I dare you to try this experiment.  Take a ten hour shower and see how you feel.  Then sit naked in the sun for ten hours, without sunblock, and see which one is the worst.  It’s no contest.  Depressed about rain.  I mean depressed about rain.  Just say it out loud a few times to see how nonsensical it really is.  Depressed…..about……..rain.  Ridiculous.

        Nonetheless and I digress and heretofore I will be refraining from complaining hence  my thoughts shall bequeath themselves a negative and intolerant hue.  This rabble I spew was but a short exhortation meant for noone really.  A temporary set back in my quest for peaceful and tolerant thoughts during this normal happening called a drought.  I take it all back and apologize to all the rain-haters.  It’s your right to hate rain.  I just needed to vent a moment.  Get it off my chest.  I’m fine now.  I saw the weather forcast a little  while ago.  The seven day forcast looked like a bingo board for genuis’s.  I can hear a Nobel Prize winner calling out the numbers to a room full of super nerds- M…..105,  T…..107, F……104……..”I have completed the bingo algorythim” will be yelled out instead of just plain old “bingo.”  You can’t expect these high-powered mental giants to yell something like “bingo” out, please.  They work themselves silly in school forgoeing the usual pleasures of youth, and I mean the good ones to, the big ones, and you expect these people to yell out something as common as “bingo.”   How dare you?  They’ve earned the right to smart-up bingo.  Who are you, some kind of bingo purist?  The more I think about it the  madder I become.  Yelling “bingo” when you’re a genius.  It’s some kind of -ist I’m sure.  You’re a geniusist.  Going around tellling genius’s they have to yell “bingo”, ludicrous.  Ok, it happened again.  I take it all back and apologize to the bingo-yeller purists out there.  It won’t happen again.  I’ll just stop typing  when I feel the negative energy taking over.  Perhaps (I’ve stopped typing)

     I watch old movies and read old books.  It’s not that I don’t like new movies and new books.  I do.  I enjoy them occasionally.  It’s not the same though.  I like books and movies from the late forties to early seventies.  Somehow there’s more energy in them, more exuberance.  That’s how it seems to me.  Back then, actors would break out into a spontaneous song.  I know some of you younger folks might not understand this, so I’ll explain it.  Sometimes in an old movie the events that are unfolding are so dramatic, or so joyous, that the actor will have to stop and sing a song.  I know.  It’s shocking.  Yep, just stop and  sing a song.  I know you think it’s stupid but how many times in your life have you felt so good or so bad that you had to stop and sing?  I’ve done it numerous times.  Now granted, the people or animals around me didn’t come in on the chorus, but nonetheless, I did stop and sing.  Just the other day I had a particularly bad time and I broke into the “doom, despair, and agony on me” song from Hee Haw.  I don’t know if your “rap” music is good for this, but you can always borrow from us.  It’s not just the singing either.  Man, in the old movies when someone has had a particularly good time they will break out into a dance.  I don’t mean the over-choreographed things you have in your movies.  I mean a real get-after-it dance.  Some actor will start stomping his feet a hundred miles an hour and making this tapping sound.  It’s crazy if you ever see it.  Those movies are full of happy action even when the action is sad.  That’s why I like them. 

      I particularly like a group of writers from this period.  I really like Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnetgut as well as numerous others.  For these guys, the world seemed a little fresher.  Everything was changing quickly.  Questions were being asked.  A lot of these writers went about trying to answer them or at least explore the various answers.  When I read these books I feel their brazeness.  Their wide-eyed approach to looking at the world.  I guess it’s because their world had changed so quickly after WWII and it was pretty new-looking to them.  Think of how Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll have changed forever how human beings think of music.  It’s got to be that newness.  That has to be where that vibe comes from.  That energenic vibe.  I think that’s why we seem a little drab these days.  Even though there has been huge technological changes since the seventies and some social changes, the eighties until now have been a lot of the same old stuff.  I’m not saying a lot of it isn’t good.  It is.  Still, it seems like the same old stuff.  If some girls are screaming and passing out over some singer or band you can bet they are paid actors or it’s the socially acceptable and calcuated thing to do.  It isn’t spontaneous.  There hasn’t been anything really big and new happen since then.  I mean, who has had an Elvis type situation, since Elvis.  Just about everybody has the same rights now as everyone else excluding the gay folks of course, but they’re working on it.  Maybe the next big thing will be a gay Elvis type situation.  A super-star from somewhere no one  has ever heard of that can sing and dance in a new special way that he stole from the poor native peoples that raised him and bench press five hundred pounds while reciting the declaration of independence and be way gay and then become president.  That would be exciting.  Things would be exciting.  There would be spontaneous dancing and singing all the time.  The state of the union address would be a big production with congressman dancing in unison and the president floating down to the podium on a wire wearing  black tights.  That’s exciting and new.  I don’t think I’m ready for it.  I really don’t think I’m  ready for it.

