The Kentucky Bar on Avenida Juarez

It was easy to make phony ID cards in the 60’s when I was a teenager. Not that we needed them. The drinking age was 21 and we didn’t have the courage to try buying a drink in El Paso with phony ID anyway. On the other hand, if we wanted to drink all we had to do was go across the border to Juarez, Mexico where nobody cared about ID. We left the car on the U.S. side, put two pennies in our shoes, then walked through Mexican Customs and on to the strip.

The act of putting two pennies in our shoes dated back several decades. In order to return to the U.S. from Mexico, one had to declare citizenship and pay a two cent toll. Crossing to the U.S. was, back then, a simple matter of saying “American” to the U.S. official then dropping the two pennies into a slot in the toll both. The older men of our generation would tell us to put two pennies in our shoes just in case we lost our wallets or spent all our money while partying in Juarez. I never knew anyone whose citizenship was questioned but the two cent toll was never waived.

The only instance of entry denied that I know of came from a story my uncles told me at a family picnic. They had been forced to spend the night sleeping in the alleys in Juarez after disrespecting a U.S. Border Agent. The pair had spent a Saturday night cruising the bars along Avenida Juarez and paying street musicians to play their favorite songs. They were three sheets to the wind by two A.M and ready to go home. A pair of drunks staggering towards the border crossing was common enough. Most times they were singing or talking very loudly to each other. In other words: stupid-drunk but harmless.

When the Border Agent asked my Uncle Juan’s citizenship, he replied “American Cheese”. The agent frowned and made him stand aside while he dealt with my other uncle who was busy digging into his pockets for the two cent toll. Not finding the coins, he kept searching his pockets over and over.

“Citizen?” he asked.

“U.S.”, said my Uncle Tomas.

He tried hard to stay on his feet while searching deep for the missing coins but finding only the family jewels he looked quizzically at the agent and said, “Figs? I don’t remember buying figs.”

The bars in Juarez catered to the GI’s going through boot camp at Fort Bliss. Back in the 60’s thousands of kids passed through the camp before being shipped to Vietnam like so many disposable towlettes. After eight weeks of hard training they were given Cinderella furloughs which they spent drunkenly all along Avenida Juarez or the red light district on Calle Mariscal nearby.

As soon as you crossed the border, the bars were there. A single block could have as many as 10 bars side by side. Some were clean and well lit, but for the most part they were dark and cramped. American kids looking for booze would be assailed by barkers at every bar entrance. “Come in, boys! Nice girls inside! Cheap!” Of course, there weren’t any nice girls inside but I guess that was the point. Their job was to entice the guys to buy grossly overpriced “drinks”. Most of us were too scared to go in those places. I peaked inside once and saw a row of fearsome women who looked like peregrine falcons with their hoods removed perched on barstools along one wall. We looked for bars that had live music and cheap drinks instead.

On weekends Avenida Juarez would be filled with groups of young American soldiers in civvies walking or staggering from bar to bar, their buzz cuts clearly marking them as prey; lots of horseplay and friendly swearing, all the time checking their watches. They had to be back on base by midnight or else. The MP’s waited at the toll booth on the other side of the border to gather up the boots who were too drunk to make their way across town to the base.

I was reminded of my own teenaged adventures on Avenida Juarez the other day when my MP3 player selected a Mexican tune played on marimbas. The band was playing a Cumbia, a type of music that combines tropical musical instruments and complicated rhythms with traditional Mexican instruments. The marimba sound reminded me of the Kentucky Bar on Avenida Juarez.

I didn’t go to Avenida Juarez unless I went with a group or with my friend Gabriel. Gabe and I would go to there on weekends if we weren’t otherwise busy with our girlfriends. The bar itself was just a large, well lit room about 30ft by 50ft and a fairly high ceiling. As you entered, the bartender was on the left side serving up drinks from the rows of bottles on the counter behind him. Mirrors reflected the long, narrow bandstand on the opposite wall. On the bare wooden floor, in between the bar and the bandstand there were about two or three dozen small wooden tables that would seat four customers each. Thanks to the 12 foot high ceilings a blue/gray haze of a hundred lit cigarettes floated about eight feet above the floor. The place smelled of sweat, beer, and old tobacco smoke. The light green walls were stained and smeared with grime from years of neglect. The attraction for me and Gabe was the six member marimba band. 

These Marimberos are from Guatemala

My memory isn’t very clear about the marimba itself. It may have been one 15 foot long instrument or to two shorter ones pushed together. Gabe, who eventually became a professional musician, marveled at the absurdity of hearing Frank “My Way” Sinatra, or Barbara “People” Streisand songs played on marimbas and with a lilting, happy go lucky Afro-tropical beat. All excited, Gabe would tell me to watch what the third marimba guy on the right was going to do next, then listen to the second guy pick up where guy three left off. On and on he went until he broke the songs down to their minutiae. The band played a mix of popular American and Mexican music with occasional forays into excerpts from well known classical favorites like the William Tell Overture. They didn’t play requests.

On Fridays the bar was always packed with GI’s when Gabe and I went but we were usually able to find stools at the bar. The boots were there because it was only a couple blocks from the border, the beer was cheap, and solo women were not allowed. They were noisy and rude to each other but we never saw any fights. Gabe’s theory was that the GI’s were scared straight by tales about Mexican cops and their inventive forms of law enforcement. It was at the Kentucky Bar that I first heard this joke:

You’ll get along in Mexico if you learn three phrases in Spanish:

Donde esta la cantina?          Where’s the bar?
Buen dia, Juez.                     Good morning, Judge
Cuanto es la multa?              How much is the fine?

It was Gabe who first discovered the marimbas at the Kentucky Bar. He wanted me to go with him but he wouldn’t tell me why. I went.

We crossed the border, pushed past the slimy barkers and the throngs of GI’s crowding the sidewalks, to the Kentucky Bar. The six marimba players ranged from early 20’s to mid 50’s by my reckoning. The leader was the last man on the left though the others switched positions according to which song they were playing. Gabe and I were just sipping our first drinks when they began to play “Amazing Grace”. It sounded so happy and lively I couldn’t believe I was singing along in my head. I looked at Gabe. Grinning widely, he slapped me on the back and gave me a thumbs up. Yeah, I wasn’t leaving until I ran out of money.

In the next 30 or 40 minutes they played a variety of American hits in their signature Cumbia style. I loved every second of it. I wondered if they knew how much they were changing the meanings of the songs by adapting them to tropical rhythms. I concluded that the band members didn’t understand the English lyrics but they liked the melodies and they were playing for a largely American audience. And like 17 year olds looking at a new car thinking, “If that were mine I’d put on some whitewalls, Baby Moons, lower the rear springs, and add fender skirts”, they must have listened to the original recordings and thought, “Ok, good melody. Can we make it fit our style?”

Then, as the Marimberos began plinking out the notes of a new song one by one, modifying and upping the tempo as their learning curve grew steeper, they arrived at their own, signed version. That night, the smarmy Pat Boone lament about his harrowed heart, “Love Letters in the Sand” sounded like an upbeat dance tune for a beach party.

When they finished playing the remodeled and improved “Love Letters in the Sand”, the bandleader announced that they were taking a break. I started to get up to go to the men's room but Gabe made me sit down. “No, no! This is the best part. You gotta hear this. You won’t believe it.”

“Para los soldados Americanos” (For the American soldiers), said the band leader and launched the Marimberos into a furious rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. The GI’s gaped open mouthed as the fired up band pounded the marimbas’ rosewood bars through every note of the American military classic. A few seconds into the piece the GI’s began stomping their feet and clapping to the rhythm. Every morning for eight weeks they had heard the U.S. Army Band rehearsing it. Now here, in a foreign country they were hearing it as they’d never heard it before, played by six Mexicans on marimbas. The ones who made it back from the war had at least one good story to tell about what happened one night when they were at the Kentucky Bar on Avenida Juarez.

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This link will take you to a performance of Stars and Stripes Forever.

U.S. Marine Corp. Band

This a sample of Cumbia music. It's a popular dance genre throughout Latin America.