The big, bad, mad, American moon rose tonight over my barn as Americans lay restlessly sleeping. Restless dreaming, scheming, screaming for the next big idea, the next phase, the next big thing we all are destined for. Greatness you know. We all got it in us or so we’ve been told and man I’m getting old as I restlessly plan for my dose. My small dose of greatness or maybe my big dose, I don’t know.  For now I’m just a smo, a smuck, a common ditch digger you dig.  But I’m a good American you see.  I dream big.  I could be president some day.  You can’t say I won’t.  I probably shouldn’t.  I don’t have any notion, preconcieved or otherwise, of what I’d do with that much responsibility.  I don’t have a clue of what I’d do.  I’d set in the oval office and have a drink and a cigar and hope like hell that phone doesn’t ring.  Don’t look to me for your answers.  I don’t have’m and I ain’t gonna pretend for you.  There’s too much at stake and I won’t fake, but I might still become president.  You can’t say I can’t.  That’s the beauty and the horror of this insane asylum we call America.  I’ve got to dream big, hit the jackpot, move, shake and hustle/hurry.  I see them everyday.  There’s hustle cars and hurry trucks blasting down the road to known destinations with intent to distribute.  I try to get out of their way.  I yield to the power.  I check  to the raiser.  I’ll take the pitch and hope it’s a ball but I might take a swing some day.  You have to.  As an American you have to and everybody says “Amen.”  You’ve got to lose to win.  It’s the White House for me baby.  It’s Wall Street.  It’s somewhere else.  It can’t be here in this moon barn with the heat and the crickets.  The moon barn is nice though.  No hassles.  No questions requiring intimate knowledge of heavy things.  Just jazz playing through my radio as I work on my car.  Let the moon shine on someplace else for now.  On monied folk with important mornings to attend to.  Restless mornings after restless sleep preparing for restless meetings.  I lay in dirt and oil peeking at the big important moon as a cricket screams out sarcasm.  I accept it.  It’s OK.  I understand.  I’d better plan for some-day.

    I’ve recently been dealing with a squeaky wheel.  I say squeaky wheel, but I mean braying jackass.  It’s physically painful to hear this person speak.  This person comes off as a bully, then your buddy, then your enemy, then your buddy while making all kinds of threats and accusations.  I know the world is full of  these types.  I usually do my best to avoid them and for the most part I do a good job.  I can’t avoid this one.  Dammit!  I can’t find a remedy for this.  This person isn’t going to stop this non-sense.  It will continue on forever until he gets what he wants, which is unreasonable at best.  I guess this is why the world is full of these squeakers.  They get what they want even when it’s stupid.  My kind of person only makes reasonable requests and is always affable during the process.  That is how I am.  I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.  I feel guilty enough asking for anything.  That’s how my type rolls.  We don’t always get what we want but we’re always pleasant.  We’re out there making the world a friendlier place, a nicer place.  But no, you jackasses out there, you squeakers,  you desire to jeopardize our tranquility with your hateful stupidity.  There’s got to be a way to deal with your type.  I have an idea.  It’s just an idea mind you.

     I think we could set up some type of hotline that would work like one of those phone sex things, only it would deal exclusively with squeakers.  The trick here would be keeping the squeakers from knowing it’s just a hot-line for their type.  Any business could use the service when dealing with a squeaker.  Just tell the squeaker that you are transferring him or her to the person in charge.  That’s when you connect him or her with the hot-line.  The squeaker then lodges a complaint, yells, and generally talks ridiculous as they do.  The hotline employee plays along and takes all this abuse but also listens closely to the person gleaning any personal information.  It is my belief that a squeaker is someone who needs affirmation, who needs love.  After gathering a little information the hotline employee will then strike up an informal conversation.  The hot-line employee will laugh and laugh at everything the squeaker thinks is funny.  The employee will also compliment the squeaker on their intelligence and thank them for being such a good person  and citizen.  After gaining a rapport with the squeaker, the hot-line employee will then manufacture a tragic story of their own.  The story must contain elements of loneliness and misfortune as well as the desire to continue chatting in a more personal way.  The  hot-line employee must work sex into the conversation after a rapport has been established.  This can be done by telling the squeaker how sexy they sound and how handsome or pretty they must be to have such a sexy voice and a high intellect.  The squeaker needs this affirmation.  It’s all about them against the world.  The hot-line employee must give them the affirmation they desire while establishing their own squeaker credentials.  A squeaker will only make a connection with another squeaker.  A normal/squeaker connection is impossible.  Squeakers will only mate with their own kind.  That’s why there are so many of them.  After the hotline employee has made a connection with the squeaker, then and only then will the hot-line employee begin phone sex proceedings.   Hotline employees will be trained in the squeaker way of mating.   I will demonstrate a typical passage from a normal squeaker mating ritual.  Squeaker-”you’re doing it wrong.  Why did you say that?  Why can’t you speak more clearly?”  “That’s not where that goes.”  The hot-line employee shall verse themselves in this insult-laden mating ritual.  When it is evident that the squeaker has finished his or her insult/mating sequence, the hotline employee shall quickly tell the squeaker that their complaint has been documented and thank them for their time and hang up.  The squeaker should be pacified by this, and if he or she ever calls back, make sure he or she speaks to the same hotline employee.  The sequence should then repeat thus locking the squeaker in a phone sex/anger/ affirmation vortex.  I believe us normals would pay good money to have these people out of our hair.  I know I would.  What a glorious rainbow filled day that would be!  Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, why can’t I?  There’s no squeakers to offend us, tell me why, tell me why can’t I?  A guy can dream, right?

     I’m sick of this consciousness.  This insane American consciousness.  We continually compare and measure ourselves against each other.  It’s how we know our value.  If you have a nicer vehicle it means you are doing better than me.  If you have a nicer house it means you are just better than me.  I try not to care about such things.  It’s hard though.  People who have made it seem so happy.  Even when they are divorcing or in trouble for some terrible deed they still seem happier.  They may not be.  I don’t know.  They just look the part.  Rolling to your trial in a limo denotes style and taste and happiness.  Happiness dammit!  It can be bought I’m sure of it.  Sure they tell us about all the lotto winners who have a bad time with their cash.  Do they ever tell us about the ones who live happily ever after?  That’s a big No.  I know when I first get my pittance, or paycheck as it is called, I am pretty happy.  As I dole it out to the people who own me I get less happy.  I believe this is proof. 

      I’m looking at my chances for making more money and thus gaining some extra happiness.   I don’t like my chances.  I am trying  some stuff.  That stuff doesn’t seem to be paying  off.  I’ve heard people say, people that should know, that you have to spend money to make money.  Well I spent a bunch of money.  I made some money.  I’ve basically broken even if you don’t count the hours and  hours I’ve put into my endeavor.  It’s not happening for me.  I have no one but to blame but all of  you.  If you all would stop looking so nice in your fancy houses and your fancy cars then I would not feel so small.  I would not feel so inadequate.  The comparison between me and you would not end so  badly for me.   That’s why I’m close to throwing up my hands and saying the hell with it.  Why not go all the way?  Be the ultimate comparative loser.  Be a bum.  A wino.  A lay-about.  A hobo.  A Democrat if you’re a Republican, or a Republican if you’re a Democrat.  I could easily just admit I have lost the battle and relax, drink, beg for food, get beaten up or killed, freeze to death, whatever.  Who cares?  I guess my wife and kid would care.  Dammit!  So I’ll get up tomorrow morning and slap a poor-man’s smile on my face and go out there and tread water, spin my wheels, chase my tail, run in one place, and stay even.  I’m not falling behind and I’m not getting ahead.  I’m comparing my ass off to the rest of you.  Please think of me when you decide if you want the racing stripes or not.  You really don’t need them.

    My favorite author is Jack Kerouac.  I like the way he thinks.  I like the rhythm of his writing.  Whenever I seem to be out of rhythm I pick up one of my Kerouac books and soon things seem to start cutting right along smoothly.  I get that slow jazz beat feeling.  I start to dig things I wouldn’t usually dig.  I start to use words like “dig”.  I can’t help it.  I read Kerouac and my mind starts wanting to really look at things, really understand things.  Dig things.  I was in this state of mind when I decided to go to the races Friday night.  I took Kerouac to the car races.