 La Pollera Colora -- Carmen Rivero 

This link is just for fun. These Marimberos really love their job. The guy in the dark suit and the drummer give outstanding performances.

Note from Time Served: 

The Kentucky Bar may not be the actual name of the bar about which this story was written but it's the only name I remember now (drinks were very cheap $0.50 for bourbon and coke). There is one place I do remember well ~ Las Cavernas. It was a tiny bar located in a basement below another bar. The entrance was made to look like the mouth of a cave. Inside, the walls and ceiling had the same motif. The "charm" of the place was that the only lighting was black light which made teeth, eyeballs, and light clothing glow slightly blue. The effect was strangely appealing at first, but several dates I took there asked to leave after a short while. They were creeped out, they said.

 

Dunc

Now that the Class of ’65 reunion was over, I decided to spend another day to look around the city I’d left 20 years before. I headed south to the farming area where the narrow county roads were always good for small adventures. One time my wife and I wandered onto a dirt road that abutted a farm that raised miniature horses. At first we thought the herd we saw was at least 200 feet away but they were actually just 50 ft away. The little horses were just two feet high at the shoulder. Months later we tried to find them again but didn’t succeed. Another time we followed the flight of an egret, not a native bird in the Southwest, and found a hidden wild bird sanctuary in an artificial lake.

This time, when I saw the amateurish sign “Caesar’s Palettes” written large on the side of an old barn in the Lower Valley, I just had to stop, look, and ask. The tall brush and huge cottonwood trees obscured the front of the barn so I couldn’t see the enormous piles of wooden palettes, the kind used in warehouses all over the world to carry stacked goods.

The barn was about 300 feet from FM78, the farm-to-market road that ended just five miles south where it joined State 20. I drove over the rutted driveway to the open barn doors, got out of the car to the sound of rock music blasting from a pair of tower speakers located on each side of the doors. Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane were just finishing “White Rabbit”. “…..feed your head, feed your head…”, she wailed. No sooner was she done than Janis Joplin implored me to “take another little piece of my heart….”

Thinking I must have made a mistake and wandered into Psychedelphia, circa 1968, I turned back to my car.

“Mex!”

I hadn’t been called “Mex” since Vietnam. I whipped around to see who’d called me. It was a tall old man, sunburned to a crisp, who looked a little like somebody I used to know.

“Mex! It’s me, Dunc. Dunc McGregor.”

The Dunc I remembered from ‘Nam was a lean, broad shouldered guy, about 6ft a hundred, messy red hair, a droopy Fu Manchu mustache, every bit as tough as he looked. This guy was tall and wide like Dunc; graying red hair tied up in a pony tail, no mustache. I couldn’t place him.

“You don’t look 18 anymore either, Mex. If it wasn’t for your big nose I wouldn’t recognize you any more than I could find Waldo. It’s me, Dunc. ‘Nam, ’68, best friend you ever had.”

“Dunc? Where the hell’ve you been for the last 40 years? I’ve been looking for you all over the country all this time and you’ve been holed up in my own home town? I’m here to collect the $8 gas money you borrowed in LA.”

“No. You got it wrong, Slick. It’s you that owes me. Forty years, compound interest adds up, boy. Cash only, please. No checks.”

Like old times we did the dozens, matching wits, each trying hard to top the other until we ran dry.

“Dunc, ‘Caesar’s Palettes’?”

“Long story, Mex. Come on inside. I’ve got some cold beer and some candy ass soda pop just in case you’re still a wimp.”

He pulled two beers out of the cooler, turned the volume control down on the stereo and led me out a big cottonwood next to the barn. We sat down and looked at each other wondering if we looked as old as the guy we were looking at.

When our enlistment was up it was Dunc who saw me off at the Greyhound Bus Station in LA in ’69. I was going home to Texas. Both of us had mustered out of the service at the same time a couple of months before. He was getting up the money to buy a Harley then head home to Mississippi. We tried to stay in contact at first but it didn’t last long. I hadn’t thought about him in years.

His family was what’s called white trash, meaning poor, uneducated, and in some ways proud of being ignorant. He grew up in Mississippi among similarly poor blacks and Mexican migrant workers working alongside them in the watermelon fields and pecan orchards. When that work thinned they went to work in the poultry farms slaughtering and cleaning chickens from sunrise to sunset. Every man was a human being to Dunc.

His relentless energy as a linebacker in high school earned him a scholarship to Mississippi State where the team elected him defensive captain in his sophomore year. He was always the first to ‘hit the hole’ where the ball carriers were most apt to run but at 6ft. 3, 190lbs, was judged too small and light to play in the NFL. Unfortunately, the war in Vietnam was in full cry when he graduated and he was drafted immediately and sent to boot camp where it took three DI’s nine weeks of mighty effort to break him.

It wasn’t but two days after he reported to his base commander in 'Nam that Dunc was brought before his CO for fighting. Pecking orders are fact of life everywhere in life. Factions form, each with its leader and followers. Dunc, being Dunc, refused to kowtow to one of the self-described ‘leaders’ and was beaten badly but he wouldn’t back down. Eventually, he got the upper hand, so to speak, and broke the leader’s wrists -- both of them. To save the paperwork and hassle of a court martial Dunc was sentenced to three weeks latrine duty and was never challenged again. The guy he’d injured was sent stateside.

“Damn it, Mex, last time I saw you was at the bus station in LA and you borrowed $8.00. Saw Russ and Sergio in San Francisco in ’72. They told me Spence was living in Trucknutz, Arizona or something like that.”

I said, “We had some good times while we were waiting to muster out, remember?”

“Yeah, those girls who came to the parties over at Russ’s place? That redhead with the short dress, hair up high; that little girl had legs that went all the way up her………..”

“Dunc, you’re talking about my wife.”

“Oh, shit, man. I didn’t know. She married you? I gave her more credit for brains. Man, you got the better part of that deal.”

Still not believing, “The redhead and you?”

I nodded, yes.

Now really curious, “How’d you do it? I was gonna make a run at her but Marc had dibs already from being her pen pal or some shit.”

Catching himself now, he put his hand on my knee, “Hey, Mex, I didn’t mean nothing by that. I’m sorry, man.”

I told him no problem. It was a long time ago. Anyway, I told him, we had bunch of kids, owned a small business until we retired to Florida. Got another beer?

As he walked to the barn for the beer I laughed quietly at the idea that Dunc would make passes at my girlfriend, now wife. Back then Dunc looked like and acted like the bad boy that women are powerfully attracted to when they’re bored with their boyfriends or just looking for something out of the ordinary. Good looking, friendly, approachable, a sort of wild, unpredictable attitude about him. He was a dynamo in a crowd but tongue tied and hugely bashful whenever he was alone with a woman. One of the girls told me that she tried everything but strip down to get him to make a move on her. When she got real close he fumbled his drink, spilled it on her dress and on his pants then spent the next two hours apologizing.

Fresh beer in hand I said, "I was just thinking about you and the Harley you bought in LA to drive home.”

“That was a sweet ride, a 19 and 69 Harley Sportster. Took me 23 hours non-stop, ‘cept for gas and food to get to Clarksdale. My dad saw me drive up. Didn’t say anything right off. He just put me in his truck and took me to the ER. The nurses thought I was in a fire, my skin peeling off me, bleeding. It was windburn on my face, arms, hands, feet; even parts of my body that were covered. Doctor said he’d never seen windburn that bad. I was laid up in the hospital for two weeks, mostly knocked out with pain pills. Took a long time to heal up and I had to stay out of the sun for almost a year. Wasn’t allowed to drink either. I was a scary sight, too. My skin was blotchy all over, looked like I had some disease. If I was a horse or a cow no problem with being multi-color but hard for a man to get dates looking that way. It wasn’t exactly the homecoming I had in mind. Crazy times. Crazy man.”

Dunc may have been crazy but he was an educated crazy man. He had a civil engineering degree and was 23 when Uncle Sam drafted him. They offered him a commission as a 1^st Lieutenant owing to his degree but he turned it down saying he’d be nuts to be frag bait. He’d just as soon be a grunt, do his time, and go home. Two years later when we mustering out we were required to listen to a non-com try to talk us into reenlisting; get bonus money, go up at least one pay grade for two more years.

Dunc only spoke to the non-com for two minutes. Everybody else spent at least 20 minutes listening to the pitch.

“Dunc, what happened?”

“Nothing. The guy said my name and serial number. I said it was me. Then he said, have you thought about reenlisting?

“I said, no, reached across his desk, took the form, signed it, and left.”

We laughed at the memory of the lifer just sitting there with all his medals and stripes, expecting respect and admiration and getting neither from a grunt with a thousand yard stare.

“Mex, of the all the guys you were my best friend, kept me out of a lot of trouble like that time in Bangkok with the Marines.”

I thought about the time he told everybody in a bar in Singapore that he was going to kill me. Before that he’d protected me from the rednecks in our unit where being brown, black, or different was an invitation to abuse and insults. When they wouldn’t stop harassing me, he spoke up. “Listen up”, he said. “Nobody but ME calls this spic a spic. You think otherwise, let me know now; save me some time looking for you later.”

“I was your best friend? You forget you what happened in Singapore?”

“Jesus, Mex, what’d you expect? You called me a queer.”

“I didn’t call you a queer. You just thought I did.”

We were on R&R in Singapore. The bunch of us had rented rooms in a cheap hotel near the bars and whores but Dunc had other ideas. He rented a motorbike to go up to the mountains about 50 miles away. All excited about driving up there, staying at a good hotel for a change, he invited me to go with him.

“It’ll be nice. Real cool up in those mountains, rain forest, sleep on clean sheets on a bed that’s only used once a night. We’ll have fun.”

I was thinking about how I wanted to spend my R&R and I said, “Nah, I’m not that kind of guy.” It was a joke but Dunc heard something else.

According to Russ, on the last night of our R&R Dunc and the other guys were in a bar drinking as much as they could hold before going back. They were laughing, joking, and insulting each other as usual except for Dunc. He slugged down one beer after another, looking pissed.

Around midnight he slammed his bottle on the table looked around at the guys and said, “Nobody calls me a queer. I’m gonna break that wetback in two, then I’m gonna stomp his scurvy body flat as a goddamn tortilla, then I’m gonna cut him up in pieces and feed ‘em to the sharks. Anybody know where that sumbitch is? I’m gonna do it right now.”

Russ, who was bigger and meaner, pulled him outside and calmed him down. The next day all was forgotten in the dense fog of massive hangovers.

“Well, hell, Mex, you know I didn’t mean it. That was more'n 40 years ago. Damn, this is the second time I’m apologizing to you today. You the Ghost of Christmas Past or something? What’s next? You’re gonna tell me my future? Remember the MP’s in PI? I saved your skinny ass that time.”

What actually happened in PI was different from his recollection. My memory is better. I wasn’t drunk but I was high.

On that R&R, Dunc announced that he was going to get laid by all the Filipino bargirls in one bar. Two things argued against the success of his mission. We were going to bars that had at least 20 hostesses. That would mean five women each day for four days. Dunc was extraordinary in lots of ways but that fantasy would never happen. The other factor was bar etiquette among the working girls. If a girl succeeding in getting a guy to buy her drinks and maybe her favors later on he belonged to her as long as she wanted. If he came back the next day she would still own him unless she cut him loose for being cheap or whatever reason and he became fair game for the other girls to try. A guy who tried to have his fun with more than one girl in the same bar was risking plenty. He could instigate a fight among the girls or could become a victim of violence himself.

We were all in it together for good or ill so we came up with a plan to keep him and us safe. One of the guys was on his third tour and knew all the hot spots during R&R excursions. He told Dunc that he knew a pimp who could arrange a barfull of girls for him but that he moved around a lot. For the next six hours the gang went from bar to bar drinking at all of them and never finding the imaginary pimp. It was half past eleven. Time to go.

The regs were that we had to be off the streets by 12:00 AM or the MP’s would pick us up. Dunc was blind drunk and mad as hell as we staggered towards our hotel. A block away from the hotel Dunc stumbled and fell on his back, stared at the sky admiring the stars and started singing a nursery rhyme. A pair of MP’s drove up and demanded ID’s; asked where our hotel was. It looked they were going to let us go but then Dunc began swearing at the MP’s, jarheads, if you want to know. He was still on his back struggling to get up. He rose to his feet wavering back and forth still swearing. I cut in telling the MP’s I could handle Dunc and get him off the streets. I grabbed his thumb and started leading him towards the hotel. Dunc cussed at me and for the umpteenth time vowed to break me in two, stomp my scurvy body until it was as flat as a goddamn tortilla; then he was going to cut me in pieces and feed 'em to the sharks. He didn’t stop yelling even after we arrived at the hotel going up the steps to his room with me still pulling him along by his thumb. The guys said I looked like I was walking a big dumb ape. I pushed him on the bed and waited until he fell asleep.

In Dunc’s version it was me that provoked the MP’s. He threw me over his shoulder and took me back to the hotel.

I decided not to challenge his recollection about what actually happened in PI so I changed the subject.

“I went over to my old house on North Loop by the Indian Reservation. The house and the pines I planted in ’85 are still there but all the neighbors are different, not friendly like the old ones. Seems like the city’s grown and the community’s shrunk somehow. Nothing’s the same as it was 20 years ago.”

“Ain’t that the truth? When I went back to my folks’ place in Clarksdale all the small farms were gone. All the land was just one big ass spread owned by a syndicate that doesn't give a good goddam about the land. I couldn’t stay. Plus I was all fucked up in my head from the war anyway. You weren’t much better off if I remember.

He was right about that. A lot of us weren’t right after Vietnam and nobody seemed to know what to do about it. The visibly disturbed ones were put in VA hospitals for untested therapies and drugs that probably made things worse. The rest of us lived with whatever was in our heads. Some did better than others.

“Soon as I healed up from the windburn I went back to LA, married a sweet girl but it didn’t last long. She couldn’t take the flashbacks and not knowing what I would do next. Three years, she was gone.

“After she left me I kicked around the country not looking for anything in particular, just moving around until 1984. By then I was on VA disability. The doctors gave me pills for depression but I stopped taking them because they were making me more depressed. The only good thing is the pills made me lose my taste for alcohol. Smelled like old piss. Kicked it except for a couple of beers now and then.

“I went up to Seattle and spent a couple of months at my sister’s place. Her husband’s doing real well; some kind of marketing genius, so they let me stay and wouldn’t let me pay for anything. When I had to move on again they staked me $500. That, plus my uncashed VA checks got me to Las Vegas where I lost most of my money.

Marsha and I met there. She was a cocktail waitress and at first I thought she was just cozying up to me for the money which was fine by me. What’s money for anyway? But she stayed with me after it was gone, been with me ever since. She’s at her mom’s now, up in Utah for a month. I remembered you and we decided to come here and look you up sometime around ‘96. You were gone by then. Some snotty asshole, said he knew you, told me you’d gone to Florida to sell TV’s or something.

“We were out of money so I went to work as a warehouseman and Marsha found work as a receptionist in a lawyer’s office. We were doing ok. My boss liked me, gave me extra hours and responsibilities. One day some dumbass kid ran over my foot with the forklift, broke my ankle. Doc said it would take months to heal right. The bossman felt bad about it, like it was his fault, so he gave me a job I could do, gimpy leg and all, fixing broken palettes. New palettes cost about $22 and there were always broken ones laying around. Good times ‘til my boss had a heart attack and died. The new owner fired me.”

The sun was taking away the shade so we moved our chairs to another cottonwood. I could see his house, a utility shed, and a wire pen with a couple of dozen chickens pecking at the ground.

Dunc pointed to the house and said, “We had a little money set aside and put it down on this place; house, barn, four acres. It was touch and go for a couple of years. We almost lost the place; fell in arrears more than once but made it through. I couldn’t find a steady job so I started going around to warehouses offering to fix their busted palettes. Two months trying and nobody took the bait. In the meantime I picked up broken palettes from dumpsters all over town. Then I had an idea. Why not show up with a pickup load of rebuilt palettes and trade them one for one for broken ones plus $10 each for the good ones. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was a good deal. It was good for me, too. My only cost was for the spiral nails and my time. I had lots of that.