    I noticed right off that I was in Kerouac mode.  I stood in line and made myself disappear.  I stood and listened and watched everything.  The first thing that really struck my interest was this guy standing a couple of spots in front of me.  Usually I wouldn’t have noticed him.  My head normally would have been in the clouds playing all kinds of scenarios that could possibly make me rich.  I noticed though.  I knew he couldn’t have been a local right off.  We’re not too  clothes conscious around here but this was a blatant disregard for all things Okie when it comes to clothes.  This guy had on a pair of cut-off jean shorts.  This would usually be acceptable.   However, these jeans looked brand new.  It was as if he had decided to take his knife out and make his blue jeans into shorts on the way to the races.  Cut-offs are fine as long as they are made from worn clothing but cutting a pair of new jeans into cut-offs, that is unacceptable.  So after I got over my hang up on the jean shorts I noticed this guy had on a pair of insulated underwear tops that the sleeves had been cut off.  What?  Now I’m hung up again.  Insulated underwear tops with the sleeves cut off in the middle of the summer, What?  The top looked new as well.   So this guy just cuts off his pants to make shorts and then ruins a new winter-time garment by cutting off the sleeves.  It’s a hundred degrees outside.  At least the guy had on tennis shoes.  They were black stylish tennis shoes with red laces and they looked brand spanking new.  He wore a very nice pair of half calf white socks with them.  It hits me for a second that this guy might be special.  I decided to check out this guys face and watch his body language.  Maybe I could find a clue by doing that.  The problem is that this guy looked very normal.  He is somewhere in his mid to late thirties.  He has glasses.  He has a full head of slightly greying medium length brown hair that is oiled down with something and combed back.  Old fashioned looking slicked-back hair.  He’s not using the “product” that people use these days for hair.  He’s got some Elvis, fifties, daddio, grease on those locks.  He is speaking to some woman and they seem to be having a very pleasant conversation.  The lady looks dead normal in race-car adorned t-shirt and Khaki shorts with ankle socks and white tennis shoes.  I can’t hear anything they say but the conversation looks very normal.  Then I finally get the clue I’ve been waiting for.  He says something he thinks is funny and he smiles.  That smile is a dead give away.  He does not smile in the normal okie way.  We do more of a smirk or a full open mouth, slack jawed thing.  That’s how we do it.  This guy pulled all the skin back from his teeth.  That’s how he smiled.  Whenever he would start to smile I would see the flesh muscles start to pull lips and skin away from his teeth.  I’ve seen this before.  I’ve seen Northern folks do this.  It’s a little creepy.  I had my answer and didn’t need to explore this anymore.  He’s a yankee.  A northerner.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

         The timing was perfect.  I  had finished my dig on the yank when it was my turn to buy a ticket.  I went in and took a seat a few minutes before the national anthem and the praryer.  It’s the prayer that really got my Kerouac going.  The man that does the prayer before the races each Friday night warrants a short explanation.  You see I have pre-concieved notions concerning the man that says the  prayer.  I know who he is.  I’ve met him.  I can’t dig him on quite the same level as the yank.  I’ll just explain a little about him and then get to the point.  He is a Vietnam vet.  He’s a good person.  He’s probably not normal but what the  hell, who is?  Anyways, he always start the prayer like most prayers start.  He greets the almighty with a howdy.  It’s right after the howdy that things get different.  He starts to speak in a very casual voice, very laid back.  He starts telling the almighty what’s been going on in the world, sort of catching him up on things.  Then he throws in a few tidbits about what’s been going on with him.  These things can range from small things like headaches or soreness to big things like surgery.  It’s very casual, very first name howdy neighbor stuff.  After the catching up part he launches into a commercial for the race track.  It’s a nice thing to do.  It seems odd that a real prayer by a real guy, not an actor in a comedy, would be doing commercials inside a prayer to the almighty.  I think this is when he is speaking to us.  He seems to meander between speaking to  us and the almighty.  It’s very  much like  he’s at a dinner party with god and friends.  He always mentions the armed services.  I like that.  We all owe those cats alot, always will.  After the armed services he always launches into a short story.  The stories are always about someone he knows who is going through a bad time.  The stories are touching and very real.  I’m unsure if the short story is for us or the almighty.  Either way it’s a nice jesture.  He ends his prayer in a typical manner not befitting the casual cosmic journey we just took with him.   I Kerouac-dug that prayer and it’s form. 

      The race track I go to has this drawing every race night.  You buy a ticket for a dollar.  If they draw your ticket you get half the money from the ticket sales and the other half goes to some charity.  This way you can feel good and righteous about gambling.  I always buy a ticket or two.  It doesn’t hurt that the ticket girls are young and very pretty.  They have on shorts, real ones, and t-shirts.  They are usually very friendly and flirty with all the older guys of which I am one.  It’s a good way to sell more tickets.  The ticket girl that works my area is a tall blonde nicely proportioned.  She is young so I only admire her from an artistic perspective.  I usually make her walk up the stairs to sell me a ticktet one at a time through out the evening.  I do this because I believe it improves my chances of winning.  I like to have tickets at different places in the hat.  It’s called logical even though I have never won a drawing or even been close.  This ticket girl friday night ignored me.  I’m an easy sell.  Walk up to my seat and I will hand you a dollar and say something profound.  You hand me a ticket and smile and then leave.  We repeat this several times during the evening.  I think this ticket girl thinks I’m a perv or something.  She made sure she was never looking my way when in my section.  She went out of her way to avert her eyes.  She’s all hung up on me being a perv.  I’m not a perv.  How dare she think such vile thoughts.  I didn’t buy a ticket.  I was branded a pervert in her mind.  I’ll forever be a discusting pervert to her even though it is based on no evidence and would be thrown out of court in a second should there be such a court for thoughts I think people  have about me.  I dug the fact that I could read her mind.  Kerouac dug the fact that we both could read her mind.  I Kerouac-dug the races in general.  It was probably my night to win that damn drawing though.  I’m taking her to thought court.  I want my money.