“I did that for a year or so, barely getting by. Been doing better every year after. Got contracts with a couple of small warehouses; going for a Walmart contract. If I get that I’ll need to hire some help.”

Dunc went to get us another beer. Just for something to do I tried to estimate how many palettes Dunc had on his lot but he was back before I could finish my calculation.

Now that we know what to call it, I said, “How are you doing with PTSD, Dunc?”

“Oh, sometimes good, sometimes bad. It’s dogged me all my life. I couldn’t keep a job; pissed off all the time. Some nights I didn’t want to fall asleep, you know why. Next day I was a wreck, started fights, got fired. Drank too much. Just pissed at the world. You know, Mex, all my life I’ve wondered who I might be if not for the goddam war. I’m a goddam civil engineer for god’s sake.

“Marsha’s the one who kept me halfway sane. I don’t know how, she understands what I need when I need it. She’s there. Hate to say it but I thought a lot about killing myself. Last few years though, I’m not pissed anymore. I just feel bad sometimes about the things I did over there. It’s different, you know? Anger’s not the same as grief; grief’s a lot heavier. It’s less now. I guess I’ve paid off some of what I owe.”

The moment over he looked up and gave me a little smile and said, “Whatever happened to Dr. Tim?”

That wasn’t his real name and I don’t remember now why we called him Dr. Tim. He was a few years older than the rest of us; a sage, a guru of sorts. After we were discharged Dunc and I fell in with a small group of anti-war students and Dr. Tim. They weren’t full blown hippies but they occupied an area between pro-war patriots and the anti-war protestors. They dressed down fashionably like hippies but bathed regularly, drank cheap wine, liked to party. Guys like us, back from that lousy war, were guests of honor. There was sex, drugs and rock & roll enough for everybody.

One night after a party, Dunc and I crashed at Dr. Tim’s house. About two o’clock Dunc had a flashback. He sat up hollering, “Incoming! Incoming!” He jumped up and started pushing the furniture against the door, yelling and crying at the same time. Dr. Tim rushed in and got him in a tight bear hug, talking softly. In a little while, Dunc went slack in is arms and began sobbing so hard I started sobbing, too. Whatever he had, I had it, too.

“Dr. Tim? Don’t you remember? He was grad student at UCLA, working on his Master’s, Dunc. Psychology, maybe Sociology, I think. Spence told me a long time ago that the VA hired him right out of college. Still there. Heads up a big department.”

“All the pills and stuff he had. Really good weed, too. I think we were like lab rats to him. Remember the time he tried to give us LSD? I said hell no, but Mex, you took it. I thought you were gone for good. All the while Tim had his arm around your shoulder, humming some shit; rocking you side to side, the crazy music.”

My brain felt like it exploded when the LSD hit my nervous system. Everything glowed. The green carpet, the white beanbags, my shoes, the posters on the wall shimmered intensely like hyped up neon on the edge of bursting. I was afraid. I closed my eyes but the electric colors continued, swirling, combining. I heard Dr. Tim murmuring over and over, “It’s ok. Just let it go, let it go. Everything is possible. Let it go. Everything you see is real. Let it go.”

I don’t know when it happened but I began to enjoy the experience. Everything was new. Everything was possible as soon as I let it go. My mind was free to go anywhere it wanted; no barriers, no warnings, no stop signs, no looking back. Everything was possible. Hours later, when I felt normal again it was with a clarity I had never experienced before. It would be more than ten years before I had another flashback.

The sun was setting now. We moved our chairs under the shade again and continued talking about the other people we knew, Russ, Max, Spence, Marc, and Sergio. I told him about our reunion in Florida and how my lawn was set on fire, the dorky fire chief, and the neighbors’ little spat in my back yard.

“I wish I’d been there. I haven’t seen anybody but you since ’72. Next time see if you can get the guys to come out here. Not much to see but sand and jack rabbits but, hell, we can have fun just laughing at each other. I’m being polite now, Mex, but I cracked up when I saw you getting out of your car, your belly hanging over your belt, squinting like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day.”

I agreed that it would be fun to get together again, said I’d update the guys about his whereabouts as soon as I got home.

As we walked to my car I saw his sign again: Caesar’s Palettes. I had to ask.

“Where did that come from?”

He turned towards the barn, hands on his hips. Real proud. “When Marsha and I wound up here all we had was a few bucks and this.”

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a five dollar Poker chip. Caesar’s Palace.

“Just about all we had left after Vegas. Don’t remember if I thought it or Marsha. Either way it worked.”

Driving north on FM78 I pulled over to the side of the road a mile or so from Dunc’s place.
I felt bad for him. I felt bad for me. I felt bad for everybody.

That's what friends are for

Fiction

The magazine I hurriedly grabbed at the airport newsstand turned out to be a car magazine. I barely made it in time to board my flight. I really don’t care about cars anymore. There was a time back in the 50’s and 60’s when I could identify and name every car on the road by year, make, and model. All I ask now is that my car takes me where I want to go.

The magazine had a roundup of the year’s most wonderful cars. Big whoop. To me there wasn’t much difference among them. In fact, the metallic paint and the sloping contours made them look like they had been made of Jell-0 poured into slightly different molds. I poked one of the pictures to see if it would jiggle.

In the back pages there were ads for vintage car parts. Either somebody had parts or somebody needed them. One of the ads had a fuzzy picture of a 1957 Chevy like the one my Dad owned decades ago. He bought it new and kept it until the 62’s came out; another classic design.

I was 15 years old, soon to be 16 in 1960. I couldn’t wait to drive Dad’s ’57 Chevy. I knew all about the 283 V8 under the hood and had planned how I was going to take it out on Route 86 and floor the gas pedal. Route 86 between the railroad crossing and Parker’s Dairy was always deserted. Deputy Sheriff Mike never patrolled there mainly because he was always on the other side of the county driving by Ellen’s Café where Cherry worked as a waitress. She wouldn’t give him the time of day but he kept trying, even knowing that Cherry was Biggers’ girl.

His full name was Chuck Biggers but plain Biggers seemed to fit him best. Even as corn fed Iowa boys go he was impressively sized; about six foot four, 220. Deputy Mike was about the same size but he had a two pound weight advantage in the form of a .38 caliber Police Special. Quiet wagering among the townspeople about which of them would win a fistfight had them dead even.

For all that, Cherry pretended not to notice Deputy Mike unless she was with Biggers. She’d give Mike an encouraging glance or two but no more than that. It was just enough to keep him guessing and hoping, and as long as she didn’t marry Biggers, there was hope; and she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to settle down just then.

It’s a truism that there are no secrets and lots of gossip in small towns. No internet, no TV, and nothing but farm reports or religious programming on the radio, tends to give rise to gossip and to everybody watching everybody else. It wasn’t a secret that the butcher at Wilkins’ Market took his thumb off the scale whenever Mrs. Miller went shopping for ground beef. That’s all anybody really knew but it generated hours of gossip about whether or not Mr. & Mrs. Miller were getting along; he’s 10 years older than she is, don’t you know.

The Cherry-Biggers-Mike triangle was always near the top of on-going hot topics. But right now, the hottest one involved Cindy Owens and her cousin Jimmy Stephens. Cindy’s parents had sent her to the Stephens farm to help out in the kitchen while Mrs. Stephens recovered from back surgery. As you might expect, Jimmy and Cindy’s hormones go the best of them and they proceeded to learn the mechanics if not the consequences of human reproduction. Luckily, she didn’t get pregnant but she was deeply smitten by thoughts of love, marriage, children, and flowers in her garden, so much so that after Sunday Services she asked the Pastor if it was ok to marry your cousin. Two days later Cindy was on her way back her folks while Jimmy basked in the approval of his friends, none of whom had so much as kissed a girl yet.

I wasn’t thinking about girls so much, well, not all the time anyway. More than anything, I wanted to drive my father’s 57 by myself.

When I was growing up you could legally drive alone when you became 16 so I was looking forward to being legal next Saturday. I was up at 5:00 AM, got myself ready and made just enough noise to wake my mom and dad. They knew what turning 16 meant to me so they got up earlier than they wanted. It seemed like it took Mom at least 365 days to make breakfast and Dad another week to eat it, but at last it was done. I asked Dad for the keys.

“Now, Son, driving is a big responsibility. You have to be a good citizen and obey the rules of the road all the time, especially the speed limits. I don’t have to tell you how many of my friends and relatives have been in accidents because of speeding.”

But of course, he did tell me about them. All of them.

“So, are you ready to go?” he asked. Boy, was I! What I didn’t expect was that Dad was going to come with me on my first ‘solo’ drive.

Well, hell. He said to drive to the school. It was a 10 minute trip that we did in half an hour, stopping at every stop sign, looking this way and that; gliding to a stop at the next one, watch your speed. Is there anybody behind you? You’re too close to the car in front. Slow down.

My dream of roaring down Route 86, doing 60 with the windows open and the radio blasting Chuck Berry or Elvis evaporated. I hoped none of my friends would see me crawling by like old Mr. Newman. The man had to be at least 137 years old; driving so slowly, all over the left and right lanes, or stopping at a red light, sometimes falling asleep before it turned green. If you saw his 1950 Plymouth coming at you it was best to slow down until he went by. There was no way to know where he was going next. The old Plymouth didn’t have turn signals but if it did, the left one would probably be blinking all the time. Sometimes Deputy Mike would follow him to make sure he got home alright.

I thought my Dad would let me take the Chevy for a spin once in a while but he had other ideas. The only time I got to drive was to run errands for him or my Mother. Go to the store; get a pound of chuck; to the stationary shop for a ream of foolscap for my Dad.

The single good thing was that the girls saw me driving a car by myself. One time I saw some girls outside the Rexall Drugs when I drove up to get some headache pills for Mom. Janice, Penny, and Erin were standing next to their bikes, drinking Cokes.

Janice, flipping her hair, “Ooooh, can I ride with you?”

Penny, “No, me first.” Erin just looked at me and the car.

They were all 16 and weren’t allowed to date or slow dance yet so it was just a tease but maybe a promise of things to come. We would all be 17 soon.

“Sorry, but I gotta get back home right away with my Mom’s pills. She’s in a lot of pain.”

Driving back I was thinking about the girls. Which one? Why not all of them? Drive a 57 Chevy and own the world!

Three more weeks passed before Dad finally lifted my servitude and said I could use the Chevy on my own. I don’t know how he decided it was time to let me fly but he did and that’s all that mattered. He still admonished me to drive like a decent man should – or else. When my Dad said “or else”, it meant that consequences would be swift and dire.

At first I was happy to drive here and there just to be behind the wheel of the Chevy. I wasn’t allowed to have any passengers even though my buddies begged and begged. “Or else” kept me in line until one day I was cruising on Route 9. I checked my speed; it was ok, no traffic, front or back. I looked down the road and there was Route 86 just begging for a 57 Chevy 283 to rip it up.

I made the turn to Route 86 and drove a quarter mile north and stopped. The 86 was a straightaway for at least 20 miles and hardly ever had any traffic. Irresistible. I floored the gas pedal and all 176 horses under the hood took off at once. The sudden start pushed me back against the seat and the white stripes on the road became a single line for about 30 seconds. At second 31 I heard Deputy Mike’s siren whining and saw his cruiser in the rearview mirror, closing fast.

Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!! He never patrols here! When Dad hears about this I’ll never see daylight again.

“You’re Don’s boy, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“I thought so. I’m thinking your daddy doesn’t know what you’re doing out here on the 86 and I’ve gotta a pretty good idea that he won’t be too happy to know it.”

The weight of my misery was crushing. I still had my hands on the wheel but my head was down on my chest, tears rolling down my cheeks. It was over. No more Chevy. No more girls. I’ll probably have to take my mother to the Junior Prom with her driving.

Deputy Mike took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. He stood up and rested his arm on the roof of the car. When I looked up I saw that he was looking away to the corn fields. In a couple of months it would be harvest time and those corn stalks, eight feet high by then, would come down.

He started talking but he sounded like he was talking to himself.

“When I graduated from Wilson High I couldn’t wait to get out of here and see the world. I had a wild hair you wouldn’t believe. Well, I went to LA a week after I got my diploma. It near killed me. I spent 2 ½ months there and never found a friend. Only people look you in the eye are up to no good. So I came back to my friends, the people of the land. Buddy boy, I learned that you have to have friends to get along in this world whether it’s here or in New York, LA, anywhere.”

I was thinking the Deputy was drunk or something but I had enough sense to keep quiet.

“Your daddy, Don, is a good friend but even good friends can have a falling out over their kids. No telling how Don will react when I call him to tell him I caught you going like a bat outa hell on the 86. He might take it right and slap you silly, or he could take it wrong and make it my fault in his mind.

“Right now you’re lookin’ like you need a friend real bad. So listen up! I’m lettin’ you go. Don’s worth more to me as a friend than catchin’ you lettin’ off steam in his car. One thing, though. If I hear a whisper about this from anybody I’ll be on your bumper anytime you get a notion to go anywhere. Now go on home.”

That was lesson enough for me. I became a model driver everywhere I went on an errand or just driving around to the Dairy Queen to meet my friends. Deputy Mike would tip his hat every time our paths crossed.

A week before school started I was at the Rexall picking up Mom’s allergy medicine when I overheard Jack, the pharmacist, telling Janie Jones about Biggers tearing around looking for Cherry. Somebody told him they saw Cherry getting into the Deputy’s car and going off together. Jack allowed that it might be good thing for Biggers and the Deputy to finally settle things once and for all. Janie clucked in agreement already thinking who to tell next.

This wasn’t the first time Biggers and Deputy Mike confrontation stories had circulated. Old story. It was like watching a pair of bulldogs snarling at each other through a hole in the fence. Even if Cherry married one of them the snarling and threats would go on and on.

I headed west on Route 9. A new burger stand had opened just past Route 86 and I hadn’t been there yet. I didn’t make it past the 86. As restricting as Deputy Mike’s warning had been, it wasn’t powerful enough to keep me from wanting to race the Chevy.

This time I was smarter. I drove the speed limit for 10 miles on the 86 looking side to side the whole way to make sure Deputy Mike wasn’t out there hiding in the corn fields. I made a U turn, thinking the coast was clear; I could take the Chevy to at least 75 on the way back. But I caught a flash of sunlight from the left side of the road. Deputy Mike?

I got out of the car and backed up a few feet so I could get a better view. Through the corn stalks I could see that the deputy’s car was parked about 15 yards inside. I thought I heard noises further in so I circled around keeping the noises to my right until I was close enough to see the whole car.

I saw Mike’s gun belt hanging off the side view mirror. On a blanket next to the car, Mike and Cherry were lying down chewing each others faces, or looked like that to me. At first I thought they were fighting. Mike was on top of her and he seemed to be winning.

I said, “Mike?”

Cherry screamed. Mike rolled off Cherry and reached for his gun belt. Cherry stood up and ran to the other side of the car, straightening her clothes as she went.

Deputy Mike didn’t look so powerful now with his pants down around his ankles. He looked like he needed a friend; a friend who could tool down the 86 at 75 miles per hour without a care in the world.
 

Gabriel's Horn

 Fiction

When I heard that Gabriel was coming I just had to be there. It was Gabriel Zambrano, a classmate of mine from high school. If there was prank executed or a teacher flummoxed, Gabriel was in on it as the ringleader or the executioner. He was the innocent, put upon, smartass the teachers loved to hate. They couldn’t discount his brains or his grades but any teacher that had him lived with a bit of dread that he would lay some kind of trap that would ridicule gently but never with malice. Some teachers admired his skills at entrapment, tried mightily to avoid falling for the tricks, but didn’t always succeed.

The news came in a letter inviting me to the 47^th reunion of the class of ’65 from St. Thomas College Prep. The school was run by a religious order who’s charter was the education and development of young men. The tuition was fairly high but the student body had a mix of upper, middle, and lower class students. The tuition and remote location in the outskirts of El Paso kept the enrollment consistently under 400.

I had always declined (read refused) to attend the previous class reunions. Even though I had never attended one, I had some preconceived notions about what happened at those gatherings:

        A bunch of old farts who barely recognize each other try to recapture the camaraderie of the ‘old days’ when things were pure and simple, while at the same time sizing each other up, comparing themselves to the others. Who was up, who was down; who did better than the jocks, or did the jocks who always seemed to have things go their way actually go through life as charmed now as they were then? And what became of the geeks and nerds, the invisible ones who never seemed to do anything but read and become teachers’ pets?

Gabriel. In the Spring of our Senior year he and I had rigged the Fart Chair in Fr. Banford’s physics class. Actually, all I did was be his lookout while he modified the teacher’s hemorrhoid cushion. Fr. Banford’s battle with his ring of fire was such that he had to stand up and sit down at frequent intervals. After the modification, the pillow would emit a small amount of sulfurous gas every time the he sat down. Thirty minutes into the day’s lesson, the odor was in everyone’s nostrils. When the prank was uncovered, everyone, including the teachers, just “knew” that Gabriel had done it. But it was just a few days before graduation and the principal let it go. Gabriel never owned up to it and I kept that silly secret for 47 years.

Our English teacher, Fr. LeGrand, was fond of vocabulary building. He drilled us every day from his favorite book, “Word Power Made Easy.”

“Polymath,” he said. “Does anybody know what it means? Come, on. It was on the vocabulary list.”

Phil raised his hand and said that a polymath was someone who was highly skilled in many fields.

Fr. LeGrand was thinking of himself when he asked if anyone knew any polymaths. After all, he held PhD’s in English and Mathematics, a Doctorate in Music; and was an accomplished amateur musician, actor and athlete. But all of us turned to look at Gabriel who sat at his desk idly doodling in his notebook.

It was true. Gabriel was good at almost anything he tried. While the rest of us might know our lessons, he knew stuff that wasn’t in the text books. It was as though he could remember everything he ever read or heard about anything.

Yes, it would be good to see Gabriel again and finally, I had to admit to myself that I was curious about some of my ex-classmates. What became of the members of the Blue Rockers band; Alex, Vic, Jer, Bobby, and Sylvia?  I wasn’t that interested in the rest of the 60 or so members of the class. All I had to do to was look at myself in the mirror to see the changes five decades had made in me to imagine what time had done to them – less hair, more fat; less optimism, more wrinkles; less future, more past.

Bobby and Sylvia wouldn’t be there. They didn’t go to our school. Years ago I heard that Bobby was killed in Vietnam so I looked for his name on The Wall. It was there. Sylvia had disappeared when the band broke up; maybe Gabriel would know something. I made a mental note to ask him.

I mailed my RSVP and made reservations to go. My wife couldn’t go because she was in the throes of editing her latest book. She and her agent were down to arguing about commas. It was an old battle between them. The agent said she didn’t use enough commas, but my wife insisted that the number of commas in her work was exactly the number required.

“Commas! Jackson, all you have to know about them is what ONE comma and the Supreme Court did to the 2^nd Amendment. No more commas.” The argument would continue until one or the other capitulated. Then another “problem” would arise and the arguments would begin again. To my eyes, dealing with the editors was harder than writing the books.

When I checked in at the hotel there was a message from Gabriel to meet him in the bar. I left my bags unpacked in my room then went to look for him. He was sitting near the door drinking what looked like a Manhattan. Some things don’t change. That had been his drink since high school. Whenever we went drinking in Juarez he claimed that the night bartender at Curly’s was the only man who knew how to make a Manhattan. I’m sure the bartender was impressed to receive compliments from a 17 year old sophisticate.

“Viejo! How are you, man? If it wasn’t for that Manhattan I wouldn’t recognize you. How did you get so old?”

“Same as you. Went to sleep one day then woke up 50 years later looking like this.”

It was good to see him. I had followed his life on the internet for years. After bumming around for a few years he had landed a job as a trouble shooter and consultant for a top manufacturer of really high end sound equipment. He had a gift for knowing exactly what was wrong with the sound of an amplifier and could describe it to the designers in such a way that they could make the necessary changes to the equipment or the room it was in. Technically, he was ‘on call’ 24/7 and was paid a retainer to carry a beeper should his ears be needed to satisfy an unhappy customer.

With no office and no boss he had time to do what he really loved, play his guitar and compose songs. He was good enough to play with several bands on the East Coast and played a bit of everything. For a while he played string bass for a Bluegrass band. Being Mexican-American, his color stood out among the band members, but he called himself Jay, played the slap bass well enough that he toured with them and another Country band for a four or five years. He made a couple of rock & roll CD’s of his original music and had modest success. Retired now, he lived with his wife, Juanita, in a remote part of New Mexico, playing occasionally at a local tourist hotel to keep his hand in.

I gave him the short version of my life since graduation, stopping before he went to sleep from boredom. Then I asked about Alex, Vic, Jer, and Sylvia.

“Let’s see. Alex is here so he can tell you about his teaching job at Eastwood High. Been there going on 20 years now. Vic went to LA to make the big time. Instead he met up with a girl who converted him to Mormonism. They moved to Salt Lake, blanded in and disappeared. I think Jer is here, too. He married a girl he met at St. Mary’s, became an accountant for big company. He’s doing well. I don’t know about Sylvia. She told me once that she just wanted to get married, raise kids and pigs. Maybe she did.

“This is my first reunion, too. I don’t like to travel without Juanita but she flat out said no, she didn’t want to have to talk to my buddy Dickshire. She didn’t actually say it that way. Juanita learned a lot of colorful words from the guys in the bands we traveled with.”

We ordered another drink as a group of guys walked into the bar. It looked like some bigshot surrounded by yes men or body guards. He made a show of entering the bar and ordering his retinue about, making sure everybody knew who the big dog was. I didn’t need to read his name tag. I knew it was Richard Dickshire. Except for being 50 lbs heavier and balding fast, he was still Big Dick Dick. He was the richest kid in our class and from the look of things he was still the richest among us. This guy wasn’t born on third base. At birth his toes were already touching Home Plate.

Gabriel picked his drink and said, “Let’s go outside.”

I was a non-entity in high school so nobody ever bothered me one way or another but Gabriel had been one of Dick’s targets for ridicule and humiliation. He came from very poor family who made enormous sacrifices to pay his tuition at St. Thomas. He didn’t dress well and rarely had any extra money. Dick and his pals would harass him and even push him around sometimes. I remember one time the Blue Rockers were playing at a school dance. Gabriel was paying the admission for himself and his date when he discovered that he had left his wallet at home. Dick gave the ticket taker a 20 to pay for the tickets then stuffed another 20 in his coat pocket, saying, “Now, Gabriel, you take Juanita to nice place tonight. Forget about the taco stand. Juanita’s dressed too nice to sit at Tiko’s Tacos. Buy her a big steak. Maybe you’ll get lucky in the bargain.” He looked Juanita up and down. “Juanita, you can do a sight better than this loser. Let me know when you’re ready for a winner.”

The fact was that Juanita was never his girl. She only had eyes for Gabriel and was still with him. Dick had tried everything to win her, throwing his money around; buying her gifts and disparaging Gabriel. Juanita was the one thing he couldn’t buy and it rankled.

She was one of those rare human beings who improved your mood just by saying hi in passing. Even the girls who hated everything liked her. She was beautiful, too. All of us had a crush on her at one time or another but even when she turned us down we didn’t feel all that bad. Once she had settled on Gabriel, nobody else had a chance in hell with her. I only met one other girl like her and I married her before she came to her senses.

The first day of the two day reunion began the next morning. At first everyone, meaning the 50 classmates and wives, milled around squinting at each others name tags. Nobody seemed to remember me except Alex and Jer. Mostly, Gabriel and I hung out together. People kept coming up to him, telling or retelling some story about his pranks and how they still laughed about them all these years later. I was having a good time just listening and remembering, too.

Unfortunately, Big Dick Dick would not allow himself to be ignored. He made the waiters set up a bigger table for him and his admirers. We could hear him above the chatter and the music from the pianist in the corner. Oh, yes, he had finally gotten rid of the six seater Lear Jet and had a 12 seater here; thinking about refitting a 727 next year.

A six piece rock band set up and began playing and the guys who had brought their wives began dancing. The stag guys catcalled and made innocuous, lewd remarks to the women who seemed to like the attention. Big Dick Dick tried to dance with one of the women but he got winded quickly and left the floor, leaving his partner stranded. Gabriel and I watched and talked about old times.

Our MC, Chuck Kelly, called us to order and made some remarks about old age, time passing, the good old days, etc. He made a few comments about the organizers and named some of the attendees who were there for the first time and others who had not missed a single reunion. They each stood and got polite applause. He read off the agenda for the day and for tomorrow. He ended by officially ending the party and inviting everyone to the bar for a nightcap.

The next day we toured our old high school. The interior hadn’t changed too much except for updated desks and labs. We recalled dozens of events large and small. A new gymnasium complete with a weight room had been built thanks to Dick Dickshire. In an inspired moment of originality, he had made it clear that the facility was to be named the Richard Dickshire Athletic Center. He posed for pictures in front of the barbells rack. Irony and self awareness were not his strong suits. If one were to guess, he weighed more than the combined mass of pig iron stacked behind him. 

The intramural baseball game was called off because we couldn’t find enough people fit enough to make two teams. Instead, we had a picnic by the river, drinking beer and dining off paper plates. Someone brought out a guitar and Gabriel played and sang the folk songs that had been popular years and years ago. By evening we were very mellow and we headed back to the hotel for the closing ceremonies of our reunion.

Chuck, the MC, proceeded to read the names of people whom he had not been able to reach and asked us to help look for them. He announced that after his remarks we would have another dance, dinner and drinks afterwards. Finally, he was just absolutely delighted (!) to announce that Richard Dickshire had generously paid all of our hotel expenses including the hall, music, meals, and our individual rooms. Applause!

Chuck was just beginning to call Big Dick Dick to the stage to say a few words but Dick was already going up the steps to the stage. He took over the microphone and began to speak.

“Hello, everybody. It sure is nice to see all of you here. I see a lot of smiles and I guess I know why. It’s not everyday that Santa pays your bills for you. Well, I’ll tell you when a man is successful he feels he owes something to others so I’m happy to let go of some of my loot once in awhile.

“My daddy left me a beer distributorship that was only grossing five million a year. I sold it, first thing. My mother said it would break my father’s heart if he knew what I did but I’ll tell you what. I smelled the future and it smelled like crude oil. I invested in a couple of oil wells and before you know it I doubled the 5 million, then doubled it again. I’m not a bragging man but I do love my comforts. There’s a brand new Lamborghini Aventador in the parking lot. You might have seen it. It’s the red one with the two guys standing next to it. They’re guarding it for me everywhere I go. Damn thing cost me $449,500 and it goes like scat. I’m having it shipped to Germany so I can take it on the Autobahn. For those of you that don’t know it, there’s no speed limits on that road!

“No doubt about it I’ve been blessed more than most. But for all that, I didn't get somehing I really wanted. Do you all remember Juanita Moreno? Beautiful girl. Gabriel, back there” pointing now, “stole her away from me and I never forgave him for it. That said, I’m going to be big about it and let bygones by bygones. Gabriel, I love you, man.

“Thank you all. Now let’s all have a good time.”

Dick left the stage and began working the crowd, stopping, saying a few words to each person. He reminded me of an old freighter cruising slowly into the harbor with seabirds circling and following. When he got to Gabriel he dropped anchor and spoke.

“So how’s Juanita doing these days? As long as I live I’ll never figure out why she picked you. She’d been better off with me. She could be driving her own Lamborginhi to Neiman-Marcus every day instead of trailing you around the country like a camp follower. You know it. I know it. And I’ll bet she’s thought about it time and again all her life.”

Hearing that, we all drew in our breath expecting Gabriel to explode. But he didn’t.

“Dick, Juanita is fine. She’s more beautiful than ever. But in case you didn’t know, she isn’t here because she can’t stand you. She was nice to you but she was always nice to everybody, even to creeps like you.”

Now it was Dick’s turn to explode but he didn’t. He puffed out his chest and tried to whisper but didn’t seem to know how. No one had ever heard him whisper. Leaning in, he said,

“Gabriel, do you know why you never got any recording contracts? Do you know why you spent your whole life going nowhere? It was because of me. I have friends everywhere. They do what I say. If I say Gabriel doesn’t get a contract he doesn’t get it. If I say his CD’s don’t get on the shelves, they don’t get on the shelves.

“You might think money can’t buy everything. Maybe you’re right but I sure bought you your miserable life.”

Everyone was looking at Gabriel, including me. He was shaking with fury as he remembered all the doors slammed in his face; the sure things that fell apart at the last minute. All those years waiting for the breaks that would never come. Thank you, Richard Dickshire.

He started moving and I thought he was going to charge Dick but he turned on his heel and walked out fast. I followed him out and led him to my rental car. We got in and headed to the freeway just to go somewhere, anywhere.

In the hall, the band started playing but everybody was buzzing about Dick, Gabriel, and Juanita.

We drove over the bridge to Juarez and stopped at the first bar we saw. Inside we ordered beers. Gabriel gulped his beer down, ordered two more and started laughing hard. Oh, oh, I thought, here it comes. The breakdown.

“Damn, that’s good beer. Viejo, bring me two more and two for my friend. Our horses are outside. Take them some beer, too.” The confused bartender actually looked out the window to see if there were any horses. "Gringos", he muttered and went back behind the bar.

Gabriel looked at me, staring hard. “That fat sonofabitch owes me but I don’t know what. I’m happy with what I have. Remember how Fr. Tippington showed us how to make a decision tree? If you do this, what are the consequences? If you do that, what are the consequences? You go through all the possibilities and you choose the one with the least negative consequences. All the time we were driving around tonight I was thinking how I could pay Dick back. Then that first beer hit my mouth and I realized something. I’ve had a damned good life. Why would I screw it up now by killing that asshole?

“Juanita loves me the same as she did 44 years ago. We had two great kids, 5 grandkids. My pension and savings are good enough to last me years. I live in a nice cabin in the mountains. I play my music at the hotel when I want to. And look at my job. For god’s sake, I never had a boss or an office I had to be in every day. If the beeper didn’t go off I could do whatever I wanted with my time. And the pay was damn good, too. Best of all, I have Juanita.”

It was only 9:00 o’clock. We decided to return to the reunion hall for the closing. On the way back Gabriel had me stop at a Walmart and wait for him in the car. He came back holding a plastic sack. “Some beer for my room,” he said. Yeah, right. He was up to something. His innocent look didn’t fool me in high school either.

As we approached the hotel he said he had a plan. I knew it! In an instant I stopped being 65 year old never-been and became 16 year old gonna-be again. It made me giddy until I heard the plan.

My part of the scheme was to start a fight with the guy wearing an earpiece at the entrance to the hall. He was one of Dick’s guards. I was skeptical.

“Don’t worry! Just make enough fuss so that the goons guarding the Lamborginhi have to come over to see what’s going on.”

I was still skeptical. “Look, as soon as they start running towards you, run into the hall. Trust me. They won’t come after you.”

Ok. Ok. I went up to the guard acting drunk and bumped him harder than I intended.

“Get out of my way you cheap rent-a-cop!” Whether it was the bump or the insult that motivated him, he stiff armed me on the chest and sent me flying. I staggered back.

“Come on. Come over here and try that again you Mother something. Did I just call you Mother something? Mother Superior? Mother Jones? Whatever Mother you are, game on!”

By the time I got that out the guard had radioed his buddies at the car. They came running and, suddenly sober, I ran into the hall where everybody was creaking around the dance floor to “Mustang Sally.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel snuck up to the car. As soon as the guards sprinted off he put a portable air horn under the car, turned it on, and scrambled away into the bushes.

Portable air horns are used by boaters and sea going ships to signal their presence from a long distance. The ear piercing sound can travel more than half a mile at sea. The sound level has been compared to that of a jet engine measured close up. Sustained exposure to a sound that loud makes it impossible to think. The automatic reflex is to do something, anything, to make it stop.

The blaring horn brought the guards back to the car. It was locked so one of them ran to the hall to find Dick and the keys. Dick stormed out, yelling at the guards to stop the car alarm. They couldn’t hear him over the horn’s blast. Finally, they got the keys, opened the door, but couldn’t find any way to stop the noise.

Dick was screaming at the guards and they were yelling at each other. Finally, resorting to sign language, the opened the hood to disable the klaxon. Still the horn blared. More Dick yelling. More sign language. They disconnected the battery. The horn blared.

Someone in the hotel called the Sheriff who pulled up with his siren going which didn’t help matters. Dick yelling in the Sheriff’s ear. Dick yelling at his men.

The opened the engine compartment and frantically pulled at the wires but the noise didn’t stop. The Sheriff brought out his heavy duty bolt cutters and went to work on the wire harnesses, tossing them over his shoulder as he worked. Nothing stopped the blaring horn. By this time Dick’s men had taken the dashboard apart, ripped out the seats and interior door panels. The Sheriff cut more harnesses. The car looked like a chop shop victim, parts scattered all around.

The horn got softer and softer. It gave up a last tweet then went quiet. The Sheriff peeked under the car and found the exhausted air horn canister.

Dick was so bewildered he couldn’t speak. His mouth was working but no words came out. His half million dollar car was ruined.

He saw Gabriel in the crowd that gathered around the car. And he knew. He just knew who did it.

Only $450,000, give or take

$19.95 plus tax

My First Time

It was difficult but not impossible

I remember the first time I had sex in a car. It was in a '65 Volkswagen. Imported from Germany after the Big War, Volkswagens were renowned for their economy but not for roominess. As I remember, they had an advertising campaign that really worked despite competition from American made cars with big engines. Anyway, the VW belonged to Mike Bennett. Old Mike, (I call him Old Mike now because he's old, but he wasn't old at the time I borrowed his car. Matter of fact, we were the same age.) Mike's father gave him the car to go back and forth to school. Mr. Bennett Sr., now that was a man's man. I heard that one time he and his buddy Eduardo had been drinking and Eduardo got so drunk he wanted to fight everybody in the bar. Not a problem if you’re built like Bennett Sr. but Eduardo was only about 105 lbs of skin and bone. Well, Bennett Sr. being Eduardo's best bud stepped in to stop him from getting hurt, so he cold cocked him, threw him over his shoulder and took him home to Magda. You don't mess with Magda even if she's just a wisp of a woman. Once her mouth starts working you won't stop her. You had to let her wind down no matter how long it took. She said to leave Eduardo on the step and go on home. So, Bennett Sr. got in his car, not the Volkswagen, that comes later. 

Bennett Sr's sweet ride

No, his car was a white-over-powder blue '57 Chevy. I'll tell you no finer looking car's ever been designed than that Chevy. It had a bright orange 283 cu. inch V8 engine. Everywhere he went, guys wanted Bennett to pop the hood so they could look at that orange motor. V8's were a big thing back then. They sounded different from a straight six; most of us could tell just by hearing if it was a V8 or a six. My father told me when that when he was a young, guys with Model A Fords would compete to see who could set the idle lowest on the four bangers and keep running. He said it was a real treat to watch the engine fire one time, pause a bit then fire again and keep going like that. You had to keep the engine running at least a minute to qualify. Nowadays you look under the hood of a car and you don't see anything that looks like a motor. It's all hoses and pipes. Hell, you don't even see spark plugs. The way I grew up, you took the spark plugs out and cleaned them with a wire brush. I had to borrow a gap gauge from Juan to set them. Those things cost about a buck, but why buy one if Juan would lend you his? He was a nice guy who let you borrow his tools but you had to clean them before giving them back. One time Mr. Bennett let him drive his '57 Chevy. Juan took it on the FM256, got it up to about 90 miles an hour before the State Trooper pulled him over. Juan figured he was in trouble but his Mom always told him to respect the police so he just pulled over expecting the worst. This was going to be bad. The Trooper was a badass that nobody wanted to cross. Everybody called him Thumper because he looked like a rabbit. His eyes were close together, pinched looking, and he had a bit of a hare lip that he tried to hide under a mustache that made him look like a rabbit with a mustache. Turns out Thumper just wanted to look at that orange 283 V8. But his judgment left him and he told Juan he would let him go if he let him drive the Chevy one time. Juan could follow in Thumper's Ford Cruiser. Off they went. Thumper got the Chevy up to 85 with Juan in the Cruiser close behind. Competition among men is built-in to every cell so Juan gunned the Ford and started pass Thumper now hitting 90. As they got bumper to bumper, Juan thought about what his Mom, Rosario told him about respecting the law. Rosario had been brought up hard, working the cantaloupe fields in Marfa, Texas and she knew a thing or two about disrespecting the law. If you’ve ever tasted a cantaloupe from Marfa, no other cantaloupe will ever satisfy you again. The good ones are bigger than a softball but smaller than a soccer ball she told me once. Cut ‘em open, get the seeds out and you’ll get tastiest, sweetest orange fruit that doesn’t taste like an orange. Whenever I went to the store for my mother to buy cantaloupes she told me to ask Mr. Barrera where the fruit came from. Mr. Barrera owned a grocery store two blocks away from my house. An old guy, if you went in to the store, he’d be asleep on a stool next to the cash register. A lot of his customers would get their stuff off the shelves and leave the money on the counter. Well, I know that’s shocking to hear but that was in the 60’s when things were different. These days, even 10 year olds are staging holdups. Matter of fact, just today I read in the paper about just such a thing. Don’t laugh. I still get my newspaper delivered. I pay once a year by check now because of an incident with the paper boy that I won’t get into now, except to say that the kid conned me and my neighbors paying him twice. Mr. Ramirez got so mad he went to the kid’s house and got into a fight with Howard Johnson, the kid’s father, not the Howard Johnson motel magnate. The nearest Howard Johnson to our town was in Fort Stockdale, 10 miles away. We never got to use the swimming pool because you had to be a guest there except once when my Uncle John came to visit and stayed at the motel. My father said Uncle John thought he was big stuff and our place wasn’t good enough for him since he sold some gadget he invented to Montgomery Ward’s for a lot of money. Back then Sears and Montgomery Ward were each trying to beat the other for customers until “Monkey Ward” (that’s what my Dad called it), got in trouble and had to sell out to Sears. And Sears was different then, too. Their name was Sears Roebuck and Co. I don’t know what happened to Roebuck but one day it was gone. Now I hear that Sears and Kmart are the same company. What a world. I never had much truck with Kmart. I was 12 when they opened their first store at the edge of town. You’d think they were giving stuff away; and if you thought that, you’d be right. The place was packed with shoppers who were getting some free stuff; balloons and hot dogs, Cokes for two cents. Cokes had been five cents all my life for a six ounce bottle. 

Pepsi, better than Coke

You could buy a 12 ounce Pepsi for seven cents and get two cents back when you returned the bottle. We kids did the math and the Pepsi was the better deal. Problem was, where to get seven cents. Enrique figured it out. Two of us would go into Barrera’s store real quiet. If Mr. Barrera was asleep we’d steal some empties from behind the counter then wake him up and ask for the deposit money. It was the perfect crime that only worked once. You know, I haven’t thought about Enrique in a long time. Margarita, the waitress at the Knock Knock Diner, said she heard he was a big time mortgage broker now. The Knock Knock wasn’t exactly a diner. It was Manuel’s house. You had to knock on the screen door and wait for Manuel to come out to take your order then wait on the porch. Margarita would bring it out and set it on a little table for you. If I’m right about it, this was the origin of knock knock jokes that become popular once every generation. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ham & Eggs, How? Over easy”. 

But I could be wrong.  

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Important Note from Time Served

The foregoing should serve as a tip that you won’t find in books on How-To-Write-Good.

Never write while under the influence of powerful antihistamines that are likely to make you dopey like the bourbon your mother used to put on your gums when you were teething.